In Which I Dream An Idyll, In Which I Dream The Primordial Battle

My dreams have been absent from waking memory for more than a month, a fact which is highly unusual. I can recall only one other time in my life where this occured. It was eight years ago exactly, and that was because the man I was dating at the time, commonly known as The Devil, was stealing them. He was also causing me to bleed each time we had sex, regardless of the force or tenderness we engaged in the act with. Upon being told that I felt he was stealing my dreams and that I was bleeding each time we had sex, my dreams returned and the bleeding stopped. There are other reasons he was known to us as The Devil, and those reasons, while important, hold little bearing here. Just understand, that it is not easily my dreams should slip away from me in the daylight hours.

Knowing this, though, sheds little light on why it should have been occuring the past month. My stressors have all but disappeared. Money, love, life are finding a pleasant equilibrium. My lover, Andy, is not stealing my dreams, we in fact rarely sleep in the same place together. No, this time it is a mystery.

What there has been to recall is little. There's the brief snippet of Michael J. Fox shambling toward me with heavily cataracted eyes, an image unsettling enough to have me wake with the certainty that I'd dreamt his death into being, and there's the dream last week I recall swipes of, a Grey Gardens-like duo of women who were my "aunts", and pails of ranch dressing being flung at a large crowd of people who wished them harm, one member of this masse being my friend Hilary Davis, whom I recognised from behind by her red hair, just seconds after the dressing hit her. There's also the brochure which featured a Korean restaurant called Babi, which served pizza with a Sriracha cream sauce and artfully cut, cold, raw vegetables placed aesthetically over the surface of the Sriracha slathered crust. But none of these dream snippets add up to a whole, nor have they provided me any insight to deeper brain goo.

In other words, these dreams are not like my dreams. They are inferiour imitations of what I know to be my dreams and praise the lord, it would appear that the real dreaming is back as of two nights ago.

I dreamed of a huge old pale yellow house, which sat on a hill that slipped gently into a cliff which overlooked a large lake. It was surrounded by thick woods of elm and oak, with a private drive not easily seen from the main road. The house was run down, as if it had not been tended to in a decade or more, but its build was solid, and its foundation crafted from natural stone. I had found out that this house was an heirloom, passed down for generations, but kept secret; the previous owner had cared little for it and spent no time there. Thus, my time had come to make it my own, lest the house fall further into disrepair. I stood on a higher hill which overlooked this house and took photos with my cell phone. I'd been unprepared for this gift and the elation had made me weepy, heady with possibility. I sent these photos to Andy with the understanding that he was to keep it secret. He was welcome to live with me here, of course, but it had to be tended to before that was possible.

What is curious, then, is the course the dream took after this. Being as religiously romantic as I am, I find myself wont to believe that this house is real, and that it is a place I have been, in a life long past. I've had dreams like what this dream turned into before, where people I've never knowingly met have names and rich lives of their own, and understanding of the dream landscape, technically foreign territory, is as known to me as my own life.

I arrived at the house in the early afternoon hours as people bustled about tending to tables and wreaths and streamers. Signs of festivity, of celebration. I wore a cotton dress, in the style common to women in the mid 1950's. This was not the house of the first portion of the dream, but that same house, decades earlier. In pristine condition. Full of people, of life, of love. These woods were somewhere south of the Mason-Dixon, and the inhabitants were lifelong, old money Southerners. Happy, genteel folks. And I was one of them. But, in pondering this in the waking, it was not a me that I know, but yet a me no less familiar than the me that is now. My hair dusted my shoulders, a dark blonde which shone with shades of red. I wore a small white veil upon my head. My dress was perfectly tailored to my shape. I kept looking down, to my stomach, touching it gently. I was pregnant, and it was my wedding day.

I dashed upstairs, to the servants' quarters, where I spoke with my dear friend, our black head servant, Albert. He was the only one who knew that I was pregnant, but it was not something we spoke of, or indicated. In the dream, I just knew it to be true. He sat at a small table in a nook just off a children's playroom, eating a simple sandwich. His eyes shone with happiness and pride that I was back home, and that the reason for my return was my wedding. I knew that there was much to prepare for, and bid him adieu.

This is where the dream ends. I find it curious that despite Andy being prominently on my mind in the first portion of the dream, he is absent from the second portion, and that I've no impression of who my groom and father of my child was to be at all, other than the understanding that he was the right choice.

