Zach and Tom were sitting on my bed. Phillipe Candeloro and I were leaning against my bed watching a documentary (see below for the plot summary). I offered Phillipe a handful of raw hamburger. He declined. A while later, I offered him some weeds smothered in Velveeta. I ate the weeds with Velveeta after he declined; they weren’t actually that bad. Then, suddenly, I was sitting on the bed. Zach, Tom, and Phillippe were gone. The documentary was off, but my VCR was still taping.

Documentary:

It was about the only Native American to raise the flag at Iwo Jima; he later became a paraplegic. The documentary covered his whole life. He was Geronimo’s grandson. He fell in love with a lady named Maria who spoke Esperanto.

****

I “woke up” and it was sunny. (When I had actually woken up five minutes before, it was night and it was raining). The VCR clock said 11:00 am; the other VCR didn’t say anything. It just had the OTR (one-touch-record) circle lit. I couldn’t read my clock radio. I knelt on the ground to get my Michelangelo watch (I never had one, but it sounds like a wonderful Swatch), but I needed to get back down to get a flashlight too. The watch said 9:00 am. I flipped on my TV to watch Channel 2 for the time. The Home Shopping Club came on, selling a ring. I flipped through the channels until i learned that an earthquake in LA shut off all power to the US for a while. A 20-something guy was playing in a lake with waders. A Madonna video came on next. I got dressed, wearing 2 black shirts and a mustard yellow sweater. I looked in the mirror and I started to peel off chunks of my face. not just flakes, but four-inch leathery pieces. I thought about saving one. Under the leather layer, my face was blood-vessel blue and scab-removed pink. I had no nose. Then on TV was a Sesame Street cartoon with Adolf “Eigentliches.” He was settin the record for “land travelled by using cannon-balls. Of course, the first one needed to be shot backwards…” He was on one of those see-saw-type railroad handcars.

Even when I write about “waking up,” I’m still dreaming . . . keep that in mind.

I was sitting in the library on my head. My head stuck out of the back of the chair as if I were in a guillotine. I thought about the back of the chair sliding down and chopping off my head. I changed so I was sitting like Mork in the opening theme of Mork and Mindy. Jon was sitting beside me. I said, “I don’t know what I’ll do when I grow up.”

“You’ll probably get married.”

“I don’t know. I know this will sound bad, and I don’t mean anything by it, but I could marry you so I could have time to write.”

“That would work. It would be better than marrying someone like Andy.”

I was driving up a ramp behind a church. I was driving my car between two yellow poles and I barely made it. There was a ghostly white woman with blond hair (Courtney Love, I’m pretty sure) in a wedding dress. I almost hit her, but she vaporized. This happened four times until I realized I had been there before.

I brought a bag of chips and my black pillow to forensics. Reichardt pulled me aside and gave me a list of possible judges. We were, all of a sudden, hosting a tournament on Saturday. She sent me off to C5 to try and work things out. Not much later, I came back out and ran into a black guy. He noticed I had chips and asked if I wanted to trade. I said sure. It had “mandarin” or something, and I just had plain, so we kept our own chips. I met up with Ryan and we decided we were hungry. We headed for Dairy Queen, except everyone was eating in the dark. I looked around and, along Tyler, several Duane Hanson-type wax sculptures were sitting about three feet apart. Actually, they were crouching. Melissa L. was puzzled too. Police officers were around to make sure there was no trouble. The police officer was carrying a little person (a Hispanic female midget cop). The midget held up handcuffs sternly.

Reichart, Chad, Joy, and I were in a prison interrogation room. There was one crude light bulb hanging from the ceiling. Reichardt told us stories of her past. I didn’t listen. I was just glad I had my pillow and chips with me.

Jon and I were on the couches in the library. I was sleeping and woke up to see Deonde hovering over me. He sat down beside me and talked to Jon. His girlfriend, “Katrina,” sat beside me on the other side. It was if my shape was sitting, but my soul was laying across the couch as usual. Deonde and Jon got into a mock fight. I “mingled” with Katrina.

I was in the library again (or still?) gathering food for Mr. Hammond’s Black Panthers meeting. Actually, I was prowling in their room. They didn’t have any Sunny Delight, so I left. Later, I returned with Ryan to record my dreams. He laughed at me because I wrote “three” instead of “tree” and I didn’t dream about trees anyway. I dreamt about black-outs. so I realized again that I was dreaming.

I thought I heard a noise and assumed Mom was coming in to shut my window. I guess I looked at myself, and saw my arm and leg shivering. I looked sort of bleachy and dangerously like the blond bride I had nearly run over. Then I felt around for a sweatshirt. I found one, but I never put it on. I heard a crinkling sound and decided to convince myself that it was the sound of me hiking in the forest. Then I remembered I had pieces of plastic beside my bed and it could be a murderer. But I was dreaming, so it was okay. I told myself to concentrate on the footprint, so I saw Neil Armstrong’s footprint in my mind and thought about Kurt Cobain.

