Everything is Tense these Days

There are a bunch of people at Grandmom’s house, all of whom are fretting over some logistical or scheduling problem that threatens the party we were planning on having that night.  Can we fix the problem or do we need to reschedule the party? (Rupert) Giles and others spout suggestions and we discuss them in turn, but in each case there is a sticking point. I personally am rooting for “fix now; let's party” (duh!) but the solution is quicksilver evasive. Heather Mason pitches (for the second time) rescheduling the party in the grand hotel she has recently acquired. This sounds good to most so we all reluctantly acquiesce.

Now that there’s no party tonight, I need ride home. I work on various possibilities. I recognize how damned inconvenient hauling my carcass would be for the person I really want a ride from; and frankly I don’t care to ride with one or more parties for whom it’s no trouble at all—so I refuse all rides and purpose to walk.

It’s a crazy fucking long distance to walk, so I conjure Plan B: I call Roze to pick me up. Which means I need to get to that corner by Hammonton Lake, just before the road curves to the right, to meet Roze, who is, I’m afraid, put out by my request. Unfortunately, I leave a McGuffin behind and I have to go retrieve it, which means schlepping through a labyrinth of a retail media store, something like Tower Records. I discover to my chagrin and stress that I can’t simply retrace the direct route by which I left—there’s a door that locked behind me, maybe. I end up in unknown employee-only territory briefly, and fear I’ve gotten myself lost, but a bit of backtracking fixes that. Then I get stuck at a payment register (remember when we used to say “cash register”? how quaint) between stairs helping with a customer transaction. Run run run! There has already been phone trouble, and trouble explaining the location to Roze; now I’m not going to be on “that corner” when Roze gets there. She’ll be pissed off—or worse, she will think she has mistook the location and leave again and my phone is dead and…

Later, around a restaurant table with maybe eight friends sitting around, I relate the whole episode and explain my retail labyrinth troubles to Rex: “It’s like a record store but much bigger, more the size of a department store… not a huge department store like John Wanamaker in the ’80s, but still, it takes up several floors, just with a smaller footprint.” He is distracted, would much rather be participating in another simultaneous conversation at the table, but he promises he’s listening to me.

In the same location, a wee bit later, some of us are playing out dramatic scenes in that weird limbo between pre-written drama and real life. I and a random NPC have just finished up one such interchange and I immediately start a new one, in the same character, with not quite Chris Riggs as my interlocutor. My intent here is to drive at a confession of sorts, and he is getting increasingly defensive. The whole while, we are both fussing with small and various objects that are strung on a utility line around the room, at the top of the walls near the ceiling. Several of these objects in a row (but by no means all the hanging objects in the room) are tiny pairs of scissors. The drama builds until NQCR is livid (again, it is not clear how much of this scene is acting) and he brandishes tiny scissors at me and hollers, “Don’t you tell me how to solve my problems!” or some such. I haul out a hereto unrevealed factoid, which shuts him down. He hangs the scissors back up, and SCENE.

We both return to the dinner table and I replay the whole exchange in my mind. Inarguably, his was the more sympathetic part; but I am confident my character was right and will be seen as having the better position in the end—by, among others, NQCR’s girlfriend, who is sitting next to him at the table, critically processing the scene with him. Still, I am, with a staunch (misguided) sense of ethics, still portraying my character without any gratuitous cues for sympathy. Let the rightness be demonstrated by itself, I reason, rather than have any or all of these dullards side with me for lousy, sentimental reasons.

Finally—don’t ask me how we got here—I am at a market of some sort, cash for animals and embryos. I’m here to buy something exotic and ridiculous and wildly unethical. Wait, I need some water..

Crabby is as crabby does.

I am in the busy, populated long house, on the top floor. Perhaps it is the attic because the only way to get up here is to climb a small series of concrete abutments on the balcony, using some wrought iron railings as handholds. I have been exploring but now that I’m done and ready to head back down, I find the way down is much tricksier than the way up. It’s terrifically awkward; the handholds are in the wrong places for facing this direction; and I can’t figure out a good way to turn around and climb down in the same direction I clumb up. I can just foresee (or forefeel) my body weight shifting precipitously and inertia taking me over the balcony railing. *sigh* Another fear-of-falling dream! Anyway, Roze shows up and I lament my predicament to her. "How does one get down from here?" I ask. She offers, "You could always knife down—sticking knife points in the concrete, like Mike does." Of course Mike does. I figure it out without knives and join her below. 

