Writing for friend; Stage story for June; Wood music

An old friend kisses me. I go for it We spend a hectic time running up and down the streets of his sketchy neighborhood going into bodegas looking for condoms. All the packets are like Chinese takeout packages of duck sauce or something--a viscous fluid in with the condoms. He also asks me to write a story for him. He'll give me the details and I'll do the prose. We're in my kitchen in Virginia. I agree to do the story, and one of his old friends is making pie. He keeps burning the crust and then saying he's going to make a "waffle crust". There are clusters of cockroaches and ants in places around the kitchen. I ask my friend to line the trashcan with a new bag, then I use big sheets of newsprint to wrap up the fighting insects and dump them into the trash. There's also a whole raw chicken in the trash. We make out in the recycling bin.

I'm asked to tell a story. I change my voice into an old timey Southern voice and tell the story of a girl named June and her community was giving her presents for an important birthday. I'm telling the story and watching it. Everyone's in a river. The people look like real people, but they act out their lines in a stagey way. June asks a carpenter to make a puppet after her future husband. She asks someone else to write her a song. I'm not sure where I'm going with this story. Maybe I'll punish June for her greed? But then a priest appears at the local church and tells the female priest they're going back to early Catholic teachings. Suddenly no one can give June their presents because they all go against the church. They sort of rebel. June goes onto the sidewalk and some of her friends join her. They go to to a drugstore because they can pick up some cheap birthday presents there. We find ourselves in little study cubicles in the back. we can see red-leaved trees.

In the woods, hearing an eerie song. It' like the soundtrack to a horror movie but a folksong. I stumble down a very steep hill in the woods, hearing the song. It's got mirimba and a man's sad voice singing.

Dog; Orgy at the Prof's; Boat balance

I'm with my grantmother's old pointer, Audie. He's dying and I comfort him by stroking his cheeks and ears. In life, Audie was a very ugly and smelly dog and none of us kids wanted to play with him, but he was sweet.

In a big building. I was working for a professor? In a museum? An older assistant told me to take sheets of dark blue vellum paper that came with a tray of fruit or something to the basement freezer to be used later for pinning specimens. In the basement, the professor, an older, tall, bearded man, hits on me. I wouldn't mind except he's my boss so I discourage him.

Walking back through, I see more and more people. My computer is actually set up on one side of a bed. My old roommate is in the other side. It's not lunchtime yet so I'm trying to read emails and get a little more work done. She has two boys that she's fooling around with and I'm invited to join the orgy. I protested that I was just trying to get some work done. The emails are very hard to read and I'm slowly realizing they're all junk anyway. I agree to the orgy and let the nice boy put a collar on me. Our kissing keeps getting interrupted. I have a picture of a pretty black woman in a frame, that was actually taken from a book or dream journal, but when my roommate mistakes her for an old friend of mine I let her. My roommate gets the picture wet in the bed and I pretend to be annoyed.

An older woman climbs into the bed and announces she wants to be in the orgy. The boys are really upset and I explain to the old woman that she can't force people to have orgies with her. She's angry and offended but I stand firm, although I think the boys are being kind of wusses. She finally leaves.

I get up to try to leave the room but a marching band is assembling. I meet up with Ryan and we merge with the musicians. We end up going to something like an amphitheater church. We get all the way to the front but Ryan says he'd rather sit farther back, but by then it's pretty crowded. The church is slowly turning into a boat. I'm way up on a high tower for some promotion but then it's time to scramble down the stairs. I'm not wearing shoes and my feet slip all over the place. I see a dog with the same problem, sitting on its bottom and lifting all its feet in the air. The feet are enormous with huge articulated toes and claws. I feel so sad for it.

At a party I'm on a bench where people are coming and going. Trying to set up another orgy but it's too complicated. Three black girls join me and are talking. They ask what I'm up to and I mention the orgy and they seem non-plussed. I see Ryan arrive, dressed like a professor with round hornrim glasses. I'm very happy and go up to greet him. A boyfriend of the girls arrives too and we talk. They are all misidentifying the composer Aaron Copeland. I'm looking down into a bathtub, trying to balance or submerge a container. I hum Simple Gifts. I get the tune wrong once but get it right the second time.

In another bed and another old lady shows up, talking ostentatiously on the phone about how she met these wild girls and her male friend should come. I explain again that she's not invited. It gets heated and we're all talking over each other but I prevail. She's not even too angry.

Map happy; injured people; sisters

Beautiful map and landscape dreams. Hovering above, then slowly coming down on mountainsides, greens, browns, cliffs, sort of pale afternoon light. Not knowing what I was looking at but being happy and excited.

In the halls of a school or someone's big house. About six or seven people. Two of them are injured. I give others instructions to strip cushions and blankets off couches and make a bed for the injured people, and to find some painkillers. I don't know what the injuries are--wounds? Broken bones? I say I'm going to sleep in a loft. There's some guy who's pestering the ladies and I tell him to back off.

I'm watching the sisters from The Little Mermaid, arranging themselves in a rectangle. Their bright yellow dresses catch the light and reflect it back like mirrors.

linear horror

One of the most linear, exciting dreams in a while.

I was at a family gathering. It was like a middle-school girl's birthday party from some bygone era. We were at a restaurant and an older, odd relative, a sort of nerd chic girl, was there too. There was a man working the counter at the restaurant, a short order cook. I slowly realized I was related to both of them. At first the other girls shunned them, but my brother and sister were calm and didn't mind. We were at some strange resort or school. There were wooded mountain trails all around. At one point my siblings encouraged me to take the bike we were all sharing, and just then the trail dipped super steep. I kept control and made it down the hill safely.