Last night's dream is less worthy of detail, so I shall summarise:

Connor, an ex quite possibly least likely to ever interest me again, wound up interesting me again, and things were vaguely rekindled. I moved to Madrid, and he followed me there. It was shortly after this that I became suspicious when I noted him frequently talking to large groups of people. I realised he was proselytising them to be in his army for Satan, and when he couldn't convince them on the simple merit of his words, he would resort to casting a glamour upon them. This fact raised my hackles and caused latent messianic powers within me to come to the fore and thus an epic battle of good versus evil began.

The end.

I'm sure I won. Connor's a putz.

Get A Land Line.

Something is slipping in me. Slipping rapidly. I am depressed. I am unhappy. But it is more than that. I feel it's the foundation I stand on. It is the use of a cell phone. It is the internet. It is living without feeling the sunshine daily. It's money. It's the boyfriend and the understanding that we are likely not long for this world as a union (but we are trying, my god, are we trying).

This panic is bestial.

I (we, everyone) are not meant to live this way.

I've ended internet on my phone. I've stopped getting Twitters via my phone. I will end text messaging on my phone next week. Then I will get a land line. One step at a time, folks.

And somehow I need to get money rolling in. Fast.

Receipts: New Orleans Bus Trip, 2006

Series of receipts found in my copy of Lies My Teacher Told Me, from a Greyhound Bus Trip to and From New Orleans in 2006:

Greyhound Food Service
Louisville, KY
726 Muhammed Ali Blvd.
Louisville, KY 40203
502-5853909

Order 1043

Host: Donald 02/23/2006
Order 1043 9:49 AM

Grilled Cheese 1.49

Sub Total 1.49
Tax 0.09

DINE IN Total 1.58

Cash 2.00

Change 0.42

Thank you for your patronage
Hope to see you again soon

--Check Closed--


I remember that grilled cheese, and that man. He was a jovial, roly poly smiling black man, and that grilled cheese was heaven, made on thick white bread, a piece of cheap-assed american cheese on each slice, grilled separately and lovingly on the flat iron grill. That man, Donald, wanted to please me, and please me he did.

I remember I went for a little walk afterward, admiring the very old houses along the Boulevard, occupied by some very poor people. The midwest just isn't old enough for me, and the east coast is too stuffy. The south is where I belong; it's warm, the food is amazing, the architecture solid and beautiful, even when it's near to ruin.


Greyhound Food Service
Nashville, TN
200 8th Avenue South
Nashville, TN 37204
(615) 259-2740

Order 1196

Host: Fred 02/23/2006
Order 1196 2:43 PM

Chicken Dinner Special 4.99
1/4 Chicken Dark
Roll

Sub Total 4.99
Tax 0.46

DINE IN Total 5.45

Cash 20.00

Change 14.55

Thank you for your patronage
Hope to see you again soon

--Check Closed--


I remember this meal too. Not so much the man, though I do recall being asked if I wanted light or dark meat and being very excited that I got the choice. It was a right delicious meal.

Now I am craving fried chicken, and hard. So good with a bit of creamy coleslaw, a nice white dinner roll and cold butter, and maybe some corn (on the cob or off, ain't no matter). Mmm.


Greyhound Food Service
Tulsa, OK
317 Detroit Ave.
Tulsa, OK 74120
(918) 587-5434

Order 1025

Host: Gandhy 02/27/2006
Order 1025 12:33 PM

Turk/Chz Sandw 2.79

Sub Total 2.79
Tax 0.24

DINE IN Total 3.03

Cash 5.00

Change 1.97

Thank you for your patronage
Hope to see you again soon

--Check Closed--


It's only in the deep(er) south that Greyhound stations have cafeterias. Most places, and I've traveled through almost all of the upper states and most of the southeastern states, just have vending machines. I really appreciate these cafeterias, as the food is hot, it's simple comfort food, and it's better for you than what you'd have to settle for at the McDonald's or gas station you're invariably given twenty minutes to find something to eat at. Another of hundreds of reasons I love the south and love the Greyhound bus ride through there.

I do remember this sandwich, too. At this particular Greyhound station, the cafeteria was just a basic sandwich line, with pre-prepared fare that you could add lettuce, tomato, pickles, mayo and mustard to. I took all but the mayo and it was a satisfying little meal. What was to follow, however, was rather ugly.

I finished my sandwich after enjoying the sunny, cool Tulsa day sitting on the stoop of the bus station. It was late February, so this was a mid-60s kind of cool, not a mid-40s if we're lucky kind of cool up here in Minneapolis. It was just a really beautiful, enjoy a sandwich outside on the stoop sort of day.

