I Love Lucid

File under: Barbie Mariposa and the Glittering Goo. Stream of subconscious glimpses from a lucid dream…

summer camp, family resort, all ages
i overhear news that someone’s spreading herpes to girls
i walk out of my room – there is a row of young girls sitting in line waiting for – ?
i feel guilty and panic
i try to say something to my family who’s there, instead i run because the hysteria is turning the camp into a lynch mob
i find a fence, jump it, run up some stone steps into the woods and adjacent railroad tracks
no trains are coming so i run through through the woods to the nearest town
i find a bed and breakfast to stay in, but i hear people talking about the pandemic up at the camp, so i leave and hitch a ride
a couple of guys with guns pick me up and give me a ride, without asking questions
while we’re driving and they’re quiet, in my dream-head in the back seat, i can hear what everyone at the camp is saying and thinking and how they plan to catch me – i think “new jersey, connecticut…new york is the first place they’ll look for me…”
we come to a highway off-ramp, the car pulls up next to a big, new, yellow pickup truck – its flatbed walls are covered with dripping honeycombs. i am distracted by the glittering goo…wondering – how does that work?
i get out of the car, because the two guys with the guns are scaring me
i wander along the highway intersections and end up in a flop house with a group of junkies
another guy, 2 girls and i pair off into couples and go upstairs to have an orgy
upstairs, i’m thinking, i can’t do this, i can’t give this chick herpes even if she is a junkie
as she undresses, i start to wonder why i’m having sex with women anyway – when did this start?
the other couple starts to make out, then stops – the guy says he’s the one spreading the herpes,
they continue to have sex anyway, the girl i’m with changes her mind
relieved knowing it’s not me, i run downstairs and out of the house
i run into the group from the camp who is calm now and heading to a fancy lodge with a tropical theme
we come up escalators into a big hall with modular leather seats
as we’re sorting out where to sit, i turn and start talking to the group i was hanging out with at the camp…”how ’bout here?”

I wake up, pee, turn on the TV to an episode of a cartoon called “Barbie Mariposa”: ” A butterfly fairy and her friends must find an antidote for their poisoned queen…” The fairy says, “This time, I promise I won’t oversleep.”

Yankee Doodles

I was trying not to read the Yankees post-season like Tea Leaves for clues to the city’s future and my place in it. Sitting at the counter at the Metro diner this weekend, reading the sports section – gasp, egad – in the Post – egad, gasp – I couldn’t help but feel a bit of sadness in the news that Joe Torre was out. Between the iced coffee and the French Toast swimming in syrup, you’d think I’d have enough sugar in my blood to weather any heartache, but this news made me pause and reflect again on my time in this city.
I drove from Chicago to NYC in late October 1996, through a monsoon of a thunderstorm with the ex who was just dropping me off. The storm broke as we approached the Washington Bridge; rush hour traffic was just letting out as we zipped down Broadway for the first time, past Hell’s Kitchen, West Chelsea and the Village, which were still affordable messes just this side of gentrification. At the southern tip of the city, those two towers were still there. On the news, talk had started about the Macy’ sThanksgiving Day parade and the city was in full Yankees World Series fever. It was Joe Torre’s debut as Manager and it would turn out to be the first of the Yanks’ 4 World Series and 12 league championships under his watch. I had less than a $100 in my pocket, and still I thought – this is a good sign.
Now, after one of the most diplomatic, stellar turns managing the high-voltage all-stars, Torre gets a corporate working over like any other cubicle confined schlub. Yes, $5 million is a nice chunk of change, and with the post-season bonus incentives it could easily be $8 million. And maybe it is time for Joe to go. The last couple of play off seasons have been disastrous and a little humbling could go a long way to energizing the team and its fans. So, the insult, gloom and doom then, is not in the sum of the fee offered; rather the omen for the team and the city and die-hards like me is in the very offering of the “incentive offer” and the salary reduction – a vote of no confidence from management in a man who has delivered consistently on the Yankee promise. The “corporatization” of a dream team, its city, the country and the demolition of the old stadium and the rise of the new one with more VIP seats than bleachers echo the changing of the guard – not only in the Bronx, but in NY and USA as a whole. Unlike any other team, and any other city in the world, Yankee fans not only EXPECT the bombers to shower in champagne every October – we actually need it. Boys in projects need to dream of making that leap and dream of doing more with their bats than bashing in each others’ skulls.
The rest of us, those that love the Yankees anyway, also need to believe in our collective hubris, in the unstoppable force of the New York hustle as a catalyst for hope and sportsmanship in ourselves and the world. We need to believe that paying ridiculous rent for tiny apartments in dubious neighborhoods is worth the stress and strife of transportation strikes, power outages, and all the other quality of life issues that drive us to the brink of a million daily mini-riots. We need to believe that with enough muscle, hustle, brain, brawn, and sheer will power New Yorkers can propel themselves from nobody nothings to the top of the heap, top of the list, and be king of the hill, “a-number-one”.
After all, no one gets tears in their eyes dreaming or belting out choruses about being number two. Except, maybe all the new yuppies and trust fund babies filling the luxury condos buying their cultural cachet wholesale and reshaping the neutered skyline while re-imagining themselves as Warhol’s babies when not even those kids are buying into that fantasia anymore. I wish I could have faith in the new kids coming up, but given their inherent disposable, derivative zeitgeist, I doubt they can ever love the city as she deserves to be loved.
Many unsentimental and democratic types will cheer the end of the Roman era in baseball. But for all my buddhist inclinations, I’m not one of them. The excesses of success may corrupt the soul, but only if you see it as an end, and not a means. And that is how I make my peace with being a type A, overachieving, recovering star fucker. So, thanks Yankees, and Joe Torre. My NY years have been infinitely enriched and inspired by your juggernaut streak. This Warhol baby needs to believe in a special city. A city where Bryant Park tents are cluttered with models in February and September; a city where boom boxes on stoops bang out summer beats; a city where you can take your Shakespeare in the park or the parking lot; a city where almost anything can be delivered to your door cheaply and quickly; a city where Union Square is filled with skaters and bikers and Palestinians and Isrealis facing off; and above all – a city where the Yankees are champs and a man’s hard work and love needs no other incentive, season after season, year after year…

