Dream Journal
I was driving a car at night with my mom and Melissa. We pulled up to a stop light behind a large white delivery van. The short male driver got out of the van, walked to its back, and opened its back doors. One of the doors smashed into my bumper as he opened it, but he didn’t seem to notice or care that he had dented my car.
I got out of the car and yelled at the man for damaging my car. He turned to face me and dragged me back behind my car. Yelling at me and keeping a firm grip on my arm, he told me to put the lemons and the sugar he was holding into my gas tank.
I grabbed a cut lemon and slowly squeezed its juices into my tank. I acted like it was no big deal because I didn’t want the man to think he was getting to me, but also because I knew the lemons wouldn’t harm my car at all. I took my time because I also knew the sugar would cause major damage to my car.
He pulled me back around front and I could see that inside the car, sitting on the back seat beside Melissa was a large tray with baking soda. I knew that if all of the lemons and sugar got into the gas tank, they would combine with the baking soda and the car would explode.
I was then sneaking down the fire escape at my parents’ house. I needed to leave but didn’t want to explain to everyone. I saw Bruce going up the fire escape with a backpack slung over one shoulder. We talked for a while and I agreed to house sit in his apartment while he was gone for a few weeks.
His apartment was just down the hill a little bit from my parents’ house. One day my father saw me coming out of Bruce’s apartment and got very, very angry. He grabbed me in the parking lot right next to my car and held me to the ground, yelling at me. I struggled to get up, but he was too strong.
Two girls and I went into a men’s bathroom to urinate because it was the only bathroom available to a large group of people.
The room was very dirty and rusty. One of the girls stood in front of the last stall’s door and pushed it open. She selected the last stall because it looked to be the cleanest of the four stalls. But once the door was open, we could see the toilet was clogged and overflowing. The other stalls were in worse condition. I thought that the women’s restroom at the top of the other tower would be clean and probably empty.
I stepped through the door to the other tower’s roof behind a man and his 10-year-old son. The rooftop was decorated with trees and plants. There were monsters among the trees; some were very, very tall, and some looked like buildings with arms and eyes.
I wasn’t afraid of these monsters, and they fascinated the little boy. But his father was wary and pulled the boy closer to himself. I walked over to the edge of the building, surveying the city and its lights.
I found the bathroom door and stepped through it into a dark room. When my eyes adjusted, I saw that I was in an antechamber to the actual restroom. There were couches and tables and chairs set up, and Steve and one of his friends had fallen asleep on two of the couches.
Staring at Steve sleeping on his back, I whispered to myself to keep quiet and not wake him, and then I went into the next room. I decided to not turn on the light in this second room so as to not wake the sleeping men.
I ran through the room and into the third, which I happily found to be lit and the room with the toilets. Steve was then behind me and asked what I was doing. I felt guilty and didn’t know what to tell him.
I was in the bath tub, half full of water, lying on my back near the end with the faucet. My arms were spread straight over my head reaching into the middle of the tub (the tub was quite large).
Marty poked his head around the curtain at the other end of the tub and smiled at me. He stepped into the tub and crouched down while I talked to him. I could see that he was naked from the waist down. When I asked what he was doing he just leered at me.
I realized he was naked and that he shouldn’t be in the tub with me. “Jesus, Marty!” I said as I wrapped a towel around me to cover my nakedness. I stepped out of the tub and left the bathroom.
I went into the bedroom to get dressed and he went to the couch and sat down. The interior walls weren’t finished in places. There were a few exposed studs in the wall between the bedroom and the living room, and Marty could see right through them into the bedroom.
I grabbed a shirt from my dresser and stepped back behind the finished portion of the wall to put it on. When I unfolded it I saw it was a black corset with stocking suspenders.
I wanted to dress as quickly as possible, so I slipped the straps over my arms and wondered how I would fasten the back when Marty appeared in the doorway. He said my corset looked good and I told him to leave. He wouldn’t leave, though, so I grabbed my jacket and headed to the door.
He grabbed my arms and held me against his body. Looking through the screen door to the outside, I struggled to get free but he held me firmly. I tried to hit him but my arms were like jelly and had no power in them. He turned and went into the living room.
I took the opportunity to run out of the house and down my parents’ front lawn. I could see the neighbor’s while house down the hill and wondered if I could reach it before Marty caught up with me. I knew he would rape me.
I opened the door at the office and as two men were walking in, the first told the second to expect the percussionist to be terribly unprepared. I knew they were talking about me.
I laughed and told them that because I was wearing a skirt today, I wouldn’t be playing any drums for anyone. The second man was carrying a djembe, and asked if I couldn’t be persuaded to play. I pointed to my own djembe next to my desk, and again told them that because I was wearing a skirt I couldn’t play; I didn’t want to be indecent.