I’ve been thinking that I want to move all the friends I sing with into the long house with me. This iteration of the long house is in a new town, however—Phoenix, maybe? Someplace out west. The legality of vocal auditions as a condition for housing is unclear, but the idea of having the whole group (it is a significantly larger chorus than Bamburía) living in the same house is immensely appealing. And as always the long house is immense—plenty of room for everybody. I recall previous (dream) visits, including this last time when I actually got lost wandering the halls of the second and third floors, and the atrium in the interior of both. I am also concerned that Paul will not want to move here because huge house = huge cleaning.  

As we’re walking down the stairwell, Roze says we have to go take hot showers. Still thinking about moving singers in, I ask Roze how the third floor is (there are still some old residents still living here); she replies, “Crabby. Crabby crabby crabby!” Apparently this means there is a major lice infestation; thus the hot showers.  

Roze leaves me temporarily in the bookshop on the ground floor to wait for a thing to happen. I find a newspaper and read a news story (not just an obituary) about a Ginger Raney having died overnight; her son, hurriedly traveling from afar to see her before she died, was waylaid with car trouble and was helped by a benevolent stranger, but still did not reach his mother before her death. I am wondering whether this happened to Mike Raney. (I cannot at this point remember his mom’s name; when I awake I remember it is Doris.) I start crying in the shop about the story.  

Also, I am naked and I can't remember why. It's mostly ok; certainly nothing that would concern the bookshop employees and anyone who knows me; but the customers walking in from the street seem startled.  

There is an imperious and whiny patron at the register: “I wish to see the [blah blah] books! I don’t want to wait any longer!” He is actually standing behind the register counter, separated from the clerk by, and berating her through the shelves of, a tall bookcase. He is a white, middle-aged, mustachioed, privileged asshole who keeps whinging despite the fact that the clerk is busy helping other customer.  

A William Byrd pavanne is playing on the soundtrack.

I've forgotten my mantra.

A hazy recollection of going back “home” (though not really home—presumably a hotel) and hunting through my disastrously floorstrewn suitcase for warmer clothes. En route, I puzzle over whether the blazer or the light fall jacket goes the outside: the obvious choice is jacket outside, but the jacket is shorter and tighter than the blazer and will look silly. At some point I explain to an acquaintance that I’m not always this disorganized—my clothes are home are stowed in very orderly fashion, I swear!—but the explanation itself is a distraction from a topic about which I’m even more embarrassed than the unkempt drifts of underwear and T-shirts.

Later: my flight home lands and my family greet me. Dad looks young and hot. As I hug him hello, he asks immediately about tomorrow’s plans; I reply that we’ll discuss... “logistics” (it takes me as moment to find the word) presently. In the process of hugging Mom and Bob there is a discussion going on and I end up hugging Bob twice by mistake— but I make the second time look like “It was a helluva trip so I need another hug.”

We fly out again tomorrow, four of us, maybe for a concert in Europe, to the aforementioned logistics are about getting home, unpacking/repacking and getting back to the airport in the morning. It is possible that in the course of our story one of the four travelers morphs into Bob; or perhaps I am merely considering him as the best option for car travel between Philadelphia and home tonight.

Meanwhile, there’s a party. We haven’t left the airport but we are at somebody’s spacious and well-appointed home. The bartender may be been a flight attendant: he was definitely on the flight but also appears to be friends with nearly everyone at the party. He sets up and announces shrimp cocktail on the rectangular island bar. This is actually a single dish with 6 shrimp, but it’s just an overture: the gist is, when six people claim those shrimp, he will make them drinks and set out more foods. While I do not see Jeff Goldblum on the phone, this party is definitely shaded like the Hollywood party in Annie Hall.

Heading outside to the patio, there is some issue with the floor of the entryway—like a weak sport in the floor disguised by carpet with woeful inefficiency. Henry and Jay Niepoetter are here. (Is Henry one of the performers? Not clear.) Out by the pool, several folks, including Dad and me, appear to be out of cigarettes. A young and very popular friend who is almost certainly not Jude Law is handing some smokes out; Dad rejects one that has wet spots and NJL selects a dry one to give him. I am next on the dole, and I find myself unable to similarly reject a wet cigarette. Once I have lit it with difficulty and torn the filter off and wrangled the remainder into smokable shape, I mumble, “Dammit”. Dad says “What?” I explain about and show off the shambles of a cigarette. NJL offers—or Dad offers to get from NJL?—a dry one, but I decline. Because democracy! Cue Rudy Vallee: Dry cigarettes are un-American!

