How I spent my Saturday

the dream and a whole lot of history

I started my day being woken up out of nightmare by Monica, co-host of monthly poetry reading I mentioned yesterday, at 8:25 AM. On a Saturday. Yes, the word “ouch” comes to mind. I was glad to be woken up from the nightmare, though. All week long, I had wild-and-crazy dreams that I could NOT remember as soon as I opened my eyes in the morning. Then, in the early morning hours today, I had what can only be called an amazing clarity dream. Though I’m fuzzy on a few details, I remember the ‘core’ of the dream with incredible accuracy.

I dreamt about a roommate I had about 14 years ago. Henceforth, roommate = Damien. (Yes, as in the devil.) I dreamt that I picked Damien up and threw her over a bridge onto some pavement. (There were earlier parts to the dream, like the fact that I noticed, as I was picking her up to throw her over the railing, that she was wearing a type of crunchy granola earth shoe and when I’d know her, at age 19, she wouldn’t have been caught dead in something like that.) She was weightless. She didn’t fight me. I just picked her up, light as air, and threw her, with amazing accuracy, to the ground below. I knew somehow that her skull had broken. She just lay on the ground, suffering. But she didn’t bleed. She just lay there, twitching and in shock. (I can’t get the look on her face out of my mind. I just stood and watched her suffer. I have no idea what this dream is about.)

The nightmare wasn’t a “dream of retaliation,” though it would make sense if it had been. Damien was, well, evil and uncommonly cruel to me at times. She asked me one time why I didn’t like being called half-breed. Needless to say, she defined ignorant. She grew up in a small, mostly-white town and claimed she didn’t see a person of color until she was 13. Sadly, I actually believe that.

Damien had to hide her now-dead, black, one-legged boyfriend, Carl (nope, not making a word of this up) whenever her dad came to visit us. Which he often did, early on Saturday mornings, without calling first. I’d hear footsteps coming up the stairs, I’d see who it was, and I would run to Damien’s room and let her know what was happening. Damien and Carl would leap out of bed and Carl would hop – no lie – across our apartment to my room and hide until Damien’s father left. Often there was some sort of crash as Damien threw Carl’s crutches into my room behind him. Then the slam of the door and more running and finally, we let Damien’s dad in. He had to have known we were up to something, but never asked as far as I know.

Damien, being an irresponsible idiot, had more pregnancy scares than I like to think about and once said, not even half-jokingly, “I’ll have the baby and whenever Dad comes over, I’ll pretend it’s yours and Carl’s.” People, novelists can’t make this shit up.

I lived with Damien for the longest six months of my life, during which she quit her reputable job that actually paid money and went to work for a perfume company as a saleswoman on a commission-only basis. After that job didn’t work out (shocker), she took a job selling “special” vacuums that cost $1600. Again, not so much of the cash flow coming into the house. I should probably mention that we were working at the same retail establishment (until she quit to join the Land of Perfume) and that I made $5/hour and she made $6/hour and we lived in a $425/month apartment with an old twin mattress for a couch. We paid the rent late so often that we just started paying $450 to the leasing office. Ah, youth.

brown uniforms and despair

Damien and I, desperate for cash, eventually started working second jobs at a 24-hour diner. I would often work an all-day, 12-hour shift at the retail place (people often called in and rather than go home and sit on my butt and not make any money, Damien would volunteer me to work or I would volunteer myself) and then go home to put on the brown polyester uniforms we had to wear as a hostess (me) and a server (Damien). I was made a hostess because I had no food service experience. Damien, with her whole summer’s worth of experience pushing ice cream at Dairy Queen, was made a server. She rolled in tips. I benefited from very little of her wealth. Of course, all I remember buying at the time was cigarettes.

I should pause to mention that I was probably the worst hostess in the diner’s history. Aside from staying awake at my post all night (which, yes, was difficult to do from 10 PM to 5 AM, having already been up and at another job all day) and ringing up customers, I didn’t get anything right. I double- and triple-sat some waiters and gave others no tables because I couldn’t figure out the seating chart. I didn’t understand when one of the senior waitresses shoved some money into my hand at the end of the night and then told me to give some to the busboys for their work that night. All I knew was that I met a very nice gay male couple that worked there together (which made my then-bisexuality and extreme sexual confusion and various identity crises manageable); watched one of the waitresses leave the restaurant on her ‘lunch’ break (around 3 AM, if memory serves) and spend the entire hour making out with her boyfriend in a car in the parking lot; and met more rude, drunk people than I ever knew existed.

