I was in a really nice house. It was long, with a lot of rooms, although only one story. It was all in shades of gray and blue. There was some sort of party going on (i.e. and annoying
family function), my
mother was there- dressed up in something that only made her look more ugly- and my
siblings were there. I was there, but I was not dressed up; I was wearing what I had been wearing in real life the preceding day, and had wore to sleep- khaki pants, a black long sleeve shirt, and a black printed t-shit over that. And the party was in one wing of the house and I was just hanging out in the other wing- it was “mine”. And there was this guy there- he
looked like this guy I knew from this past summer (not bad looking but no one I ever had an attraction to or that much interaction with), but he
was this other guy I’ve known all my life from my childhood neighborhood, a pretty boy who I never got involved with because of his abrasively
self-absorbed personality. (He’ll go unnamed because he’s an amalgam of two guys I’ve known.) And he was coming on to me and I accepted it, using him really, for his proffered gifts of kisses, making out, and holding me. And he was a good kisser, I enjoyed kissing him. But all of a sudden, my 6-year-old brother Kivi was there, and I was thinking about how Kivi is getting the raw end of being parented by my mother. And the guy said that we could take Kivi with us to
Jerusalem, and start a family. But this couldn’t be farther from what I want to do with my life, and I said, “You want to bring Kivi to Jerusalem and start a family- now?” And he said yes and I hugged him, perhaps out of inexplicable, real gratitude and perhaps in fakery. In either case, all he really wanted was
sex, which I saw clearly. So I retreated with him into a closet- I wanted the foreplay. After I had had a little of that I told him that I had to go ask my mother something. The party was winding down; she was taking off her earrings. I told her that she could find me in “my” wing of the house. And then I returned to the closet and the guy was gone, but for the first time I didn’t really care that I was abandoned, because there had been no emotional attachment and I had got what I had wanted without going too far. I mentally added him to my list of people that I have kissed.
I was with my father and my 14-year-old brother Yaacov, having
Sabbath lunch at the Weinberger’s- Rabbi Weinberger is the
New Square Hasidic rabbi of the synagogue my parents went to when they were married and I went to when I was a child and my mother still goes to. It was a really nice day and we were eating outside. When everyone was ready, I went inside the Weinbergers’ house to call their oldest daughter to come down. It was their house, but it looked like my mother’s house. Now the Weinberger’s have two daughters, and they both have characteristically Hasidic names, and I couldn’t remember which name went to which daughter. So I made sure not to call either one by name. When the eldest daughter came out Rabbi Weinberger made kiddush (Sabbath blessing over wine). Except as he did so Yaacov and I each made a borei pri hagafen (effectively a “condensed” kiddush), as if we weren’t accepting his kiddush as applying to us. That wasn’t out intention thought, and I immediately regretted the appearance that it was. When the Rabbi was done with that kiddush, which was not short but was functional and perfunctory, he motioned to his son to make a “real” Hasidic kiddush, slow and with
niguns (tunes) inserted. The son made this kiddush, and everyone nai-nai-naid along with him, even me, even though I didn’t see any other girls at the table singing and even though I was pretty certain they didn’t want me to. (Traditionally observant
Judaism has a law stating a man cannot hear a woman sing because it is seductive.) But I kept my voice low enough that (I thought) it couldn’t be discerned independently. And after kiddush I was surprised to see that the Weinbergers were a relatively tender, loving family. Moreso than mine, anyway. Rabbi Weinberger was slightly holding on to his younger daughter’s hand. There was another little girl at the table, or maybe the younger daughter morphed into her. This second little girl had (with her uncaring parents) moved “Out West”, and been
raped, and returned. Somewhere in the course of conversation she had mentioned being raped, quietly. Then she wished she hadn’t, and went silent and hoped nobody had heard her, because it wasn’t
appropriate talk for the Winberger’s table. I don’t know if anyone heard her but me but I thought, “It’s common knowledge anyway”. Then Yaacov and I moved to the children’s tables. There were two, on one either side of the adult table. More people were going to be coming, I was told, and there wouldn’t be room for us at the main table. But I didn’t see anyone else come.
I was coming out of
school. Around in the back of the school was a big lawn-come-parking-lot. My father’s minivan was there, perhaps because he had driven me to school, and I thought that I had to get it back to him. I got inside and I tried to drive a little bit but it was too scary (I don’t know how to drive yet) and I gave up and decided to go home by scooter instead. (In real life I don’t own a scooter, I don’t want to own a scooter.) So I got on my scooter, which was motorized and had a seat. It went really
fast, which was terrifying. And I was going down the hill that the
Grand Central Parkway service road makes as it approaches
Midland Turnpike and run alongside the Weinberger’s house. I got that chest-sinking falling feeling and I shut my eyes. Then I was on Midland Turnpike, but as if I had come from the direction of
Hillside Avenue. I slowed the scooter down and turned off the motor and got off of the seat and started riding it like a regular scooter. Yaacov was behind me (I didn’t see one but I think that he had also been riding some sort of vehicle), and behind him was Kivi. I asked Yaacov how Kivi got there and he said that he had walked/trotted behind us (like a little
dog!). I felt bad for Kivi. And I was
tired from scooting a block or so along Midland Turnpike under my own power. I asked Yaacov to take Kivi to our mother’s house, even though he had been planning to spend that night at my father’s apartment. So Yaacov and Kivi turned right toward my mother’s house and I went on straight, planning to turn left toward my father’s apartment.
