10.29.00 - 5:52:51

uhm. i do not usually eschew capital letters. but i don't feel like using them right now. my body has metabolized - or allowed to sit and intoxicate me - too much alcohol, and now the leftovers are hanging around in my veins like greenie meanies dancing slamdancing on my windowpane (so i'm reaching for my vodka so i'm reaching for my razor so i'm reaching for you but you're always never there)

and i remember that poem from when i was thirteen. and i don't know whose it is, until i'm almost half-convinced it's mine. but it isn't.

so i am hung over.

and i slept. all. day.

and i tossed and turned and wrestled - literally - with my pillows. don't worry, i beat all the resistance outta the suckers. i was a very energetic sleeper. which is probably why my shoulders and arms ache so much right now.

oh, and i had a dream.

it involved:

• labor day;
• my dad's fiftieth birthday in two weeks;
  • note: my dad is long past fifty;
  • note: my mother is not a party thrower;
  • note: certainly not with those tacky 'over the hill' balloons;
• so it really made no sense. they don't, dreams.
• football game. i was someone's girlfriend. or imitating someone's girlfried;
• all player-girlfriend's had assigned seats;
• there was a mall full of fake shoppers;
• several secret service agents;
• two children being ushered by me and someone else through the mall;
• a thomas the tank engine book/toy with an african american face.
• can i be racist in my dreams?
• was that racist?

so. in my dream, my hand folded into the child's, as we hunched and went down the stares hiding from the secret service agents and fake shoppers (we knew they were fake because they were all dressed alike) who were all there to - i swear - guard DIANA ROSS - who was apparently going to play santa claus (her face was in a star on the huge sleigh. she wasn't there yet. and there were only guards. we had stumbled onto a secret!).

so. someone else - another adult - was there with me. we wanted to take the elevator. we were trying to get away. except someone caught us. and sent us to a DIFFERENT second floor.

because we knew.

what we knew, i don't know. but we knew. so there was a struggle in the hallway. i knew part of the code! i was going to get back down to the first floor! except except except -

- o the elevator started falling. quickly. too quickly, and we almost died but we didn't because the stupidhead scientist made the elevator fall only from the second floor which isn't very high. so we snuck out and we had to sneak out between this building and another one which was maybe secret. there was razor wire on the ground.

there was razor wire on the ground and my feet were bare. someone from the football saw me. we had gone to analyze anime in the middle, and that was what led me to the mall.

but now he seemed distant. i felt changed. my feet left ribbons of blood on the ground, and all i could do was go home.

so home i went.

the dream should be over and is not.

there was a present waiting for me. it was a tiny tiny box of chocolates that opened each to each like an intricate lock. like a game. or sex. what else would interlocking chocolates remind you of?

they were perfect. like little jewels. he lived just up the street. but he couldn't see me. i don't know how we met, but that was the most important part of the game. i don't remember why.

once he drove by and fixed a flat tire on my car while i hid upstairs. because. i almost ran down. moments later i did. he was gone.

but i had my chocolates.

and someone from the football game, someone from school, someone from a very different place walked up to the driveway as i was climbing in to my car. i was going to san francisco, to a theater with a very gaudy fifties star where the specials were no matinee, but at night.

and that someone walked up to me with a poem written on a fish, or a semblance of a fish. he said, "i think this is yours. i think they stole it."

"it looks like mine," i said, "but it isn't."

and that was my dream.