Two friends came in once, drunk as skunks (after careening into the parking lot and probably parking sideways), and angrily demanded food and beverages from the wait staff. At one point, one of the guys passed out while he was eating and the diner staff gathered by the kitchen door, watching as the guy’s head slumped closer and closer to his eggs. He passed out holding his fork in one hand and his knife in the other. We waited, oh-so-patiently, for his head to fall into the plate. (Insert all applicable egg-on-his-face jokes here.) Unfortunately, he regained consciousness before that happened, paused for a millisecond, and then resumed eating as if nothing had happened. And then he and his buddy stumbled out of the restaurant and drunkenly drove away.

I only worked at the diner for a month of weekends. Luckily, Damien and I only worked there on Friday and Saturday nights, though those were some of the busiest times. One weekend, I went to retail hell on Friday morning, worked from 9-9, went to the diner from 10 to 5, came home, stayed awake until 9 AM, went back to retail, worked 10-9, went to the diner, worked from 10 to 5, and went back to work at retail hell from 11-6 on Sunday. I believe I was up for upwards of 48 hours. (Gotta say: a lot of things stop making sense after, oh, hour 28 or so. And I also learned that one can do a lot of work in a retail establishment without really needing any brain power. I became, more or a less, a robot, which caught the attention of a young couple who came through my line and paused to stare at my zombie-like self as I rung up their order. I asked a question and when I didn’t hear a response, I turned (or, by then, lacking energy, oozed) and looked at them. They were staring at me like I was a science experiment gone horribly awry and they asked how long I’d been awake. I think I recounted most of my weekend work history to them, but honestly, I could’ve told them I was a tuna and had to get back to my spaceship to make out with Big Bird before my ears fell off. All I remember saying was that I was off work soon and was going home to go to bed and if anyone kept me awake, I was going to KILL THEM, to which they merely replied, “Good.”

you couldn’t pay me enough to relive this crap

Being the suck-ass, low self-esteem, self-loathing, suicidal sap (alliteration unintentional) that I was at age 19, I would volunteer to stay awake between our diner and retail shifts, knowing that if I went to sleep, we wouldn’t get up in time for work. So Damien, who didn’t get off work until after 6 at the diner and was the only one of us with a vehicle, would come home, take a bath, and then crawl into bed and sleep for a couple hours while I paced the apartment, watched HBO that we couldn’t afford, and chain smoked. Back then, my breakfasts often consisted of cigarettes and Mountain Dew. Caffeine definitely got us to work on time more than once.

One morning, I heard an odd sound coming from Damien’s bathroom. Actually, I paced the apartment first, trying to figure out what the weird noise was, convinced that sleep deprivation was causing me to hear things. I finally happened into Damien’s room and heard the sound get louder. Turns out Damien had fallen asleep while in the tub and had slid 99% of her body into the water. The only part of her body out of the water was the tip of her nose (nostrils included) and her mouth. The odd sound was Damien snoring, which echoed off the bathroom walls and had alerted me in a very German Shepherd-like sense. I stood there staring at Damien, caught between embarrassment for seeing her naked (which I knew, she of the anorexic/bulimic, body-hating, self-loathing way would hate) and wanting to laugh hysterically. How to wake sleeping bitchy without causing her to drown? I finally went with “Dude! Dude! Duuuuuuuuuude! Dude!” (I was going through a dude-saying phase then. Sorry.) After a chorus of “dudes,” she finally heard me (underwater and asleep, remember) and awoke. She didn’t sputter and drown. I burst out laughing and probably went back to chain smoking in the other room. She got out of the tub, put on sweats, and went back to sleep. On her bed.

At least once, we were woken up by one of the retail store managers calling to say we were late for work, so I know I occasionally slept in between shifts. But I didn’t sleep enough, I know that much.

the evil continues

Damien loved to play me against our mutual friends. She and Carl would go to another couple’s house to play cards. Damien told me that Rick, the man of the other couple and also Carl’s best friend, didn’t like me and didn’t want me to come over. Then Damien told Rick that *I* did not like him and didn’t want to come over. Luckily, Rick and I met up after that fact and cleared the air. He came through my line at retail hell and the instant I saw him, I was angry. There’s that bastard who never wanted to play cards with me. I’m not perfect, but what the fuck is HIS deal?