I was sitting at the table at my grandparents’ house. My cousin Talia, who is
beautiful,
popular, magazine-
thin, and about my age, was on my left. Her mother, my aunt, was on my right. Talia lived in a house on the aforementioned hill that the Grand Central Parkway service road makes as it runs alongside the Weinbergers’ house. Except that if you took that road further up the hill you were in the “country”, which is where she lived. I lived next door, in the house beyond hers. And a ways beyond that was my school. (None of these locations, other than the Weinbergers’ house, transcribe to real life incidentally.) Tali had left a few pieces of garbage on my land and, sitting a Baba and Poppop’s house, I told her so. Her mother got really upset, and Talia said to me, “But you gave me permission to!” And I said, “I thought you asked permission to put garbage in my
garbage cans. Otherwise, it’s just littering!” Then, perhaps to make it up to me, she was driving me to school (in my father’s minivan). We were driving up that hill on the Grand Central Parkway service road (although in reality it is one way the other way). When we got near my school, the road was all convoluted, and it was hard to find the right way. At one point the road forked and I told Tali to keep right, but instead she went left, where the road became a really wide staircase, leading down. It was divided into three “lanes” by 2 banisters, and she must have misunderstood what I was referring to when I told her to keep right because she drove down the right lane. Then we were in this huge, high-ceilinged chamber, sans car. Tali had become the amalgam guy I made out with before. And the chamber was a huge,
futuristic mall. Everything was clothing and technology stores, and
young,
hip looking people. But they had lost sight of the priorities needed to live- as I told the guy after we walked down to the far end of the mall concourse- their only food source was an Au Bon Pain. And how did they get the money to shop all day? The guy told me that we couldn’t leave, no one got far enough up that stairs before the police caught him/her. But although the place was so
consumerist, I resolved to stay there because it was, again, young and hip- i.e. no
parents.
I was in the movie
The Matrix. But its plot bore no resemblance to The Matrix’s, it only had its main character, Neo. But I was Neo, or I had his consciousness. There was some point where he/I was fading though movie
special effects into a glimpse of some people- specifically the mother and then the father of the little girl at the Winbergers’ table who had been raped “Out West”. I don’t remember her mother, but her father was portrayed as an old man in a cowboy hat with a western accent. He was sitting at a table at night with a male friend. Two birds flew by. The men wanted dinner, so the girl’s father put up his hand quickly, and knocked the second bird in mid flight. It fell onto the table and the men started to eat it. Then they had to go, so they started to bury it (it was really big), to eat later. The “camera” of my mind’s eye moved from them to a store window behind them, where two mannequin-like men were shoveling gravelly sand on top of an ominous,
slimy mass.
The movie had a subplot (presumably related to the slimy mass) involving fast,
poisonous
slugs. It was nighttime. And the slugs were all over the sidewalk and I was running, trying to escape them and to find and kill the big one, the parent of them all. It was really a
predator trying to get me too, strong and fast. A voice over narrator said that the slugs were like
acne (really like pimples)- if there was one, there would be many different kinds. And so, the sidewalk had many different slugs of many different sizes on it. At one point the biggest slug was on the bottom of a garbage can. And I was in the middle of the street trying to hold the garbage can to crush the slug on the bottom of it into the ground, but the slug was so fast, it would run up the sides of the can and I had to throw the can down or it would get onto me. Then I fell down, and the slug, with its own strength, started hurling the garbage can around. Then I saw a car coming and I ran onto the opposite sidewalk from the one I had come from. This sidewalk too was crawling with fast little slugs and I was going to have to face the big one again soon. There was a man there juggling five red balls. He said “You need to get yourself some anti-venom champagne.” I said, “Where can I?” He pointed down the street to a commercial cross street (it resembled Hillside Avenue) and a
liquor store on the far corner. But he said that he could give me some now and he took one of his balls and smashed it on my back. And I had thought the ball (more like a balloon) would be full of the anti-venom champagne but instead it was full of more slugs, which were now all over me. The man screamed “Pet zoo!” like a
lunatic. And I started to pull off my outer t-shirt. I frantically pulled one arm out and then I saw that the slugs were slowing down, or that
time itself seemed to be slowing down. I was about to pull the other arm out of the shirt…
When I woke up, surprised to find my shirt entirely on. I am told that I was screaming in my sleep.