I was getting tired of Hole, so I stopped my CD player. It was dark, so I blindly grabbed the first CD I found. It was Janet Jackson. I decided I was through with that, so I flipped the switch over to “tape,” which passes through “radio.” and a weird sound came out. Mom was sitting at the foot of my bed. She called in Dad and told me to play it again. There was no way I could. She said it reminded her of something, but she wasn’t sure what. Dad asked her if she had rewound it. She said yes. Then Dad said, “I’m just jealous because I don’t have a 12 year old boy sending me CDs so I can be hip.” I told him I didn’t listen to those CDs, but he wouldn’t believe me. Mom asked me about an assignment, but I had already done it.

The library took up three stories. Two stories were all glass. It was basically the same library. I suggested that they install security cameras everywhere and have a surveillance room. Someone took me to an observation booth and I saw 20+ rooms of closed circuit TVs. I curled up back there, keeping one eye on the door. I think I fell asleep.

I was listening to Hole and my mom had a sledgehammer to my door. She was beating with the bass. I thought she was sleepwalking, so I yelled at her to get up. Then I “woke up” and she was towering over me whispering my name.

We were walking down Kellogg and Rock on the way to a football something. People were sliding down inflatable slides. Cars were piled up. A Cuban guy pulled up in a convertible. Dad, Mom, and I hopped in. I sat on the back, hanging out like Miss America in a parade. I hoped I would see someone I knew. I finally found Mike and Dave S. I screamed “Wacker” and he turned around. The Cuban guy thought I said “Crunch.” A game show host popped out and said, “If you can get him to ‘crackle and pop,’ you win!”

Rachael, Ryan and I were in a grocery store. We just stood in front of the gumball machine, mystified. Rachael spoke (for the first time I could remember in one of my dreams).

Sarah M. and I were trapped in some weird place. We were hungry, so we went out to this snack bar. They had all kinds of things. They had bubble gum flavored Rice Krispie Treats. I think they had mint too. They also had little packets of bubble gum flavoring. I bought a bunch of Chex attached together and sprinkled them with sugar. It was eighty-nine cents.

Jon and I were at White Sands, a nature park thing. It was indoors. He squeezed my arm as we headed up the stairs. I think Priya was in front of us. It was like The Posedion Adventure. Priya went through a chamber, leaving Jon and I alone. I asked him if he would stay. He smiled, winked, and pulled me with him. Then we were outside. It was raining. I ran to a car, wearing nothing on my feet but white socks. When I looked up, I saw a man getting out of the car with a violin case. I thought, “How cute: a six-year-old going to his violin lesson,” but it was a mafia guy. Two other mafia guys got out of the white car and robbed the convenience store.

For some reason, Kim, Kevin, Erik, Mom, Dad, and I were all on vacation together. We went to a weird hotel-type thing. We watched a movie about washed-up basketball stars. Everyone started crying. Then we down a flight of stairs. It was the team’s old locker room. Their areas were about the size of a bathroom stall. Charlie, an elderly black man, was sitting and crying. Boutros Boutros Ghali’s area was empty. I went upstairs to the front desk to see if there was any mail and to move Dad’s car. There was a packet for me from Pigeon Poetry, a magazine who was rejecting my poetry. I opened it up to read my poems and I didn’t remember writing any of them. Most of them were “I hate society” types of poems. so I left it here with some stuff for my mom. I went to move Dad’s car, but it wouldn’t start. It finally rolled . . . right into the back of a car. But it was moved. Dad came out and told me that if I ever had an accident, he’d understand and he wouldn’t blame me. Mom forgot to pick up the stuff from the front desk. We drove by a water tower and two guys were jumping off. Dad asked me if Dan Cortese was dead. I said yes and looked for him, but all I saw was a black guy with an afro.

I was talking to a girl who had to dissect a liver. She was using Pat L’s.

“He’s dead?”

“Yeah. I have to cut around all the blue spots in his liver though. And then I have cornish and crown it.”

(Don’t ask me what cornish and crowning involves.)

I was walking in the B hallway and was nearing Mrs. Grubb’s room when Jill V. stepped out of the room. She asked me if I was going to prom. I said no because my friends and I think it’s stupid. She said she could sympathize. I walked out into the commons where Karrie jumped me. She and Olivia tried to drag me away. I broke free and went to where my friends (Jon, Zach, Tom, Rachael) were sitting on the floor.

I was in a hotel room with a psycho lady. There was a party next door. The door was slightly open. I was trying to talk her into leaving, but she wouldn’t. Finally, she put half her body in the party and asked me, “You sure they got Jodeci?” and I said, “Yeah, I’m sure.”

It was a Saturday and Dad and I were packing up to leave for Arkansas. We had taken four hours to pack. I still didn’t have my tapes packed and Dad wouldn’t let me go back and get them.

We drove through Coffeyville on the way to Arkansas. Once there, it was icy. Mom said she knew it was going to be icy because of her Saturday Night Live dream. We went back to Coffeyville. There were cops prowling all over. We parked someplace and walked around the block. When we returned, our Isuzu Trooper had been moved. Dad had to sell it to some guys while we were gone.