I offered them coffee and the man who had been carrying the drum took off his coat. I could see that it was soaking wet and dripping all over the floor. I looked out the window and it was pouring down rain. He tossed his coat onto my chair, not knowing the chair belonged to me.
They stood near my desk talking with my bosses, and I stared at my chair wondering how I would quickly get the dripping wet coat off of it and hung up properly without offending the visitor.
I was a little person, a midget, in a town full of little people. Husbands were being brought to the town for all of us younger woman, and there was a big celebration to receive them.
The men came into town like a parade, and I watched my friends get paired off with handsome and gentle men as I waited for my husband. At the end of the parade was the tall man who had been in charge of bringing the husbands. When I saw him, my heart dropped because I knew that he didn’t bring a husband for me.
The new couples continued to celebrate as I stood apart from them when I saw someone helping the tall man carrying some heavy things. There was one more husband to be paired off, and I knew he was for me.
A crowd gathered around the two of them, thanking the tall man for all of the husbands. I pushed my way through the crowd and looked at the last husband, wondering if he would know he was for me.
I reached out to grab his hand but he turned and left the group, walking up the incline of a small hill. I followed, and when I caught up with him he took my hand and kissed me. The crowd behind us cheered.
Back at my home we made love, and I knew everything was going to be alright.
I had been sneaking in and out of restaurants trying to get some food because I was very hungry. I snuck into one restaurant, and found a very large ballroom filled with a lot of other people standing around and waiting.
After a bit, we were split into two groups and told to form lines on opposite walls. A man standing next to me told me that he didn’t know anything about the opera, and I told him that I didn’t know a thing about footballs. I told him that he would probably do better than me because I didn’t think there would be much singing involved.
Then music started, everyone began singing We Go Together from Grease, and my line started moving forward. Someone behind me had stepped on my ankle and I fell to the floor, creating a huge traffic jam in my line. I managed to get my foot free and caught up with the rest of my line.
We were to run around the room — each line in opposite directions — singing We Go Together, while at the same time purchasing bulk food ingredients and preparing something for ourselves to eat. But every time we ran by the food stand in the corner we weren’t able to grab or pay for anything because we were going so fast.
A girl once stopped at the baker’s rack in the corner and wondered aloud what the difference between the gallon can of condensed milk with the blue label and the one with the red label.
The other group was almost done with their part, and my group was failing miserably. We tried faking it, but we all knew we weren’t going to win.
I sat in a stylist’s chair getting my hair cut. As the stylist was thinning the ends, I turned around to look in the mirror. I was furious because I had told the stylist I didn’t want my hair any shorter than my shoulders, and my hair was just below my ears.
I stood at the mirror putting on makeup. I applied a thick black line of eyeliner directly under my eyebrow. I worried that it was too thick and too dark, but I continued applying it. I followed the curve of my eyebrow with the pencil. I leaned back and wondered how I would make it less thick.
I stood over the bath tub, turned the water on and plugged the drain. I flipped a switch which opened a small hole in the wall, and then I waited. Lacey jumped into the bath, excited at what was going to happen. I was so surprised she had jumped in because she hates water, and the bath was filling up.
Something poked through the hole in the wall, and then retracted. Again it poked through and Lacey sniffed it. The hole grew as it came further through the hole, and I could see it was a pig. The pig stretched and stretched the hole because the pig was gigantic, at least 300 pounds, and there was another pig of equal size behind the wall too.
As the pig was most of the way through the hole I accidentally flipped the switch and the hole tried to close on the pig’s stomach. The pig squealed and struggled, but couldn’t budge. I got behind its shoulders and pulled, birthing it into the bath tub. I decided to leave the other pig where it was.
I was walking through a department store that had clothing from one store on one side and clothing from Walmart on the other side. I didn’t find anything I wanted on the one side, and someone told me that I had to walk through the Walmart clothes.
The Walmart side was much larger than the other side, but the clothes were mostly crap. I walked passed a leggings display, already well-picked through and little selection left, but I picked as dark blue one up, thinking it might come in handy for bike riding this spring and summer. They were really cheap — marked down to $1.99 — but so fuzzy that they didn’t feel right. I put them back.
I kept wandering around the Walmart clothing, surprised at how many pieces of clothing were in there. I turned a corner into a different section of the Walmart store. The clothes were higher quality and higher priced. No one was back there. I didn’t know that Walmart did fancy clothing, but the store was closing for the night and I didn’t have time to look at any of the nicer stuff.
I was in my bedroom on a bright and sunny afternoon. The bedroom was immaculate, and now that I was finished cleaning it I had nothing to do for the rest of the day, and I was the only one in the house. I looked up and standing at the end of my bed was Y from the Internet.
She was very, very short, and could just barely see over the edge of my tall mattress. I knelt down on the floor so that we were closer in height, and I noticed that I was much skinnier than she was. I was proud for having lost a lot of weight.
