I got sleep! Unfortunately, I dreamt about two of the Backstreet Boys. So are the cruelities of life.

Something about “Jenna, the best defensive player ever” was printed in the paper

Jay, his girlfriend, Traci from high school, Nick Carter and that Brian guy from the Backstreet Boys, Matt, and I were on a trip together in Texas. We went to some science museum. Traci and I wouldn’t go down the tight and scary curvy slide (it was as curvy as those “silly straws,” but you couldn’t see where you would end up), so we climbed down the stairs and went into the planetarium. They weren’t doing a star show, but the walls were like those awful 60s videos–full of moving lava-like patterns. There Traci and I just talked about all sorts of things (in reality, I haven’t seen her in six years, and this is first dream about her since then, at least): how stupid Brian is, how unfair that we have to babysit the Backstreet Boys, how awful and scary that slide was, etc. We then left and met up with the gang again. Nick was going quite insane, like he was on speed, and saying that I should sleep with him because then I could say I slept with a Backstreet Boy. I told him that really wasn’t a goal of mine. He then ran off, saying there were plenty of girls who would say yes. Traci and I looked at each other and shrugged.

I ran to McDonald’s to get food for Traci and myself, but couldn’t find her house. I looked in the phone book, but it was missing almost all the names it should have in there. I was around the Central and Maize area.

I was then at the Center, and helping clean out a room. A teacher stopped by and asked for some handouts, but noticed the yellow tissue paper in the bathtub: “When I call about a class project, that’s the paper I want.” I told her it wasn’t a problem. I went into the computer lab where Traci and Priya were cleaning and rearranging things for Traci’s government class. I helped out by changing the fonts to 6 point Courier (there were no other font options). I then remembered I had Traci’s lunch in my car and offered to go get it for her, saying that it hadn’t been “that long” since I got. She said not to worry about it. Matt came in and said he needed help with the room with the yellow tissue paper and bathtub. I followed, and asked where Linden was. Matt said he just didn’t know about him anymore. When we got the room, there was only one lamp on the corner. We piled everything into the bathtub and moved it into the hallway.

I was bedridden. My slate blue velvet drapes kept slowly falling off their hooks and rod. I called the Shapiro house for Dan. Caryn answered the phone, and I told her I was returning Dan’s phone call. Dan answered, and gave the phone over to his friend Zack (who reminds me an awful lot of Jack) after a few pleasantries. Zack said he was going to do some drawings for Seen, and I said okay. I didn’t see how had anything to do with me, but I was patient. I couldn’t go anywhere. I just kept looking out the window while Zack was talking, and I noticed the house next door was four stories tall. They had all the lights on and the curtains wide open, so I could see inside. They had awful starving artist oil paintings on every wall. I got off the phone with Zach, congratulating him for getting into Seen. My drapery fell completely off, and my black sheer drapes, completely at the sides of the window, blew in the light breeze. The guy next door looked like a mixture of Anthony Hopkins and Martin Van Buren. He appeared in the window of the third floor, and angrily pulled his draperies shut. He then peered out a small opening, saw I was still watching, and then stormed off, shutting off all the lights in the house. I couldn’t stop watching, but I also couldn’t move.

Mom, Dad, and I were on vacation, and we were driving to Eureka (not Eureka, Kansas, but somewhere else–straight east). We kept talking about what we would do after we got to the lake, where we’d go from there, and all that sort of stuff. I kept saying that it was okay if we didn’t drive all that way in one day. We stopped for the night, and Dad’s beeper went off. He was needed back at work immediately, so we had to turn around.

Something about a tamborine made out of chicken bones.

Kathleen had moved to an 2-bed/2-bath apartment so I could move in with her. I was in Newton explaining it all to Mom; Dad was taking a long bath upstairs and Grandpa was taking a long bath downstairs. There was Hi-C and Coca Cola on the table. I decided to wait and take a long bath before I left.

Somehow I knew that the guy from Letterman who always sings “who let the dogs out” was trying to kill me. And I knew that a woman named Ann Watson was also going to be killed.

I saw that guy (Alan?) following me, so I stopped in this parking lot near a huge, glistening, mirror-covered church. I jumped out of the car and threw my Pokemon backpack at the car, but it went up instead of sideways. Alan opened his passenger side window and started screaming at me. By this time I was flat on the concrete.

