"The Gift" (somewhat obscene & sexual)

Frontier poor-man's vegetarian burritos & fries, water, some beer & ginger vodka later.

This dream was literally titled "The Gift." It was presented in scripted, movie format, sepia-toned, with title cards.

I am a woman, and my husband and I are infiltrating some sort of group. The group has this henchman, a veritable giant of a man, rather like The Rock, but with the face & hairstyle of Ka Hekili from Quantum Redshift. He murders everyone but me. He knows that he is a Gift to me, and I know that I am a Gift to him. Our love is total and inevitable, a great romance. I turn back into my male self at this point, and I am concerned that now that I am male, he will not be able to love me any more. But he doesn't care, and we make love. (And it really is making love, not sex, not fucking. This is slow, sensual, movie lovemaking.) He's a giant, though, and I literally have to climb around on top of him. If I'm up gnawing on one of his big brown nips, my dong is grinding into his ribs. He is transported in waves of ecstasy. Some people come to get us, they know that all the rest have been killed, but we will make short work of them. Our love will not be denied.

paint your nails

Early dinner of a Subway veggie sandwich, water. Mid evening ice cream while I worked on data entry.

Earlier dream I remembered when the dogs got me up at 4 to go out, but now is lost. One of my war dreams, I'm certain.

Later, I'm hanging out with Tyra Banks and several other people, we're all sitting on bar stools [again?], I think in Aunt Betty's den. There's a group of us. She's challenging us to all come up with exciting new nail polish colors/patterns. I'm not particularly committed to this challenge, but I give it some work. We're all leaning in the direction of colors that match our outfits. The woman wearing purple and green goes purple, etc. Mine is a little bit more elaborate, yellow and white designs, maybe reminiscent of buttered popcorn Jelly Bellies. There's some reference to PeeWee's coat there, too. I think my design isn't going as far as Tyra wanted it to or something, though. I think I should have actually made them look LIKE PeeWee somehow. Oh well.

Throw me a party full of strangers, will ya?

Caprini sandwiches, fried green tomatoes, water. Later a minor, private beer bust with Pinstripes and homemade ginger vodka.

Maresa has thrown me a birthday party. Which is nice. Maybe I'm not so into it, but it's nice. I'm not me, though. I mean, I'm me, but the me of the moment being Ron, a skinny white guy in his 50's. Everyone else is their normal age and all. And otherwise I'm still regular old me. So I'm at the party. The main room of their house is a large space with old white plastered walls and terraced along one side, with barstools on the terraces. It's almost like a courtroom and this is the Jury box, just that the box aspect has been taken away. Lots of heavy, dark wood. Historical things are on the walls. Sheryl Wolf is there. I hold her hand and tell her how much we appreciate her has a friend, that she always is there with some helpful gift or suggestion, and she's really enriched our lives.

At some point, I look around, and on these barstools are sat a bunch of guys I don't know. I mean ANY of them. Maresa has thrown me a birthday party and invited strangers. Or at least I think they're strangers. I mean, maybe I've met them before somewhere, but I certainly aren't FRIENDS with any of these guys. I kind of chide her about this. "I don't know anyone HERE, Marsha!"

I need a break. Me and my buddy from my boys only adventure club are going to skip back over to our apartment. We start out and cross what is essentially a college campus, though much of it is boarded up. There's a lot of sneaking and climbing involved. At one point there is an area like the square in front of Zimmerman Library, and there's a couple inches of water in it. I've been running, I think on my usual all-fours, and now I dive into the water. It's completely shallow, but I can still body surf and kind of swim in it, much apparently to the amazement of those looking on. Some firemen are running their hose from the truck, the source of the water. They turn the hose on me, hitting me in the legs and back and the seat of the pants, propelling me faster. What a pleasure.

We get finally to our building. But the direction we've come from has put us in a place where the courtyard and entrance is several floors below us, apparently the complex is nestled into a hillside. I feel I don't have time to go all of the way around, so I simply resolve to climb down the face of the building. [I've dreamed this place before. See Everybody's Drunk Here, January 16, 2007] The face of the building is mostly windows, which protrude as casements only a couple of inches, and the windows open outward from the top, so I need to be extremely careful not to misstep, or pull one open and fall to my death. There is a thin lip just behind the frame of the window, I need to focus on keeping my fingertips on those lips as I lower myself down. I can imagine that a few of the mean old divorcees that live in these places are going to take exception to crazy old Ron climbing down the face of the building. But they should be used to it.

I do make it down without major mishap. My buddy meets me at the bottom. He took a safer route. We go up to our apartment. It's really kind of a dorm, and there is a common shower room. Nothing nasty about this place, though. It's a luxury palace. Each person has their own shower head, below which is a stone pedestal sink-shaped shelf piled with soaps and shower products. Each shower head is individually cast into the shape of an animal, the showers issue from their mouths. Mine is a sort of two-headed serpent or dragon. Some skinny kid is lurking around. I go after him, challenge him. But my buddy tells me to cool it, that this is so-and-so, a new member of our boys only adventure club. I apologize. We do really need to be getting back to the party, though. We've been gone a long time.

Volley!

Homemade Indian Tacos, melon, water, later some popcorn.

Lost a lot of this.

But I'm starting to understand that our mission is tainted, twisted. What we're doing to the inhabitants of this place is wrong. I consult with them, they give cryptic advice in long, lowing voices. Shadowy beings. I rally my shipmates to the cause, and the civilians from my ship are with us, too. It will be a fight, though.