While this cigarette distribution and smoking is in process dad and NJL are talking about heritage and ethnicity. Dad claims “Native American heritage, which my mother (?!) makes”, to which NJL says, “Oh, I didn't realize she was dead.” Dad corrects himself: “Sorry, ‘made’.” I try to work out the semantics of the tenses re the hereditary passage of identity, but I give up.

Back to logistics: While I had postponed the discussion upon landing, the next several hours are quietly vexing me. We’re flying in the morning but there’s at least some boat travel implied. The four of us are sort of naturally, socially divided into two pairs, and the other two are known to be planning to bring aboard a massive and varied stash of recreational drugs. I contemplate whether I can safely bring along any cannabis.

Then, as usual, there is a cat whining at me.

Short stories from this morning

I am not exactly sure who this guy is, but he is a musician, a pianist, and he must have developed or contracted one of those Oliver Sachs-type neurological disorders because he has forgotten how to play boogie woogie. (Full disclosure: He doesn't actually use the term 'boogie woogie'; in truth, he has forgotten that most basic of proto-rock 'n' roll chord progressions, I-vi-ii-V, as in 'Heart and Soul'. I forget what he calls this progression, though.) Anyway, we are sitting in a restaurant and he is telling me the story of the night said chords fled his faculties, and how he struggled to recover, in the middle of playing a set with his band. His solution was ridiculously complicated: something about dropping red markers on the floor tiles to indicate to his band-mates which notes to stay away from in any given measure, so they didn't clash with what he was playing. In the midst of his explanation, at least one minor second relation occurs to me as verboten, and I agree with his method at least that far. (In retrospect, though, the whole thing is nonsense.)

Later, after boogie schmoogie guy has gone away, I am running the broader arc of his story through my mind, as if it were (and maybe it is) the plot of a movie. I am still in the restaurant—or club, the sort of place and maybe the place where the pianist suffered his sudden harmonic lacuna—sitting alone at a round 4-top table and stirring what is partly a cup of coffee and partly a bowl of soup. The chunks in the soup correspond to elements of the story I'm rehearsing in my mind. At the end of the story, the pianist breaks up with his girlfriend and it's a very 'get out yr hankies' cinematic sequence. Turns out, I am meeting the (now ex-) girlfriend for dinner, and what do you know, la voici. From the cheerfulness of her demeanor I surmise she has not yet heard that Boogie Boy has broken up with her. I am suddenly verklempt, and it seems imperative that I tell her that I love her. Maybe she gives me a look, because I immediately qualify that utterance—honestly, we really haven't known each other long enough to reasonably profess even platonic love, but I am in the moment. She ought to be assured somebody loves her. I guess I spring the bad news on her then, but the scene cuts early for some reason.

In a different, mutated thread, we are acquainted with the behind-the-counter workings of a family bakery. We are in a medieval village in the demesne of an oppressive and possibly psychotic king, and the latest news is that the king has decreed that all bakers must create loaves of bread that depict bears. Our protagonist family has been struggling to figure out how to do this, so far with no success. The regime is represented by obnoxious guardsmen on the street, always the same crusty pair, who loudly bellow the king's orders, seemingly non-stop. The story includes a lot of soap opera detail about the baker family and their interrelationships, but most of these are lost; the important thing is, the morning has come for all bakers to display their bear loaves and, hélas! our family has nothing to show for it. Rather, they have a loaf of bread with some vague lumps and mounds in a topography that is in no way suggestive of a bear or bears.

This story has been told before, I realize—it is familiar, almost a fable or household tale—but we are now seeing it from a new perspective. In this telling, the various bakers' bear-shaped loaves are loaded up on carts for presentation and paraded through the high street of the village. (There are, BTW, far, far too many such loaves to be representative of the bakerage of a small village—we're talking Macy's Parade in New York City with all the bakers in all five boroughs turning out to show they shit off.) Anyway, the products are amazing: loaf after loaf is spectacularly bear-presentative, some individual bears, menacingly mid-roar or in repose, others whole scenes with multiple bears hunting, bathing, frolicking. The crust are mostly glistening and rich golden brown, looking like egg-bathed brioche, gorgeously highlighting the detail of each offering. We see them all in motion on their carts, along with the king's men, who are inspecting the loaves for acceptability. We know that we will soon see the awful, inadequate loaf baked by our heroes and the suspense builds slowly as each magnificent bear loaf passes by. When the offending loaf shows up, however, the king's guard almost miss it: a moving obstacle—someone driving an ox, maybe—obscures it as it passes by. But they catch sight of it anyway: one guardsman says to another, in effect, "The fuck was that?" And we know our family is in for some heavy punitive shit, maybe dungeoning. But we switch stories again.