I got up while Alan was backing up to run over me, and I ran into this run-down building across the street from the church. I ran down to the basement and found a note from Ann written on the door and found her inside. We then heard creaks upstairs. I left her there (she was too scared to move) and went upstairs. I didn’t find anything, so I ran outside. It was now dark and I think I was in Memphis. There were two black kids with bandanas over their mouths and black knit hats. They were coming for me, so I ran up to them and hit them with my taser. I then ran up the street and went further west, then north. I found a hollowed out, burnt version of Graceland. Some bystander told me it was going to become an orphanage. I told him Elvis would have wanted it that way.

***

I was at the Center on the concrete in front of Studio 3 talking with Anne Coffin about different ways to enroll when all the old MFA crew came out. Everyone hushed when we started talking about Elizabeth getting a new perm.

Jon wrote a book in which he called me an “uncultured gorilla” in the first chapter. I laughed about it and told Kathleen that he’d fall in love with me by the end of the book: I’ve seen enough Elvis movies to know how the story ends.

We had ants coming into the Summitlawn house in the bathroom. Mom and I watched the albino spiders trap them up in webs. I told Mom not to touch the albino spiders.

I was giving someone a note to take to the Graingers to let them know I was doing fine. The guy asked, “Do you have a birthday or something?” I said that I did, but that’s unrelated.

I was proofreading Tucker Carlson’s homework in the writing center. Then I got involved in a whole mess about turning in MFA conference sheets to the creative writing director. Some adjunct faculty were going to the conference, but needed to fill out forms and hand them to “Tina.” I kept telling them that I was MA and didn’t know anything about MFA stuff. Then Davis came up and told me that he’d be controling even more of the assigning process, including which readings to assign. I hid in my cowboy hat, then went in his office to quit. But there were only unmade beds everywhere I looked. I left.

I was going to a concert or something, but we all had to line up for the bathroom at once. Some guy pulled me into the men’s line and said it’d be quicker, even though the line was twice as long. Mom saw him with his arm around me and shot me a disapproving look.

Kathleen and I ran out of the men’s bathroom.

I got a metal Graceland lunch box. The front had the Jungle Room; the back had the Gates and estate view. Little pictures of the other rooms were around the sides of the box.

Dave Foley and a bunch of other people went to Harrison, Arkansas, and got spider/ant bites in a grid pattern.

I saw Amy, my dead siamese cat, laying on her back on a sunny day, shaded by the marble base of the square coffeetable.

A long one last night…

I went to a Chinese buffet with John Jones. After twenty minutes, I asked for a new Diet Coke. I kept sucking at the straw, but nothing came up. The waitress brought it back, but sat it in the seat of the chair across the table from me. I mouthed the word “bitch” and knew that it would cause me some trouble later on. She did bring us four cookies. I ate one, but there was no fortune inside. I would have had ice cream, but Nina was there and she demonstrated that it was too runny to eat. After that we came out into the lobby and Stephanie saw Jerri Blank (the character from Strangers with Candy, played by Amy Sedaris). She asked me if she should say hi; I told her to go for it.

When I left the building, I couldn’t find my car. I climbed a hill to look for it. Grandma said to me: “Your butt’s getting large. Does it bother anyone else?” Mom then told me I would never be happy with Tim (I corrected her and told her it was Matt. She said “whatever”) because his dad yelled at me for not going to an office party three years ago. “I just think that’s a sign,” she said.

I watched her digital cable while she was out of the house. There were three different versions of “the Kitten Channel” (one just showed pictures of books about kittens) and an “Exploring Architecture” channel hosted by “The 3 Fat Ladies.”

From that channel, I got sucked into the “Land of 1000 Masks.” The entrance to the land was an archway of masks (ooh, how literal). Then I was struggling to remember “what little girl got murdered by the sea?” I kept repeating that phrase. I saw the floor plan for the house in my mind. In the abandoned nursery (a la The Haunting Julie Harris-style), Maureen McCormick and Barry Williams (playing Marcia & Greg Brady) were dancing together. Then Marcia found a letter. As she read the letter, a spirit that looked a lot like an ill Sela Ward in white makeup mouthed the words along with Marcia’s voice. The letter read: “You’re the same couple that danced here last week, and you are going to fondue tonight. How DARE YOU use sterno in the house of god!”

Elizabeth and I moved into a large office, overlooking a river. There was a cool breeze coming through the picture window. Elizabeth announced, “We’re in New York” now. It was about where the EGSA office is for real, but it didn’t work out that way. Sheryl B. and Sherry L. offered it to us. The picture window that opened onto the river indicated that we weren’t really six floors up, but that the water was just six feet from the window. It sort of looked like I imagine Prague to look outside. Elizabeth decorated it like a Victorian living room, only it was mostly lemon yellow instead of burgandy. Hannah came in and made fun of Elizabeth’s shoes. Deanna came in and said, “I’m sorry you’ve moved, but it looks real nice in here. Mind if I visit often?” I said she was welcome anytime.