At some point the other ships converge on us, to break our little rebellion and reestablish control. Our ship is a massive block smashed down into the side of a mountain, its side open. One of the other ships comes up over the edge of the cliff off to one side, a giant star-shaped vessel, 14 pointed I suppose, X,Y,Z, axes and four more on the triangulars. The alarm goes up, we gather our people back to the ship, get them inside for safety. Before the approaching ship knows it, though, I've ordered a volley, and a burst of missiles streaks toward them. Giant explosions and they nearly fall out of the sky, instantly crippled. Another ship, a sphere, approaches from another direction. This fight isn't over.

[Reading about the brutal repression of the United Irishmen in the late 1700's, the torture and cruelty. I knew that it would show itself in my dreams. The missile volley is courtesy of playing Homeworld 2 this weekend.]

Carving pumpkins before guests arrive

Dinner at Marsha's with pesto cheese tortellini, fresh bread, lots of melon, homemade muffins for desert, water. A few beers later.

Josh and I live at my parents' house, but it's ours. It's halloween and I've stayed in my pajamas all day. We need to get some pumpkins carved, and Josh is across the street at the Major's, working on some. I go and get one cleaned out, but I forgot the knife and marker, so I go back across the street. Some friends of Eric's are coming to stay with us for some reason, and we're not really ready. I grab a boning knife, but then decide to bring our nice one, too. And a marker. Where's the marker? I'm all over the place, a mess and wasting time. Then the alarm won't set, or it's making a weird noise. Has a message about smoke on the screen. What the? It's seeming broken.

It's getting dark by now. I go out the front door and there's this group of old people trumping across the yard and back along the side of the house. What the hell? I stroll up behind them, ready for trouble. They have a 4' step ladder and they're climbing over the wrought iron gate. I interrupt them, but they turn out (and into) be Eric's friends. I can't quite place who they are, but their faces are pretty familiar. They keep using the ladder and tossing themselves over the gate roughly. I mock them and simply open the gate; it is, after all, unlocked.

Running over to Andy's House

Relatively late dinner of Frontier breakfast burrito with beans instead of eggs, a side salad, water.

I'm going over to Andy's house, which is down in the ghetto rather than in Nob Hill. I'm running, and I consider going down to all fours, but since this is real and not a dream, I decide that would be useless. I do lean pretty far forward, though, compact myself. I'm using my arms as if I have ski-poles, and they do add speed. At one point I bolt forward really fast-- how did I do that? Verbal instructions in a woman's voice start running in my head. DIfferent gestures with my arms will have different effects. I start practicing a series of different movements, some work, some don't. But I am moving at pretty high speed, like a Jedi sprinting on Battlefront II.

I get to Andy's place, the apartments down at Cornell and Coal. I go up to his place, go on in. The place is a wreck. Where's Andy? I find him back in one of the bedrooms. There's a big Native guy in bed with a woman, but all fully clothed, the covers pulled up. Watching TV. Andy is obviously fucked up on something. I'm guessing some pretty serious acid. Someone asks me if I will take Andy to the bathroom. Sure. He's not entirely sure who I am, though he seems to recognize me. He asks if we know each other. I'm reassuring. I think about taking advantage, but I'm not that big a predator.

Pig Eugene from high school is there. We encounter each other in some sort of courtyard with columns and lit with floodlights. He's there to cause trouble, of course, but I have no intention of letting him. We fight. I mean, what can I do, but I jump him from behind, get him by the head, hang on for dear life. He struggles, and I am surprisingly strong. Eventually it is a draw. We sit and he smokes, I apologize.

Giant To-Do at JQ's

Pasta salad with "chicken", tomatoes, feta, basil. Cantaloupe. Choco cupcakes (several).

JQ and Andy are having a big to-do at their place, I think it's kind of a family reunion. The property has been transformed, though, it is vast and lush and grassy. The house looks more like Dr. Howe's old place down there. I'm around and trying to be helpful, though I'm not on the clock for this, just there for the ride.

Outside there are large tents set up with fields of white folding chairs, large bouquets of flowers. It looks more like a wealthy garden wedding than anything. People are arriving, parking on the far side of the tennis courts & trudging in. I'm pretty uncomfortable & don't feel like being friendly to strangers.

But I run into this woman who seems nice and we start to talk and decide we will hang out together. She forgot something back in her car, so we head back around to it. Seems like we took a long way around, but who cares. On the way we're talking about her divorce, how she's gotten totally screwed because her attorney was weak, and now she ends up with nothing and her husband gets everything. I'm sympathetic & comforting. She goes on to say something about something, "As long as it's not black and blue." I give myself a moment to take this in, but can't make head or tail. Say What? "You know, stamps." I realize that she's denigrating tattoos. I realize that I'm in pants and my sleeves are down. "Oh," I respond, testily, "you mean like these?" and pull my sleeves up. "Or maybe these?" I yank at the hem of my blue dickies, though I don't actually show her my tattoos there. "Or perhaps these?" and I make like to undo my pants and yank them down. [In the dream, this last one is an empty bluff to embarrass her, though it occurs that that is the way I can best show my thigh tattoos.]

I'm starting to wonder if I really want to hang out with this woman. She seemed cool, but now she just seems like a condescending, classist bitch. Do we really have to sit together at dinner?