I had a temp job in someone's study and was trying to track down someone who was either an editor or a writer. I slowly realized that three names in my contacts list were the same man--he resembled an old writing professor of mine, but here in the dream he was a frightening, charismatic man. He had some bad intention. I left the office feeling rattled and went back to the party school atmosphere. There was a nostalgic feeling like it was in the 70s or 80s, and I was a teenager. We stood on porches in the dark, lots of woods all around us, and drank.

I heard a strange noise and pushed my way through brambles and bushes. A boy and a girl had tied up another girl. She was terrified and crying. I demanded they let her go and when they didn't I had to untie her myself. She was tied with thin, filthy twine, and it was wrapped around a branch. I had to carefully lift snails off the twine and put them back on the branch and then I let the girl go. Her captors were really upset, saying they were going to be in big trouble with some honcho.

I went back to the porch where my brother and sister were. They were calm and confident. The writer/charismatic leader pulled up in a car and I felt very afraid. He got out and said that since I had transgressed and let the girl go, he was going to take two of us back to his boss. I immediately volunteered myself and then realized we had to spare my sister. She was the one with the most potential. I demanded he take my brother and me, who agreed.

No Wine; Boat?; Nixon Sux

At a dinner table with a large All In The Family type family at a holiday. A grizzled patriarch asks us to look at passages from the bible. the relevent lines are about not drinking wine. I follow along with a pencil and underline. In a tone of surprise at his own audacity, he says he's going to skip wine for the meal and have water. Everyone agrees. I think, good for them.

Something about being on the water? A boat?

At high school. I get an envelope that's intended for two other girls. One is a poor black girl and one is a girl I know from computer class at Sarah Lawrence. They share a mail box. I go over to deliver it. Rebecca, the girl from SLC, is freaking out because she's going to transfer and lose half a year. We all go have lunch at the cafeteria. Someone makes a crack about Richard Nixon. A teacher from the school hears about this and calls us into the office one by one to grill us about the "incident". We're all unrepentent: we think Nixon sucks.

Snowscape; Variety show; Vamp hair

Can't keep everything in order.

Stumbling through a city, or a cluttered room. It's crowded and dark. Maybe I'm sitting down to watch a movie, but suddenly the horizon opens up and it's a dazzling snowscape. Low hills, ice floes, but on the ground. Patches of beautiful glowing snow and ice separated in chunks like the pattern on a giraffe.

I'm in the vista. Switching pov. Two children, and a hero. A gruff explorer type who is kind to the children. At first I'm one of the children, sneaking up behind a group of men. We don't know if they're dangerous or not, but we're taking the risk. I'm a girl, but I pretend to be a boy.

The hero knocks over a tree and makes it into a long bench. A small child runs up to him/me, and I pick him up by the armpits and put him in my lap to enjoy the new seat.

In a building, a classy hotel? Back in Washington. Sarah Glidden is there, and she asks me, as a native Washingtonian, to help her get to a local culture magazine. I look on a computer map and find out that the place is actually in New Jersey. In disgust, I give up the project.

The grand hotel--a variety show is going on. I get up and leave when it becomes clear that the next act is a guy with a fire house that he's going to squirt the audience with. At the door, he splashes me a little bit. I turn around and smirk, "Thanks for not coming on my face," which I think is hilarious but no one else laughs.

In the hotel, I find TIm Kreider and some other dissipated buddies at the cafe, eating pastries. Tim and I squabble over a delicious roll and then split it. I get bored and leave. Another switching back and forth, a beautiful woman with black, short, vamp hair, shaved at the neck, wearing a necklace made of silver coins stacked together. I'm her, and then I'm seeing her. She's asleep, and I come up to touch her hair, not thinking I'll wake her. She wakes up at once, and lets me pet the shaved part of her hair, and kiss her.

bizarre coconut

Don't remember much but there was a part when I was in a bodega and I wanted to buy a coconut. Someone else wanted one too and I knew I had to hurry in case there was only one left. In the basket, there was something that I thought was a coconut, but it was this weird reddish fibrous thing kind of squishy and greasy. Like durian, but hairy? I was surprised that they were selling this kind of coconut.

Various weird institutional spaces

Lots of institutional settings. At first I'm at a school. It's dark and the colors red and yellow are everywhere. Girls in a-line skirts and knee socks. There's a big rowdy bunch of kids. There are two teachers, and one is the cool one. She announces she's teaching the remedial class. I look at my friends and we shrug. We're not remedial, but we want to hang out with the cool teacher, so we go with her. The classroom has tiny tiny desks and we wedge in. The lesson is boring. We're disappointed. Running around the school at night. I'm in the cool teacher's bedroom, which is in the middle of the hall for some reason, like it's a shot gun house. I spill walnuts all over her floor. At first I try to shove them under her bed, but then I feel bad and tidy them up.

I'm at a summer camp that's somehow pre-military. I follow a grumpy woman into the dorm, which is a mess--there's a hose sputtering on the floor, the stairwells are too tight. I'm not optimistic. I look at the print-out for my room number and find it. It's amazing! It has its own tub and toilet, a huge bed, book shelves. I start settling in. A male counselor (looks like Erik von Berg) shows up and welcomes me. We start talking about books and music. We find out Lou Reed just died, and that he had secretly murdered a priest and had his desiccated body in his house. He'd also gotten a nun pregnant. I thought, "I knew about the nun murder, but I'm really disturbed by this priest murder thing. I guess I'll get over it..."
The Erik-like guy starts drawing Lou Reed's face on my back and I feel him poking my anus. I protest, and he shifts the art to my butt cheek.