I had to go somewhere, so I went out on the streets of New York. It was dark and rainy. As I exited the skyscraper, I faced a park filled with college types, but also Vietnamese gang boys. They were talking to Elizabeth’s student with the headphones, saying things like “Well, if she’s 17, just fuck her.” I was shorter and had the ends of my pant legs tucked into my sandals. I walked with my head down, hiding under the weight of my backpack. Several boys were shooting each other with jawbreakers through the windows of another highrise. They had special jawbreaker machine guns.

I don’t know where I was headed, but I stumbled into an arcade. A four-year-old boy in front of me put a coin into the skeeball machine. Ten antique ferris wheels with prizes in the individual cars came rolling down. The boy carried two away. I stepped up and collected two. The midget prophet man appeared by my left shoulder and said, “There’s a prize in there for you. It might be antique; it might be brand new.” I opened the first compartment and pulled out a jewelry box. In it was an amethyst heart charm: I instantly thought I’d give it to Elizabeth. It was a 1937(?) purple amethyst heart: he told me the year. He looked at, told me the year, and said it had a flaw in it. He asked me if I’d wear it; as trained by my grandparents I said yes and told him I had a lot of purple things. Of course, there’s no fooling a prophet midget. As I held the box in my hand, it changed into a Matisse figure. After he handed me the heart back, I tried to put in the heart part of the Matisse box, just like in Operation. He said, “It’s not working, is it? Change it.” I held it in the palm of my hand and the heart changed to a Matisse figure. The midget said, “That’s what you really wanted anyway.” The midget was a candy maker and fortune teller, and lived in his factory through a crack in the walls.

I was in Elizabeth’s living room. We were watching the news and there were several storm warnings. We had to take the dogs to the graduation ceremony. We latched onto a golden retriever who pulled us there. When we got there, two customs officials arrested Elizabeth. This was at a gas station. I hid behind one of the pumps. I knew she was innocent, but they handcuffed and flipped her upside, like they do in cartoons when emptying other characters’ pockets. I knew I couldn’t help her, but Jim (her husband) would be able to take care of it.

I ran until I found the right-hand boundary. It was solid landscape timbers up to the sky, although I didn’t look. I watched the graduation proceedings for a while. It was outside, completely dark but lit like in movies. I moved closer to the event until I was under a house on a cliff. A guy leaned out and winked at me. At that point, I knew I had entered the movie.

I vaguely remember being pulled upside down. All these nude women were standing on the crags of the cliffs. Heather S (a girl I knew in high school) told me to flash the graduating class. I said no and told her I was going to pass out if I didn’t get upright soon. I was so disoriented that I had to really stop and think about which way I needed to move.

The whole ceremony was short, but I had been through it before. I thought “this is a Spike Lee movie” even though there weren’t many black people in it. Boys shot sugar into cobras, then sprayed them with Sprite from across the aisle.The cobras foamed at the mouth. Amanda said, “Well, that didn’t take long.” Monica said, “Yeah, it was a lot longer ceremony last time.”

I had to teach Dan’s class, so I gave them group work and read a kitchenware catalog. After Dan and Susan asked to read it, I gave it to them, wrapped myself up even more in my blanket, and walked off. One of my students called out, “But you’re supposed to teach us.” I said, “But I don’t care. Bye.”

Then everything caught on fire and everything was destroyed. Lael and I wandered around and talking about the old Macy’s downtown and “fascination with the gutted.” Jodi stumbled out of a wrecked building with frizzled hair and burnt ends. I thought “she made it.”

Through a corner of the burnt-out building, I re-entered the surreal and came across the prophet Svankmajer figure. I was still trying to figure out whose movie I was in now. The midget doctor finds me in a pioneer wagon (we were in full settler costume as well) and he diagnosed me. He instantly rubbed his hands down my sides and I started to cry. He said, “This is where you hurt the most.” I cried even more. “Here’s where it hurts first,” he said as he rubbed his hands down the front of my thighs. He then looked away. Matt was by my side and said the midget looked away when he saw death. The midget looked back at me, but not in my eyes.

Then Matt and I were a black couple on the street in a cold, urban area. I think we might have been waiting for a bus. I held the midget as he talked to me. He told me that he didn’t see death, but something else. He can’t tell me what, and then he died of a heart attack. I then realized I didn’t know his name. I decide to call him Quay, even though he was more Svankmajerian.