I got on the bus. Chose a window seat, and snuggled into my usual hoodie up, blanket on my lap, happy as a clam lookin' out the window position. Generally, the busses aren't too full, and because I appear surly, I wind up having the two seats to myself. Today was different. Today, the bus was gettin' all full up. Today, a giant she-beast was about to sit next to me.

She had breath like Grendel's mom, which she draped over me repeatedly in a moist stench cloud as she asked, "Are you a boy or a girl?" and other such brilliant questions. Her children were also on the bus, one far to the front (the girl) and the other far to the back (the boy) as there was nowhere else for them to sit by the time they got on. So of course, being the gnarly she-beast that she was, was determined to yell at these children every three minutes (inbetween harassing me about my gender) about some completely useless thing, and, well, I suppose this is where I should mention the little girl's name, or what I approximate her name to be in Normal Human English, vs. She-Beast English.

Thick-thee. Thick-thi. I have no idea how one spells such a thing. Or what the fuck such a thing means. Or why the hell someone would name a child something so gross. I just know that this woman's breath, and that child's name are forever imprinted upon me.

Thankfully, it was about and hour and a half only with them, and then they were gone.


Greyhound Food Service
Kansas City, MO
1101 Troost
Kansas City, Mo 64106

Order 1160

Host: Cierra 02/27/2006
Order 1160 5:48 PM

Maru Chix Soup 1.39

Sub Total 1.39
Tax 0.13

DINE IN Total 1.52

Change 3.48

Thank you for your patronage
Hope to see you again soon

--Check Closed--


Greyhound Food Service
Kansas City, MO
1101 Troost
Kansas City, Mo 64106

Order 1209

Host: Cierra 02/27/2006
Order 1209 6:49 PM

Pie-Apple 1.99

Sub Total 1.99
Tax 0.19

DINE IN Total 2.18

Cash 3.00

Change 0.82

Thank you for your patronage
Hope to see you again soon

--Check Closed--


It's strange to me how I really remember all of these meals. That soup was a cup of soup that you added hot water to, as this cafeteria was more vending machine fare than anything and that seemed my healthiest (and cheapest option).

There was a girl at that stop who chatted with me a little about a man that seemed suspicious to her because he was a hispanic man with middle eastern features (I assumed she simply thought him to be middle eastern because of her reaction). The girl was young, seventeen, and black. In the south, that just has too many layers of wrong. She continued to chat with me, and soon I found out she'd thought we were the same age.

So what did she know, anyway.

I miss the bus.

Virgin Boy Blood, Anecdote #1

I was about to retire to sleep when the vagaries of my life closed in on my little brain and I became so incensed I had to get up and take care of some business. Namely, move a bookshelf. Why I felt so incensed that I had to move this bookshelf is unimportant, as the new location of the bookshelf is actually much better than the first. It is now sitting next to my desk, with my lamp upon it instead of my desk, thus freeing valuable desk space. There is also, upon this bookshelf, a photo of my boyfriend, Andy.

Yes, Andy is once again my boyfriend; it happened officially on December 14th. Things are as they should be, yays all around.

But, this is not what I wanted to come and write about. No, I came to write about a scrap of cloth lying upon my desk that I've had upon my desk for months, intending to write a blog about it. I want to write about it because, you see, it is SOAKED WITH VIRGIN BOY BLOOD.

There was no rite performed to extract this blood. Okay, that's not true. Making out is a rite of some kind, yes? Yes.

The skinny is this: When I was 21, I dated a 17 year old. A soft skinned, dark eyed, mullet sporting (a good five years before the ironic mullet at least) beautiful 17 year old who drank too much Mountain Dew and played too many video games, but who got dewy eyed when I talked about things that moved me, would leave flowers taped to my apartment door, who was a virgin in nearly every way. I gave him his first blow job at the lake cabin of a mutual friend, as we laid drunkenly on the bottom bunk on a set of bunk beds. Little did we know, our friends downstairs were about to mount a paparazzi onslaught and would soon bust in with a video camera and bright-as-shit light. I still haven't seen that tape...

A week or two later, this boy and I were making out in my bedroom. I'd just moved into my first apartment and didn't yet have a bed, so our fondling went down on a weird fold out chair device (it was basically like sleeping on couch cushions) on the floor. The lighting was dim to non-existent, and suddenly, everything became very wet.

I couldn't believe he'd have come so quickly, he said he hadn't, so I got up and turned on the light.

There was blood. Blood everywhere. All over what I was wearing, all over my boyfriend, all over the quilt my grandmother had made from my father's baby clothes (irony?).

