(person) by stash Wed Aug 15 2001 at 18:24:27
Body Switching Jam Session

  • I arrive with my friends Thomas, Allen, Mario and Dave at the house of our friend Luke. It's actually his father's old house, built right on the edge of a salt-water bay. Luke lives here with a housemate and his father comes every so often to work on the house. The marina is right next door and the masts of many sailboats poke up into the dusk sky. In the side-yard of the small two story house, there's a tiny man-made inlet from the seawater that has some unknown function; it's rectangular with concrete edges like a 3 x 3 meter pool and looks about that deep. We are welcomed by Luke and enter his house. We've never been here before so he gives us a little tour. The living room and kitchen are downstairs and the two bedrooms are upstairs. Luke's dad is adding a small balcony to the side of the house that would extend off the bedroom and overhand the front door. It looks about halfway done, a framework of raw pine. Dave starts messing around, fake-wrestling with me and rolls me out onto the balcony. I try to fight him off as the delicate structure sways and begins to crumble beneath our weight. Dave pulls back into the bedroom as the balcony collapses into the pool with me. I'm not angry as I get out and re-enter the house. Our plan is to have a little musical jam session--after some of our group pick up some alcohol and the rest smoke pot upstairs. Thomas, Mario and Dave leave while Allen and Luke join me for a smoke. It is at this point that I realize I am not in my own body. Somehow I know that it is in fact Luke's housemate's body. In the mirror I see a pudgy-faced, freckled 20 year-old with longish straight black hair. We're upstairs and Luke tells us some girls are coming over to listen to us play so I decide to have fun by styling this guy's (my) hair. I can tell how he usually wears it, hanging down long, but I try slicking it back into a pony tail. I used to have long hair so it was a strangely familiar sensation to feel all that hair pulling on my scalp as I tied it back. The metaphysical/lucid dream thoughts have now occured to me and I make comments about this body-switching to the other guys, and even wonder aloud what the housemate's actual physical body is doing in the waking world while I'm borrowing it in the astral world. It occurs to me that I might have a different guitar-style in someone else's body so I pick up a guitar and reflexively play an improvised blues lick. It sounds pretty good and isn't something I would normally play. We hear the people arrive downstairs and decide that we're finished getting primped up. As I descend the stairs I hear the voices of my girlfriend and another friend, Meghann. The last thing I hear before I awaken to the alarm is the voice of my ex-girlfriend, Radha, who is also there (and who I am meeting for lunch today).

I like it!