Dream Log: July 23, 2000

jenny was at some party with me and all my friends. she was wearing a blue tanktop. her hair was in pigtails. she was standing and talking to me while my friends sat. she smeared ketchup on her tanktop over her breasts. she lifted up the tanktop to reveal tiny, tiny breasts when in reality she is actually very busty.

The entire dream was a movie, and I was an actor in it. Although I was perfectly aware that I was only acting, I had become the character. There was no distinction between my feelings and the character's feelings, so everything was kind of...bigger than what it should be, like a movie.

Somebody threw me out of a window at one point. I knew it was going to happen, being scripted and all, but it still hurt a bit when I hit the pavement. My cheek, bleeding. My teeth, loose and on the ground in front of me. I went to the hospital.

Along the way we robbed a supermarket, clearing the shelves of pool noodles and nothing else. We used them to fight the angry store clerks and ran out laughing.

Suddenly I was in my kitchen, dancing with the guy I've been chasing hopelessly for the past six months of my life. No one was there, not even his girlfriend (for once). As we danced he grabbed my hands and we smiled into each others eyes like it was real. That song by The Cure, Painted on my Heart, was playing over the scene. A cheesy movie voice-over came on (my voice, of course - Wonder Years style). It said, in that vaguely nostalgic movie tone, that even if the scene wasn't real and I knew it, we were in love for that one split second and that's all that mattered. That moment felt like it would last forever.

And that's when I woke up. I closed my eyes, trying to return, but nothing came. All I could hear was that stupid song playing over and over in my head. Next time I hear it I think I will have to cry.

- / +

• Talking to the girl in the stairwell. She was late for class, about 13 years old. She was looking down the center of the stairwell wistfully and I knew what she was up to - she must have a crush on one of the ghosts. They were all out today, more than I'd ever seen, after getting yelled at yesterday for being lazy. The headmaster had given them a big mean "pep talk" telling them to get off their asses and spook up the place.

  She asked me if I knew any of the ghosts, and I said I only knew Peeves. Her face lit up. "Oh, he's a cutie! But he's way down in fifth form, surely you can't see him from way up here." She couldn't. But she knew he was down there.

  I walked her up to her class at the top of the tower and told them she'd been helping me, so she wouldn't get yelled at for being late. The room was filled with first-graders who cheered when they saw me. I left quickly but the teacher came out after me, offering me the chance to tour her room. I accepted and went to look at all the cool stuff edebroux had left behind. I knew the things were hers though I did not remember the stories behind them.

• We had moved west hoping to see flowers before we got to East Mission, but we did not.
• I had gone back to re-live middle school as a boy. A teacher and the principal helped in the early stages of the plan. My entire disguise was not wearing my hairpins.   Fucking brilliant! And it worked.
• This briefcase is too damn complicated. Inside it was a list of options and instructions. Locked shut / locked open / not locked but latched / open. "Minimize air" would kind of vacuum-seal it shut, "to reduce paper shuffling and document damage within the briefcase."

  While I was trying to figure out the fucker, my car rolled away. Edebroux went running after it and she rounded a blind corner - we were at a busy gas station and I had a brief flash of I really hope she doesn't get squashed in this dream.   And she doesn't.

  edebroux chases my car while I stand frozen, praying that it will flatten no one and not crunch itself into a pole or building either. It rolls and rolls, just out of her reach. Across a street and into a roundabout. I am freaking out.

  Suddenly edebroux is gone and I am in her place. The cars have turned into people, running in a circle. My car has turned into Tobey Maguire, running with blind eyes. I scream EVERYBODY OUT! but no one listens. I duck in between the running people, who seem just as dangerous as the cars. I lean and manage to snag the cuff of Tobey's jeans, and he goes down on his face and I fall over too, but we are out of the traffic pattern so we are safe.

  Flash to somewhere inside. My mother is fussing around bringing Tobey soup and so forth. He has a bloody nose and won't stop smiling at me over his soup. I am watching him from a doorway. Standing next to me is the weird son from Roseanne. I feel very warmly toward him because he is my brother and had something to do with Tobey's rescue.

  Tobey says to the boy, "I hardly recognized you," and points to his mustache. The boy blushes, he's not used to it yet, and is used to people making fun of it. But Tobey means it. He tells him it makes him look older. I do not mention that Tobey himself looks about 17, and his facial hair is making him look like just a kid.

  I hug my brother before he goes to bed and it hurts to press my face against his shoulder because I have a bloody nose too, from falling. My brother and mom disappear. Tobey tells me he is going up to bed, still smiling around his poor swollen nose.

  Before I go to meet Tobey I pick up a book and it falls open to this:

  Let's say you are growing old and one day you realize,
  she's no longer the same person you always wanted to be
  buried next to. Somewhere along the way, she peeled back
  the girl and stepped out, unrecognizable. Don't say it to
  her, she would weep for the loss as well; it's sad.

  It hit me so hard I stood in the doorway gasping, eyes shut trying not to cry, trying to make sure I would remember it. I ran into the bathroom to look at my face, and was instantly awake.

I left my car at the top of the hill and drove up to get it. They were both my car. When I got out of the one I was driving, it disappeared. Instead of gravel the lot was filled with colored plastic bits - checkers and tiddlywinks and broken game pieces, dolls, firecrackers gone dead and black, all of it crunchy underfoot. I spun in a circle listening to my feet making noises. I pretended I was standing still and it was the trees who were moving. They were an unbroken dark blur until I stopped, wheeling and sick, and now I was looking at the art supply store I'd been looking for for so long. They had paper-mache fish in all the windows, just like the ones I wanted to make.

My last dream log/My next dream log

I hope I can remember this...

• I was downtown, leaving some sort of a convention. Somebody is with me - a guy who looks like Alex, but I know it's not him, although I know he is gay like Alex. He wants to go shopping. I decided to go along with him.
• We go into a Club Monaco, which looks like a drugstore. The Alex-lookalike starts looking at makeup and I wander away.
• There is a guy in the store shopping with his mother. He is very tall. He comes up to me and tells me he likes my pants, and starts talking to me. I say thank-you, and then the Non-Alex comes up and says something teasingly about guys coming up and talking to me. I get embarrassed and walk away.
• As I'm leaving, I see my father standing in the checkout line, smiling a sort of knowing smile.