Turns out the lad had had an improperly done circumcision and the skin was too tight, and when there is vigorous making out, rubbing, or anything of that sort, the skin rips a little and bleeds like a mother fucker cuz the dick be full o' bloods. He said, "This happens sometimes. It doesn't hurt." That's the sort of thing a gal might wanna hear about before the making out occurs, kiddo.

Aaaaah!

Anyhoo. We had sex a week or so later. It was his first time. For me it was meh. Except for the virginity eatin'.

A couple years later, we had sex again, at the very same cabin this all started. He'd learned a few things in that time. It was no longer meh.

He stopped talking to me shortly after. But that's a different anecdote altogether.

Therapy, it turns out, is therapeutic.

This morning I was feeling solidly fucked up. 30 Rock viewing did not help me, as even the slightest similarity to my current situation is liable to give me false hope which is subsequently dashed by the vagaries and whims of television writing, which then causes some kind of fissure in any semblance of rational thought I have put together for myself, made of tenuous, fragile bonds.

It doesn't help, either, that practically everything is somehow related to Andy. He'd become so completely, comfortably enmeshed in my life so quickly, and then just as quickly, completely ripped from it. It's been almost a month now. A whole, sad, month.

And so, I walked to therapy today, which I've been excited about for the past few days, which, having been in and out of therapy for the last 20 years, I am fully aware of how beneficial a session can be, but I cried as I walked, somehow still able to be sad despite the Lady GaGa thumping in my ears.

And I cried in my session, with a perfect stranger. Three times. I saw my previous therapist, Monica, for about four months and didn't cry once. The eyes welled up, but no actual loss of saline was made. Monica pointed out numerous times that I seemed to be detached from the tales and problems in my life, that I could talk about very emotional situations and express no emotion about them at all. Which was curious, since I was genuinely feeling emotion, and I wasn't the least bit uncomfortable with her; I was, somehow, detached, though. But not today! No, the waterworks flowed with ease. I went from feeling borderline hysterical, considering rushing over to Andy's today so I could see him, to feeling quite calm and centered, considering.

I like this new girl. She seems to be of similar demeanor to Monica, but Katie is a touch younger, prettier, and she's got a sense of humour. Monica wasn't a wet blanket, but she was also not the sort of gal that I'd ever go out and have a glass of wine with. Which was what I liked about her. She was completely non-judgemental, honest, even blunt with me. Katie's a bit more laid back. She dropped an F-bomb at one point, which I respected. And she laughed at my jokes.

I told her how I'd never cried with Monica, and how Monica had pointed out my detachment. I feel it's Andy that's changed this. I became better with Andy. The best version of myself. I need to get back to that, without Andy. And I think I can. Deciding against Drunk, Slutty Sarah, against casual smooches, against heavy drinking at all, that's a huge step. As is the realisation that I need to begin putting myself in the position to be ready for marriage and a child. I'm two, three years away from that, and that's if I pull it together as of yesterday and make dramatic life changes. Maybe Andy doesn't fit into this plan in the greater sense, but he's certainly been the catalyst for it.

Why do my hands smell like meat?

All The Things She Said, Running Through My Head.

Could the internal monologue just shut up?

blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah

And then I'm crying, sobbing, in my car with my head against the steering wheel.

What do you do to get over the best thing that's ever happened to you? What do you do when the person who seemed to have read the manual on how to love you, make you laugh, talk to you, be there for you just up and runs? How can you move on from that?

Everything in the opposite sex pales in comparison. I lose myself for a few hours in the Gilmore Girls and swooning over Milo Ventimiglia and then it's all stabby stab in my heart because he's not the face I could or want to wake up to every morning, which is to say nothing of the general populace, who actually make me feel without hope. Andy came into my life and it was a god damn pop song. Halo, by Beyoncé, to be exact. My walls came crumbling down. I let him in without any hesitation.

But no, it didn't last.

And so, when a 23 year old texts me some nasty things after he's been out with me and I've been a bit coquettish and something of a tease and the texts go on about wanting me wrapped around his cock and how someday, he's happily going to listen to me scream, yes, I get turned on, and yes, I imagine him touching me and yes, I rub one out and it's perfectly sexy, but then it just turns terribly sour and I'm feeling ill in the morning (just like when this charming child and I kissed two weeks prior), and the VERY SIMPLE FACT is that the only person I have any interest in is Andy. I can't just fuck someone anymore, no matter how dirty they talk to me. I never was very good at it to begin with, I don't fuck to fuck, I fuck to feel, and what I want to feel when I'm fucking is LOVE.