“Start spreading the news/I’m leaving today…”

Faux Pas De Deux

Some things we know, we repeat aloud advertising our self-knowledge to the world. It’s an odd inheritance, this compulsion to call myself out before anyone else does. A romantic refrain in my life has been my divided loyalties to my two lovers – the ex, and NYC.
Whatever “the city” represents – redemption, transcendence, hubris – it has always had a magnetic pull on me. To be here, to be somewhat “caught up” in the social frenzy of music, media, art – to be a part of something larger than life, that desire, hunger, lust has always made me a lousy lover. I made a running joke of that fact – that between my alleged fabulous life here and the love of my life, I would chose the city and what it promised to tell me of myself, what it allowed me to hustle into being through sheer will power and tenacity over the company of any one man, however fabulous he himself may be.
The ex was something, like NYC, like my dreams of myself, somewhat sublime. Our meeting on “Rodney King” night, at approximately the same time, suffused our decades-long on-again/off again stop-start affair with a supernatural momentum. It was Shakespearean, written in the stars. Many intoxicated diatribes included disclaimers like, ” It has a life of its own; I can’t make it stop” – maybe it was just damn REM ringing in my head: “It’s bigger than you” and “that was just a dream…” It was 1991, after all.
My dream the other night reaffirmed and amplified this fear. The dream unfolded in a big loft, in a party I was hosting. The ex had flown a long way in to be there. But, the whole time he was there, we did something we often did when we felt ourselves too much in each other’s presence and/or in the presence of other more compelling or attentive people – we ignored each other, and focused on the newest person showering us with the most intense attention. It was an extension of the fatalist zap we experienced when we shook hands for the first time at last call in West Hollywood – “Whatever this is, it’s going to be one hell of a ride.” I thought it was a subtle game, a discreet dysfunction, a perverse way of saying – “I love you, give me some room…I love you, give me some room…”
As the party in my dream wore on, the night got later, the crowd thinned, until in the end, amidst the stragglers, I approached the ex, as if it had been a swellegant evening, and it became clear that he was not happy. He was clearly hurt and disappointed; he had not enjoyed himself. I tried to convince him that I thought it was what he wanted – room, space, freedom to shine on his own, in his own adjacent, overlapping sphere. But I was also aware that I was more concerned with all the other fabulous people in the room, and their attention. Early in my assimilation experience I learned the value of being “teacher’s pet” and it was a dynamic I cultivate to this day. To not feel special is to be subject to anxiety attacks – “if it’s not about me, then who is it about? And if it is about somebody else, do I care?”
As my arguments with the ex failed to win him over, I suddenly started to panic. I had lost him this way so many times before, as I always knew I would always lose lovers, and the thought of it happening again, still, so many years later shocked me out of my polite veneer and I began stammering relentless guilt-laden apologies, which he brushed off, ignored, seemed too enraged to engage. The realization of how cruelly I had repeatedly, arrogantly undermined our relationship, of how casually I betrayed it, how unforgiving and unapologetic I was about my ambitions and loyalties, of how shallow and empty those gestures had become – all that shook me awake.
I stared at the ceiling, catching my breath, waiting for my wandering astral body to settle back into its physical self. Once I returned to me, I text messaged the ex – “Sad dream…” and apologized, with a newfound spiritual urgency, for being such a self-centered starfucker for so long, for being so dismissive about love. It was as if the integrity of my soul somehow depended on the wholeness and purity of that single relationship. Even though I felt better after the text message, as if I had come to own something on a primal, sublime level, I could not shake the feeling that I had failed again because I was really only motivated by my concern for my own soul. But in as much as we were inextricably entwined, was this twilight satori also not essentially still a breakthrough?
And is that really such a foul foundation for an endless love?

