Dream Log: July 16, 2000 (idea)

I apologize to everyone who just wants to get to the bottom of the page. Think of what you could have been accomplishing with your life while you were fiddling angrily with the scrollbar.

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• Knifegirl's Everything2 history was brilliant. An interactive timeline, listing all the great events of e2, and when everyone joined.
• I set a piece of spaghetti on fire, and then couldn't quite get it to go out. The flame was gone, but not the heat, and it was burning my fingers, and I was afraid it would burn through the table. "Hand it here," said clampe. I did. He blew on it slowly, with his eyes closed. I could feel his breath coming in a thin stream, and it was freezing. I wondered if he was the north wind.
• I tried to explain to my brother that he wouldn't be able to find us downtown just by keeping an eye out for my blanket. It would be dark, for one thing, and there would be millions of people there. He was confident he could do it. He was the age he is now, but he looked so young, about 11, but from his face you could tell he was older. I rolled him a joint. The paper wouldn't cooperate. On the way downtown we saw helicopters, unexplained, which frightened me.
• Beautiful, massive rock formations. Each one had something you could do, either climb up on top of it, or hide under the hanging-over ledge parts. They were natural, nature had given us these. We watched the rain come.
• Two kids were talking quietly, excited. I couldn't see what they saw until I got right down to the end of the footbridge. A rainbow, not in the sky, but starting right there, they had found the root of it. The boy showed me how to step a little to the side, so I could see the whole thing.  What? I don't -  And then I did, I saw it. Not one rainbow, but three, branching out from where we stood. Not three rainbows, but three and ten more in another layer under them. All the colors true and strong, unbroken clear bands beaming from us to the horizon. I knew I was dreaming and I knew I should be careful with my mind, and I was, and I got to stay.
• Our classroom was half empty, because of the war or the plague. There was one boy left and he was mine. A new girl came in and sat down with a smirk at me and an eyelid-flutter at him. She was the American Beauty girl, but younger. I wasn't worried, I saw the movie, I knew all about her. The only thing bothering me was the searchlight sweeping back and forth over the desks; it made me sleepy.
• At the 4-ring catfights with thefez. He led the way, he knew the best seats. "The Day the Music Died" pumped tinnily over the loudspeakers high up on the poles of the tent. The audience was mostly Mexicans. They offered us bottle of warm beer, and we accepted. On our way up the bleachers we stopped at terminals, checkpoints, to read nodes. Pukesick had written How to Levitate. ("Quite a privilege, really, if you can do it right.")
• I was almost asleep but I saw my mother sneaking around the living room. She lay a $20 bill on my pillow, then replaced it with a $50, then a $100. I knew she would end up giving me all three.
• I was about 11, and a boy. I may or may not have been Harry Potter. They all loved my sister and hated me, and I could prove it. My grandmother was that mean ugly lady on the Long John Silver commercial. She had come to visit but was going back home today. She had going-away presents for both of us. I opened mine too quickly, which made her angrier. It was a huge box with about three piddly pieces of candy in it, and a rock or something, some little thing to show me she hated me. Well big deal, I made up my mind not to care. My sister hadn't opened hers yet. She wasn't a bad kid, she didn't mean to be perfect, but I hated her anyway, sitting posed on the sofa in dress and hair ribbons with the present balanced politely on her knees, waiting to open hers till I was done. Grandma ripped it off her lap and slit the side open with a knife. She came toward me in terrible, threatening slow motion. She did not blink. Candy, toys, pinwheels poured out of the bottom of the box, without end. I was so terrified I had to end it, to turn my mind elsewhere.
• The tour guide showed us a door marked "Retention Center." Both of us thought it must be something horribe, a pc way of saying Solitary or Electroshock. We all went it. Turns out it was the rec room, and as we walked around I realized I'd been there before, though I didn't let on. Through the glass wall I saw an enforced game of soccer, maybe, on the back field. Half the guys had big red helmets on, bulky, like lego astronauts. I asked why and was told they contained alarms that would go off if those prisoners strayed outside the bounds. I wondered why they didn't just build a fence.

  We rounded the corner, past the snack bar (was it fair they were charging prisoners $6 for a hot dog? it wasn't like they had much consumer leverage.) into the bar filled with chatty women. The bar rotated and had one balloon tied to it, which bothered me. That damn blue balloon kept swinging round to the front, over and over.

  I was in a dress. I realized I was the best man. All right. So I went for a walk. There was a dime on the ground and I picked it up and gave it to edebroux. She laughed and found a nickel and gave it to me. I didn't say anything, but I felt a bit cheated. But from then on we only found coins of the same denomination to give each other. Seems like every time a coin left my hand, there was another on the ground. The kids caught on and gathered around greedily, scrabling for change. I went for another walk.

  I balanced on the brick edge of the fountain in the back garden. Those damn chatty women were everywhere. I overheard a woman making up twangy country-music songs for her mortified daughter, singing at top pitch about how messy and painful her birth had been.

  I headed back towards the building but ended up with my friends on a round platform. We lay on the warm stone and talked. We had to get right back up though because we were in the way of the camera shoot, the bride needed to pose. We really needn't have moved, she levitated 20 feet in the air and hung there with her arms and legs like Jesus on the cross for a minute, which everyone thought was cute. The pose she settled on was eyes cast demurely downward, hands clasped delicately around the bouquet, legs wide open. Her veil was maybe 20 feet long and her train must have been 50, white satin rippling down to pool below her on the ground. Her dress, though, was bright red, and the skirt was more like a strip of cloth around her waist, i.e., the whole world and the photographer were looking directly at her vagina. It wasn't much of a vagina. She was beautiful, with polished dark skin and a perfect figure, but her limbs moved oddly, and her vagina didn't seem to, er, open at all. Like Barbie's hard plastic seamless crotch. Still, none of us were glad she was waving it around.

  It was time to hurry. I hurried. We all crossed the grass, looking back to see the bride descend gracefully and give her father an open-mouth kiss. The groom didn't mind, he was sullen all the time. His white pants were cutaway, theater-style, for quick removal. From behind, I could see his shorts and his dark hairy legs. I went with the rest of the guys to the bathroom, on the way realizing I had a blue garter belt in my suit pocket. This made me very happy. I perched on the edge of the tub and watched the boys work.