And my god, Andy loved to fuck me and I loved to fuck him and he made me feel amazing, like the sexiest woman to ever cross his path, and he touched me better than anyone ever has, and he cared, he cared to make me happy, not only in bed but in every way, and now it's been almost two weeks since I've heard a single word from him and it's not okay. I'm not okay.

I found one of his hair ties on my desk last night, and it's been a rapid degradation ever since, I have it wrapped around my fingers, I slept with it last night.

Hence, head against the steering wheel, sobbing about half an hour ago.

And I found a band I love. Liars. Oh, how I've taken to them, like Dirty Projectors a couple of weeks ago, and what do I do? Andy, Andy, Andy, you're the one I want to gleefully present this music to, to talk about it, and maybe you've heard them already and have an opinion to present, and maybe, like we often do with music, we will have completely different ways of appreciating it, philosophising it, and then there'd be laughter and kisses and love making and sleep.

I love you Andy and god damn it, I just don't think that's going to change. In fact, distance, this time, instead of bringing me to a point where I can breathe and pull away from you, is in fact, making the heart grow fonder. I can breathe better now that I'm not in a constant panic spiral, and I'm thankful for the realisations I've had (that I want you, that I'm bored with Drunk, Slutty Sarah), but I want it to be over now. I miss you. I remember the few annoying tics you have with ardor now. I want to kiss every square inch of you and read books and make dinner and go for walks where I complain about how cold it is and you smoke your cigarette, always blowing the smoke straight up, away from me because you're sweet and polite like that, and you make fun of me because I'm cold, and I want to sip whiskey with you, and get into arguments that make me realise I'm being an ass. I want to love you, actively.

I never needed you, I never felt panicked about you. Do you realise how different that is for me? And I know I was different for you, too. I made you feel strong, like a man.

But baby, you let the chaos win, and it scares the hell out of me.

The Most Miserable Woman In The World

Is a woman I served yesterday. She gained this title even before she started crying at her table, making her son and parents visibly uncomfortable.

Which brings cause to point out that this was not a young woman. She was not some mewling lass in her early thirties with the kid she'd obviously birthed in her late teens. No, this was a woman in her fifties, with a son in his mid-twenties, and her elderly parents.

This title, The Most Miserable Woman In The World, she earned almost immediately. It was the way she awkwardly ordered her glass of sparkling wine, fumbling around at the notion that perhaps her father should buy a whole bottle for the table. His response, with quickly eroding patience? "Order for yourself. I'm having a beer."

Then, when it was time to order dinner, each option presented to her was rife with pain. Initially, she wanted a greek salad (which she tried to order when I was taking the drink order). Then, she rambled on about how she'd been thinking about shrimp all day, and did the shrimp skewers come with a vegetable? (All of this said in the most pained, belabored voice one could muster on a Tuesday evening). I informed her that the shrimp skewers were just an appetizer so they did not come with any vegetable, but she could put together shrimp skewers and a vegetable from the build your own section of the menu. So she ordered a salmon filet with spinach. (!?)

As their dinner wound down and her sparkling wine took hold (it really seemed she deteriorated exponentially from a single glass of the stuff), and I passed by the table as she was crying, about something related to her son getting a room but grandma being willing to let him come over or something, I heard him utter, "Mom, you've been crowding me for a long time now..."

I scurried out of the room right quick after that. Christ.

Later, after I'd said something to my boss about this being The Most Miserable Woman In The World with his response being that I had no heart, she walked by him cussing on her way to the bathroom and said loudly to him, "Oh, I'm just mad at my dad, he's breaking every promise he ever made to me."

Which might make you think she's maybe just batshit crazy or something. But I didn't get that impression either. Maybe in the sense of being super pathological, like borderline personality, but no genuine loss of sanity. Just bone-deep insistance on being The Most Miserable Woman In The World. Forever. No matter how embarassing or uncomfortable or energy draining she is to everyone around her. I felt sapped spending less than ten minutes directly interacting with her. A lifetime? Being the child raised by that? This is why I think parents should be able to kill off defective young... (after a lengthy process, of course).

The super amazing final straw, which I missed, but was relayed to me by my coworkers (she had the wherewithal to alienate each of us in turn which was nice) went as follows:

Woman looking at floor, which is a mix of tile and cement, trying to talk to my boss, who is on the phone--"What kind of art is this? I'm an artist! Do you call it post-modern? Modern trash? Modern ghetto?"

OMFG.

Most Miserable Woman In The World, I salute you.