Manic Depressive Monday

Dream time.

I am approaching my family’s new house in California. A nice ranch style house, late at night. From the porch, I hear people fighting inside. I almost don’t knock, but they see me through the window.
Before I come in, I hear a loud grumbling sound, down the street, in the distance. A dark flashing cloud of debris is rolling up, rising above the houses. Mobs of people come rushing down from the surrounding hills, some of them hover on the mountain top as lookouts.
There’s some kind of invasion or attack happening. Some force has mobilized, the monsters have come to Maple drive. At first, the evacuation proceeds in a very frenzied but organized way. People are pushing and shoving and falling, but they’re moving in at a steady clip, in a uniform direction.
We are led into an underground bunker, through a maze of tunnels, that opens into a parking space where getaway cars await. The ex and I get into an old black low-rider convertible. As he starts the car, a guy with a gun jumps into the back seat. As we look back at the tunnel, the crowds are now fighting over the cars, becoming more desperate and violent. I’ve lost my family in the fray; last I remember, my brother was leading them into an SUV. In my head, I know we have a rendezvous spot, but I don’t know how to get there now.
Then the guy with the gun forces us out of the car. There is pandemonium in the streets, looting, vigilantes armed to the teeth. We duck into an alley, and begin climbing a fire escape. Some guy with Sci-Fi weapons starts shooting at the fire escapes. The ex continues on, I run out of the alley, into a thunderstorm. I bump into someone as I round the corner.

I open my eyes. It’s early, still dark. The curtains are blowing wildly. There’s a storm outside. No lightning or thunder, just gusts of wind and a heavy downpour. I get up, turn off the fan, check the clock. I still have a couple hours. I fell asleep with the the laptop open. The screensaver’s on, disco and M83 remixes playing softly. I try to get back into the dream, but it’s too late. At least, too late to remember what happened when I went back in.

Pool Party Boo Hoo

Dream time. No surprises here.
I’m in a car, with another typical girl friend – she’s cute, dark – and driving. We’re on what looks like Chicago’s Lake Shore Drive.
“Look at that giant dark cloud rolling in. Do you think they’ll still have the pool party,” I ask.
“I don’t think that’s anything,” she replies.
I look at the skyline, the lake – or is it now New York’s East River? Then back at her. Now, she’s my dead aunt. My dying grandmother is in the passenger seat. I’m in the back.
“We’re going to some other party,” my aunt says.
When I look out the window again, we’re driving around San Fernando Valley in California. We pull into a driveway that runs along the side of a house to the backyard.
“There’s no pool!” I cry out, and put my head against the back of the seat, whimpering.
“I think he’s crying,” my grandma says.
I can’t go in that party, I’m thinking to myself.
Then I wake up.
I shower, thinking I need a shrink. I also need to figure out if I can give my Pitchfork passes to one of my friends in Chicago through will call. I was supposed to be there this weekend, but because of our court date yesterday, we were unable to change our flights on time. We thought we could get our court date changed because the cop said so, but whoever was answering the phones was uncooperative. I had already decided to let the whole weekend be a washout as proof to the universe that I was a big boy.
So, why did I wake up crying?

I Was Dreaming When I Wrote This…

But, please, don’t sue me if I go too fast.

This morning I woke up with Prince’s “Adore” from Sign O’ the Times in my head.
I had been dreaming that I was drifting out to sea, encouraged by the tide and some hipster in a hat. When we got out a bit far, I realized I couldn’t swim so well. Noticing my panic and our predicament, the hipster said, “Sometimes, you just gotta do whatever works” – then went under. I clung to an old pier post that popped up, waiting for him to resurface through the ripples and bubbles. Instead, Prince alighted on the post. He was a fairy with wings and flowers and he was doing the closing falsetto yelps at the end of “Adore”. When I looked back, I realized the shore wasn’t as distant as I remembered, so I jumped and landed in shallow water.
An auto body chop shop had materialized near the shore, and there were cars being dumped out its back door into the ocean. I panicked again, hoping whoever was behind this toxic enterprise wouldn’t notice me poking about. Someone entered the shop and noticed me splashing around. That’s when I “woke up” the first time.
Suddenly, I was in bed with the Ex. I told him about the strange dream I just had. He guessed the song and hummed the same final bars, then said he had to “go into the city” for some art supplies. I said OK, and went back to bed.
When I “woke up” again, I was in my grandparent’s old house in Cancun. I could hear and see the ocean from my bed.
That was when I finally woke up again, this time for real, safe and sound, back in my comfy a/c cooled NYC pad. The first thing I saw when I opened my eyes was the fish tank; the first thing I heard over the a/c was the gurgling of the aquarium pump. I noticed one of the sharks chasing the Ghost Fish around. I tapped on the glass to make him stop.
Before I could forget, I texted the ex. “U were singin Prince in my dream within a dream…”
My doctor said there would be dreams like this on these meds. No need to guess what I’ll be listening to all day.
Prince – Adore