Some of the first words out of Rick’s mouth were, “Hey, why didn’t you ever come over and play cards with us? I told Damien to bring you with her and Carl, but she always said you were too tired or had a headache. I figured you didn’t like me.” I told my side of the story. Sadly, he wasn’t terribly surprised to hear the truth. We lamented the social times we’d missed and promised to get together. I never saw him again.

Maybe I should’ve let Damien drown.

back to the dream

I think that’s enough history; you get the idea of what sort of person we’re dealing with here. Our story doesn’t have a happy ending. She was a user, I was a loser, and now things are radically different and Damien is probably dead. (She wasn't one to make the best choices, so let's just say I wouldn't be surprised if she'd bit it in the 12 years that we've been out of touch.)

Despite being thrown to the ground in the dream, Damien apparently didn’t die. There were witnesses but no one did anything. No one even seemed to notice what I had done. It seemed I had done it before, given how effortlessly I tossed her over, but I couldn’t remember anyone else I had killed. I stood there, looking down at her, wondering what I had done. I wondered why she let me pick her up and throw her over a bridge. She lay there and pretended to die, apparently for the benefit of some other woman I was with. (Not sure who the other woman was. I don’t remember her seeming especially sad or shocked that I had just committed murder. Or thought I had anyway.)

The woman and I walked away and later in the dream, Damien reappeared and we made a speedy getaway from the scene of the “crime,” (hard to have a murder scene if the so-called victim gets up and walks away, n’est pas?) in an old blue convertible, with its hard top on, from what seemed to be a thriving little college town. I think the car was called a Galaxy. We drove away and I was sort of like, “Wow, you don’t hate me for trying to kill you,” to which Damien sort of shrugged or didn’t even acknowledge. It seems that we chatted amiably for awhile and ended up in a shopping mall, also kind of crowded. Some stuff I don’t remember happened and then we were in a cross between the back hallway of the shopping mall, in one of those corridors where the janitors store their carts and stuff, and some stock room that was full of junk and had a closed door behind me. I remember fluorescent lights and a yellowish light over everything. Damien, much to my surprise, shot me. I felt a horrible sting near my left shoulder and I was kind of backing away and running around and I was like, “Hey, you seem kind of mad – is this about that bridge/head breaking thing?” and Damien sneered (SNEERED!) and growled something about yes she knew I was trying to kill her, something something, you’re not going to get away with this, yadda yadda. And we were circling each other. And I was shot but not really bleeding. She was going to shoot me again. I might have shot her. I don’t remember. But she was ANGRY at me. (With good reason.)

And then the phone rang.

And it was Monica.

And I’d been dreaming.

And it was Saturday morning and I wasn’t a murderer and why in the fuck had I been dreaming about Damien? I talked to Monica for few minutes, made some more calls (if I’m awake, EVERYONE’S AWAKE), got up, had some oatmeal, and watched TV until I fell asleep again. I stayed awake until about 10:30 because every time I closed my eyes, I started to go back into the nightmare.

I believe the aforementioned classifies as unsettling.

Serena comes over

Serena showed up around 2:30 PM. We hung out at my apartment for a few minutes and I got my stuff together for the poetry reading. We went to a brew pub for a late lunch and some, well, brew, and had a really nice time. The pub served fries with all kinds of dipping sauces. I can now officially say I’ve tried fries dipped in a syrup-and-Dijon sauce and liked it a lot. Down with ketchup!

We walked around after lunch for a bit and stopped off at a house I’m going to tour later today and fairly unsuccessfully peered through the blinds at all the windows. We could see hardwood floors and that was about it. (It has a floor! Sold!) The energy of the house seems good, at least from the outside. Here’s hoping the inside is as good as, or better than, the outside. And that it doesn’t smell like pee.

After hanging out at my apartment again for a bit, I changed clothes and we headed to the homo bookstore for the reading, which went really well. Monica read some work by lesbian authors like Dorothy Allison and shared some of her new work. I read work by Terrence Hayes, Billy Collins, Margaret Atwood, and a few other poets I didn’t know about until today, including Shirley Geok-lin Lim, whose "Pantoun for Chinese Women" follows, beginning with a quotation from a newspaper:

"At present, the phenomena of butchering, drowning and leaving to die female infants have been very serious." (The People's Daily,Peking, March 3, 1983)

They say a child with two mouths is no good.
In the slippery wet, a hollow space,
Smooth, gumming, echoing wide for food.
No wonder my man is not here at his place.