Then I was back on the green of the school. A black family of four, dressed in knit caps and fleece, bundled up very well, passed out from exhaustion in front of me. “We just want a house to sleep in.” I remembered that they were once the richest family in town. I noticed I was in a row with a lot of other people around me. A hypodermic needle was sitting in front of me and I grabbed because I knew it would be important later on. I also saw a 5 lb. bag of heroin (labeled in red ink) sitting in the street. I left it there.

Eventually it did become important, when I learned I might not be in a movie. I was sitting in a waiting room, with some loud black woman complaining about her drug use. A lot of white kids were sitting around chanting “crack head.” I had the hypodermic needle and then I was called in. I start to follow the receptionist, trying to remember how the movie ended so I would keep it on its path. I hesitated before the door I knew I was supposed to go through because there was a staircase going down to the right side. Two women were whispering and seemed interesting. I went down the stairs and I could still see: here’s when I knew I wasn’t in a predetermined movie. I tried to eavesdrop on the completely-Kansan looking women: one was a 40-year-old fake-tanned woman wearing a leather pantsuit, the other was a 35-year-old brunette with short hair (what I call the paralegal look). They saw me and stopped talking.

I had to drive to school again. This time I was in “Denver” and I was driving between warring Asian gangbangers. One of the two guys in the backseat of the car in front of me flashed me a gun. I closed my eyes, hit mysterious buttons, and ended up turning on my brights. They slammed on the brakes. I stopped in time and was not hit by anyone. Then I swerved around them.

I met Woods and Brooks over coffee in their booklined, Pergo-floored study. They were talking about Jurgen Habermas and drinking tea, but I was a little preoccupied about almost being shot. My paper was on the role of the unreal in society. Woods thought I had good ideas, but needed work on developing them. I could see that: after the outline, I’d just given him a list like Google search results. “Here are 10 key words that I’ll use in my conclusion: Marxism, private sphere, Wife of Bath, lais, Marie de France, marginalization, etc.”

I touched the table, a lot like the midget in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me does as he says “This is a Formica table. Green is its color.” I sob uncontrollably, wanting to tell them they had no idea what the real world was like; that I had been shot at; that I had a man die in my arms; that I had seen my friend arrested for nothing, etc. and they just want me to talk about Chaucer.

Then I woke up a lot more exhausted than when I went to sleep. Damn fevers.

Vital Stats:

Time of sleep: 4:00-5:15 a.m., 10/21/99 (Thursday morning, my “day off”)
Drugs: Biaxcin, no Nyquil for the first time in three+ nights.
Television: Yogi Bear, Huckleberry Hound, Top Cat
Mom sez: I was running a fever and she forgot to turn down the furnace.

The Pope Leo XII story:

On Tuesday, February 7, 1995, I received an invitation to study creative writing in a charming medieval monastery in Spoleto, Italy. I was amused and flattered, not knowing how they got my address, and toyed around with the idea of going for about thirty seconds before realizing I had no money and my parents would never let me go. So I forgot about it for a while.

On Friday, February 10, 1995, I woke up with Pope Leo XII’s name on my brain. I had just had a dream where I was living in my white Chrysler Le Baron Turbo (nickname: Dyke) with Eirik, a foreign exchange student from Norway. The car was parked in my parents’ backyard, and we just lived in the car. There wasn’t much to do, so I was writing on the frost on the windows. I felt compelled to write Pope Leo XII in big letters. A voice in my head said, “Nancy didn’t want to be anything; she just wanted to be Pope Leo XII.” The Nancy referred to was Nancy Spungen (of Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen); her mother was the one whispering to me. I then had a terrible feeling. I also dreamt that I was writing it down and that I almost wrote down Pope Leo XIII, but I knew that was wrong and that it really was Pope Leo XII.

So, after waking up, I told my mom the odd dream I had and she asked me if there really was a Pope Leo XII. I looked up it up in our encyclopedia and, sure enough, there was a Pope Leo XII. He was born in Spoleto (where I had received an invitation to study) and died on February 10th, the day I had the dream about him. I was a little spooked for the rest of the day, and my “friends” divvied up my stuff in case I died. They were helpful.

Of course I didn’t die. My car was already in the shop though. A year later, in 1996, my car died its final death on February 10th. I was always a little bit cautious around Pope Leo XII day, but since nothing has really happened on that day since then, I have a feeling that Pope Leo XII was somehow tied to my car, my beloved Chrysler Le Baron Turbo.

Pope Leo XII didn’t do much, so it’s not like I had read about him in a history book or anything. He only served for six years. Pope Leo XIII had a much more influential “reign” or whatever it is that popes do.

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.