I gave her a hug and told her I was so excited to meet her. Then I remembered that she had no idea who I was, so I told her my first name even though knowing just my name wouldn’t help her.
I told her that she was a lot shorter than I had thought she was. I asked why she was there, and she told me that she lived downstairs. I pointed grandiosely at the bed and told her I lived here.
I asked her who her landlord was, if it was the same person as mine, and she said no. I was very excited that she lived close by so we could be friends.
I stood in a parking lot full of cars with a teenage boy and a girl. She was short and soft, he tall and lanky. They stood near the hood of one car, both of them staring into the windshield, his arm around her waist. I wondered what they were waiting for.
Then I was in a small house with a black man. The lights were dim, and the owner of the house came home but he didn’t see us. We were ghosts.
I walked around a table and knocked something to the floor; the man jumped. I picked up his coat tree, laden with jackets, and s hook it in front of him. He couldn’t see me, and the floating coat rack freaked him out. He heard a noise in the basement and went to check it out.
The black man and I huddle on our knees in a corner of the room with our faces on the dark wooden floor to hide from him. I heard the man come back into the room but I dared not look up at him. He stepped closer to us and said, “I can see you!”
I jumped, sure I was caught, but the black man grabbed my arm before I could knock something over. The man was kneeling behind us staring at the floor. I presumed he had found a mouse hole, so I put my face back on the floor.
I was laying in bed under the covers with Dad laying next to me on my left. He asked me about “that other website” just for him; he wanted me to get it up soon. I told him that Mom didn’t think it was a good idea, and I agreed with her.
He said that he couldn’t wait, and I told him that I wasn’t going to do it. He got angry. I knew that he was sexually frustrated, and I hoped he wouldn’t try to make me do anything about it.
Then he was leaning over me, standing near my side of the bed, with his hands near my shoulders. He grabbed me and lied down on the bed as I jumped up. I pleaded with him to not touch me, to leave me alone.
He reached out for my arm and I told him that I would scream and yell for Mom if he didn’t leave me alone. I didn’t think he would let me cry out or get her involved, but as he tried for a better grip on my arm, I hollered out and called for Mom.
I managed to pull my arm away and get out the door. Crying, I ran to the stairwell and halfway down the stairs saw my mom start up. I hugged her at the bottom of the stairs and stepped behind her as she looked up them.
I was pumping gas into my car at a gas station. I pulled on the handle and the gas flowed out of the pump, but it wouldn’t go all the way into the tank but instead pooled at the tank opening as though something was blocking the hole. I looked closer and saw a glob of semen hanging on the side of the entrance. I sprayed it with the gas until it came loose. Then I was able to fill my tank.
Themes: Sex
The city was flooding and cars were having great difficulty traversing the roads. The roads had become all muddy and deep with water, so many people abandoned their cars to get out and walk.
I walked down the sidewalk with a friend, the sidewalk was not dry but still not yet fully submerged, and we decided it would be the perfect time to rob WalMart.
The city was very large and very condensed, and all of the stores were small with a plain gray vestibule leading onto the street. We stepped into the gray vestibule and found the locked panel high on one wall. It looked a lot like something from Star Trek.
My friend tried to open it but her key didn’t work, which shocked us both. Back out on the street we tried the next door and it’s gray vestibule. There was another locked panel identical to the last one, but this time my friend’s key worked. There wasn’t a lot of money in there, but we took all of it anyway.
We went in the next door and as we were taking the money I saw Tina at the end of the hallway standing and talking with some other people wearing white medical jackets. I went down the hallway to find out what they were doing even though my friend thought it was a bad idea.
I held a book open to a very nice poem, and I started reading it aloud for a presentation that was to take place that afternoon. I had requested to read this poem because I had heard it before, but I only knew the first stanza. I didn’t practice at all with it and I had no idea of its rhythm.
As I was reading it aloud for the first time I wondered if I could find a different poem that talked about someone giving her heart away, a figurative image of love to portray a tactile image of organ donation. My mom suggested that maybe I should just read the first part of the poem, the part I knew, because the rest of it sounded so bad.
I went off to look for a pen to change the poem and ended up in Tina’s office. I couldn’t find a pen, and I accidentally bumped her computer mouse, turning off her screen saver. I knew I shouldn’t look at her computer, but when I glanced at the screen it was an empty desktop. I knew she would know I looked at it but I just left it.
I went across the hall to look for a pen and my friend found me. We went outside and back to WalMart where she unlocked the gray panel. She was wearing a dark gray wool pencil skirt and white button-up; she was very skinny.
As we put all of the money into bags I wondered where she found the key. We got into my car and I tried to maneuver my way down a slight incline, wondering if I would make the turn at the bottom, but the roads seemed to have dried out a bit and there were other cars on the road.
Themes: Pam & Tina