I am female. My sister (or "sister": think Mary Richards and Rhoda Morgenstern) has sent me home from 'New Rochelle' to drop some stuff off. Typical for my dreams, my arms are ridiculously, elaborately laden and of course I have to fetch keys from my pocket. Once I get to the front porch, juggling all the packages I'm carrying, I realize that I have two keys for the apartment on me: my own set and a single, spare key that is destined for a house-guest. I think I'm supposed to find and deliver the spare, but for the time being I need to put stuff down in the apartment. It is a townhouse on a city street, but each such townhouse in this row have modest front porches, round and ballustered; some, like ours, have been subdivided, and two doors lead to separate apartments. My sister and I live upstairs, but I notice the downstairs door is ajar; so I put my parcels down on the porch (honestly? I let them tumble. Don't tell my sister.) and poke my head in to see who's about.

There are several family members and friends sitting in the front room: my cousins Michael and Jimmy are sitting on the couch just inside the door; my mom (I may be back to being male and myself at this point) and a couple other NPCs are sitting or standing throughout the room. Michael immediately asks me, 'How are things at New Paltz? Not New Paltz, I mean New Rochelle.' (Actually, I have no idea what followed the 'New' in either case... pretty sure it wasn't 'Paltz' and 'Rochelle'.) From here on out, everything anybody says is slightly off from what it should be, and somebody else corrects them: it becomes a game. I think somebody offers 'gin rummy tea' instead of gin seng. Jimmy isn't really Jimmy—he is (let us say) Greg Evigan, but he's still supposed to be my cousin in context—and he complains that somebody recently called him Gregory Peccary instead of Greg Evigan. Mom does most of the error-correcting. After a good chunk of this playful small talk, I take my packages and head upstairs.

There's a lot more where that came from, but this is all I remember.

Sonnet CLXXV: Come on ye[r] childhood heroes

I've never fathomed humans’ ravening need—

lampooned in Jethro Tull's Thick as a Brick—

for superheroes. Yet I will concede:

that recent movie good guys make my dick

get up and tap dance serves sufficiently

as common ground. For instance, Charlie Cox,

who couldn't be more aptly named: can we

burn all Daredevil’s tops and set his box

in neoprene relief instead? And yo,

Luke Cage: 

why ruin all those jeans and hoodies

with bullet holes? Just leave ’em hanging, bro.

(The clothes, I mean, not Mr. Colter’s goodies.)

And how does Aquamomoa 

require

more than a Speedo? Wardrobe, I’m for hire.

[2018 September 5]

McNulty!

Bob and one other guy in the quintet are not performing up to snuff, and I am annoyed. This is not Bamburia but the idea is the same: we are five male voices trying to perform out as much and as well as possible. No other members of Bamburia are in this group, just Bob and I and three NPCs. It is clear in our final warmup/rehearsal in the church practice room that we are not all we can be. Grrr. I throw out the idea that we need some reform in singer practices and standards, and suggest that musicians are replaceable if they do not adhere to the revised standards. Bob is deeply offended, feels that this is fraternal betrayal.

We go into the chapel itself, which is much bigger and more elaborate than the First Assembly of God in Hammonton, but the crowd assembled there definitely has that same feel. All the background memories of being a kid whose parents are intimately involved--in Sunday school, in the music program, friends with the pastor--are there even if I can't sort them all out; it's just a pervasive feeling: I know this place. It is before the service, which apparently includes our performance, but folks are gathered here and preparing for some sort of rite--not a baptism per se, but a family dedication to the Lord, I suppose. There's literature or swag about it in the hymnal pockets on the backs of the pews, but I don't take the time to read what's up: I'm concerned about out quintet's performance, which promises to disappoint. 

Later--I'd say after the performance, but there's no actual memory or record of that--we have a blow-up in the church bowels over my singer concerns. There is also some to-do about my coat; at some point I end up wearing a coat that is not mine and I realize this belatedly. Where is *my* coat? Of course I have to go hunting for where I left it.

There is a purely theoretical interlude where someone--let's say Scott Robinson, though I'm sure it wasn't specifically he--and I discuss theology and morals, Christianity and nihilism. I argue (Scott has heard me so argue in the past, and I'm pretty certain he agrees, so it's not really an argument, more like a pas de deux) that atheism does not preclude morality. I also contemplate the shakier ground of nihilism, which seems to me to require das ewige nein, a total absence of morality, attendant on the total absense of meaning. But I want nihilism to retain morality. I want "soft nihilism", I suppose. All the while we are having this conversation I am playing a "video game" but with real objects: I am using a power drill with a circular bit to cut circles in oversized decks of playing cards, which are lined up in a grid, three across and who knows how many north-south... possibly to infinity. Each circle cut takes out a particular character in the design on the backs of the card decks; each such cut is obscurely tied to a given statement in the "morality" argument. No idea of the particulars, but it is clear as I am doing it.