In the slippery wet, a hollow space,
A slit narrowly sheathed within its hood.
No wonder my man is not here at his place:
He is digging for the dragon jar of soot.

That slit narrowly sheathed within its hood!
His mother, squatting, coughs by the fire's blaze
While he digs for the dragon jar of soot.
We had saved ashes for a hundred days.

His mother, squatting, coughs by the fire's blaze.
The child kicks against me mewing like a flute.
We had saved ashes for a hundred days.
Knowing, if the time came, that we would.

The child kicks against me crying like a flute
Through its two weak mouths. His mother prays
Knowing when the time comes that we would,
For broken clay is never set in glaze.

Through her two weak mouths his mother prays.
She will not pluck the rooster nor serve its blood,
For broken clay is never set in glaze:
Women are made of river sand and wood.

She will not pluck the rooster nor serve its blood.
My husband frowns, pretending in his haste
Women are made of river sand and wood.
Milk soaks the bedding. I cannot bear the waste.

My husband frowns, pretending in his haste.
Oh clean the girl, dress her in ashy soot!
Milks soaks our bedding, I cannot bear the waste.
They say a child with two mouths is no good.

***

I read some of my new work and sold a copy of each of my three books to a young lawyer who had come to the reading and shared some of his own, fantastic work. Sadly, the man had a very thick accent and I could only understand about half of what he said, so I smiled and nodded a lot when we talked after the reading.

I bought the encyclopedia of witchcraft I had on hold, as well as a copy of Ani DiFranco's Out of Range (not being one of her rabid everything-Ani-does-is-perfect fans, I was more than elated to stumble across an album of hers that I really like, the same that I finally replaced after losing it to theft a few years ago; it's okay -- I deserved a karmic kick in the pants for some of the things I did during my adolescence).

Serena and I came back to my apartment and hung out and talked and, to my surprise, ended up signing me up on a dating website. Hey, free membership, you know? So goal number something (because I’m too lazy and too tired now that it’s 1:53 AM on Sunday to go look it up) to get laid might well be in the works. Right. Numbers 1, 10, and 20-something. Anyway, not important. Happy and a little nervous that I’ve put myself out there, but more happy than anything. Sent winks to a few cute women. We'll see if anything comes of it.

Serena headed home around 11 PM and I hopped online and ordered some pizza, having not eaten since the fries at the brew pub. I started writing this entry and, when food arrived, I watched a few minutes of Sleepless in Seattle, which Showtime apparently LOVES to run (and I love to watch because Meg Ryan looks so unbelievably frumpy that I can't believe anyone besides Bill-Pullman-as-Walter would fall for her). And then the pod people came and got me because I stopped eating when I was full, turned off the TV, and went back to writing. can you say hallelujah i knew you could

And now it’s no longer Saturday and the Leaden-Foot Assholes have arrived home from being wherever, and I am sufficiently tired. And yet, it's now closing in on 2:30 AM, I just typed an O instead of a zero, and it's definitely taking me longer to make simple decisions. I'm thirsty. Should I drink some water? There's some water right there. Right there. On your left. And clear and tap-pish. Waiting to be consumed. Man, my throat is dry. I should drink some water. Hey look, I've got some water! How neat is that?

What the rest of Sunday holds

Ideally: laundry, grocery shopping, and cleaning up the living room that is on the verge of becoming messy if I don’t sack up the junk mail and put away the lemon juice that’s been sitting on my coffee table all week. Also, I want to take out the trash. And scoop the poop and, for fun, watch The L Word much, much later tonight. And doing the whole Sunday dreading-the-return-to-work whining that is not ideal, but is par for the course.

Realistically: I might brush my teeth after I get up in 12 or 15 hours from now.

Oh yeah. I also cancelled my massage and saved myself $120. After returning home from dinner with Brent & Co. last night, I paid some bills and realized that getting the massage would eliminate having any pocket money for things like, oh, gasoline, over the next two weeks. So I cancelled the massage and I'm going to look for a new masseuse. In place of the massage, I watched part of Bubble Boy on Comedy Central this afternoon. Far more entertaining ("Back off, bitch! He's the Messiah!") and much cheaper than having some lithe woman manipulate my limbs into buttery softness.

Wait. Why did I cancel the massage?