Later: in the well-traveled path between Point A and Point B there is a very steep hill whose downward approach one must take at a careful, controlled run. I have no idea why I'm on my third time tonight, but this time, just as I have gotten started down, I see some guy walking insouciantly up to my landing point. I have no control but end up sort of crashing into the front of him; and he has the audacity to give me shit about it. I start to explain that one needs to be careful in the upward direction to be sure nobody is currently heading down the hill; but seeing that he is John Doman, I break off and tell him, "By the way, I'm a big fan." He is gracious in response, and we start chatting. I ask him, "What are you doing now?" by which I mean what is he working on, acting-wise, but I immediately realize it could also be read as designs upon his immediate future--which is how he reads it, and he takes me back to his place.

His place is on 12th Street in Folsom/Hammonton, about where Tony's custard or Anna Martelini's house is/was. It's a gorgeous, sprawling, Jetsons kind of joint, where two entire exterior walls are just glass. We have drinks and talk; we do not have sex and there's no real tension in that direction, but at the same time I don't have the sense that it is off the table entirely. A lot of stuff happens from this point on, including some other people coming over socially, but that detail is lost. Mostly I'm pals with John Doman, so that's a big yay on waking up.

Yay penis.

In a department store that's really a second-hand store, I am browsing news stories. the format is unclear and perhaps irrelevant: they may be in books, magazines, on VHS tapes, or memorialized in extruded, cast, vividly painted polymers. In any case, I am trying to decide which take best represents the event in question (also a McGuffin--it could be a WWII battle or a Monty Python sketch for all I know) and I am carefully considering each. They are all on the bottom shelves of several adjacent sections, and having contemplated a contender I decide that it is inferior to one I perused a little while ago... where was that?

I retrace my steps but cannot find it. I assume it must be on the facing side of this rack of shelves, so I head around the corner and hunt further. Nope. I keep checking racks until I am several stacks away, in another department of the store. I finally allow that it can't possibly have been this far away, and head back to where I started. But now there are several women browsing the same little area, and they impede my search.

Waiting for them to clear out, I head over toward the front of the store, where a furniture display sits beckoning potential buyers through a great panoramic bank of windows. It is dusk outside and cars in the parking lot are turning their headlights on. (Back in those quaint days when one had to turn headlights on! And wear onions on one's belt.) I am wearing a yellow collared shirt and underpants; and, wandering amongst the furniture with no other shoppers around, I decide I can continue and finish my shopping without the underwear: the yellow shirt must be for tall guys because the front and tails  come down past my genitals and butt, respectively. I pull my undies off and rebutton the bottom few buttons of my shirt. This will be fine.

But the exhibitionist charge earned here precludes any further shopping, so the next thing I know, I go to check up on a number of friends whom I've been hanging with. They are all disposed, individually or in pairs, on bunks--upper and lower berths lined up three abreast against opposite walls of a basement room. In the middle of the far wall, perpendicular to the bunks, is a large TV display showing gay porn. All my friends (including a number of hetero ones) are busy having sex with themselves or each other. Adam and his girlfriend are in the upper left bunk closest to the TV and are unhurriedly making out. Various solo guys are working their cocks with various levels of abandon.

Speaking of which, here's John Dugan, lovingly tugging his outsize pud, upper right, center. As always, he is breathtakingly desirable. But this is new territory to me: while I am used to exhibitionism I am not used to everybody else doing it. This casual, communal fuck/wankfest is strange and wonderful. There are no bunks left but I park myself in the middle of the floor and start to masturbate--first with a blanket over me, then, emboldened by the spirit of the room (although I haven't officially been invited to participate, I make an assumption that it's fair game), out in the open.

Somehow, though, this prompts John to cover up. Despite his business being conspicuously unfinished, he wraps himself in sheets like swaddling clouts. And, honestly, fuck that noise: I immediately go hit him up and unwrap him. He is accommodating and friendly, as usual. Oddly, this version of John Dugan is extremely hirsute; and he has recently shaved his body hair, resulting in numerous razor burns and stubble. That's a bit of a turnoff but I am on a mission: I lick and kiss up the inside of his thigh to his taint, then sit him down and take his gorgeous cock in my mouth. And like a video game where I have conquered the big boss, this scene is done.