#1: the potential child molester

You're the stranger without a face (darkened by the shadows inside the car) who picked me up in the third grade as I walked in the rain. You gave me a ride home. I knew not to tell anybody I'd gotten a ride home from a stranger, and I'm not sure why I was walking home in the rain in the first place. I can't see your face and I wasn't afraid then or now, but I wonder if I didn't get raped and murdered. I have wondered many times about that, if I died and this is just a memory of me, a pretend version of what it would be like had I lived.

I think there were many times in my life when I could have died and the rest of my life is just an imagined thing, a way to avoid the mourning left in my wake. Maybe this is why I've always had the feeling I'll live forever -- thanks to you and other tragedies like you -- because I'm already dead, walking among the living, just pretending I'm here. It's like some Hitchcockian idea; I tiptoe through life so I don't wake myself up and see you hovering over me, engorged, enraged, too close, too close.

boo-hoo

First you tell me I oughta write a blog -- that I'd be a natural at it -- then you tell me you're worried I might offend my family or other people by the things I blog, then you take me off of your "List of Blogs I'm Reading."

Now, nobody's gonna read this stupid thing!

the christian wrong

I guess I oughta write a little something. I have a cold (or some sort of minor Biblical wrath) since Thursday night. It had been coming on for a couple of days before that, but it hit after the show.

I've started performing again in a big way. I bought a thrift store suit and tie (and shoes with holes in the souls) and had a toupee from my volunteer job at another thrift store. All of that cost me less than twenty bucks.

We sang at Flipnotics, old gospel songs, not like the kind you find in your Baptist hymnal, more the ones the country sangers and other backslider types were always recording: "Satan's Jewel Crown," "Everybody Wants To Go To Heaven But Nobody Wants To Die," "The Kneeling Drunkard's Plea," "It'll All Be Over But The Shoutin' When We Get Home," etc. G wore her Tammy Faye best and I was in my suit. We had a Nordic version of Jesus playing percussion and glockenspiel behind us. It was a glory-hallelujah jubilee. It was kind of anti-gospel. I think we should call ourselves The Christian Wrong, but G is hesitant for some reason. Maybe she thinks it'll scare off the crowd.

Those were my people on Thursday, 90% of 'em. The lesbians were across town at the monthly lesbian (etc.) talent show watching feminist videos. It don't matter. It was good. We gave them what they didn't know they wanted, but they wanted it -- including the "lesbian shakers" G made out of millet-filled plastic cups.

Second-to-the-last song was "Old Time Camp Meeting." We pushed the mics aside and walked through the crowded room singing our praises, tambourine for me, guitar for her (Jesus stayed onstage with the kick drum). Then when we got back onstage and I lost the suit, stripped it off, to reveal my underskin, an orange-and-white sequined (big girl's) one-piece -- which was a gift from a friend and which I have to basically dislocate my shoulders to get into -- grabbed a wooden dowel and did a spontaneous twirling routine. It was quite fantabulous.

I had borrowed a friend's boom box (to play Christian rock hits from the '70s before and during the show), and after, I asked if I could put it in her car so I didn't have to bring it over to her house the next day. She said yes. I took her keys. By this time I was somewhat redressed, but was feeling hot and itchy from the "sequined hair suit." G suggested I change in the bathroom, but I wasn't into the idea initially, thinking I was soon going home. But after I dropped the boom box off in the back seat of my friend's car, I changed my mind suddenly; several people were staying to watch the next performer and I thought I might as well.

I dislocated my shoulders and got out of the sequined number and back into the polyester pants and cotton dress shirt (which was itself very cool and comfortable; too cool, in fact, I started feeling cold and sickly almost immediately). When I came out of the bathroom G and company were on the patio (my friends were inside the coffeehouse waiting for the next performer to start), and I sat with G and them and chatted a bit. They were going to see the rest of the feminist videos. And I decided I didn't want to go in to listen to the performer after all; I wanted to go home and relax.

So I did. (Are you paying attention?)

I got home, found a pot of freshly-made lentil soup on the kitchen counter. I silenced my phone and put it bedside, had a bowl and a half and a beer, read some more of The World According To Garp, took a shower, got all comfy-cozy and ready to crawl into bed. I looked at my phone (my timepiece, as always, to see what time it was as I usually do so I know the next morning how many hours I've slept -- not realizing then that I would be sleeping for almost ten hours that night) and there was ONE MISSED CALL on the cellphone screen. It was from the friend who had loaned me the boom box. Oh, she's probably calling to tell me how much she loved the show -- she's so supportive and sweet--

NO!!! I didn't give her back her keys!!!

I paced the whole of my small bedroom, freaking out, as I called to listen to the message. I was right. "I'm assuming you gave me my keys back after you took the boom box to the car, but I can't find them and I don't know what to do..." Oh my god! I checked to see when she called -- it had been less than ten minutes (that was a minor relief), I did all that before I called back.

When I reached her, everything was fine, she was in her car on her way home; "a lady found the keys in the bathroom." (God bless that lady.) I felt like my apologies were inadequate, but they seemed unnecessary for her to hear. She just told me what a wonderful show it was (she's so supportive and sweet).

It took me forever to get to sleep after that! I almost got on my knees and said a little prayer. But that would be Wrong! I just breathed and let my heart race come to an end, and eventually I drifted off and now I've got a cold and hopefully it won't last too long because G and I (and Nordic Jesus) have been hired to play a private party on the 15th.

flip my switch

So, you're saying I'm already enlightened?
I had a feeling.
Should I put my hands on top of my head to hold the light in?

this dream brought to you by patron tequila

It is hard to wake up when you open your eyes in the middle of a dream, especially one that is so involved and enjoyable.

There was a roomful of creative people. It had the feel of an acting class, but it was different somehow. The professor was someone you all admired greatly; he told the group to take turns "doing something." A waifish woman crouched at the front of the room against the impossibly flat and tall wall, said, "What should I do?" Someone said, "Do your circus character." She did an amazing movement piece, her body lithe and agile, something a body could do only in a dream or maybe Cirque du Soleil). At one point, she stopped her movements to fix another woman's blousy shorts which flapped open a little wide at the cuffs when she sat cross-legged at the front of the room.

Other people did bits during which you were caught up in the planning of your special thing -- and that was what the professor warned everyone away from -- going off into other dream states, sitting in the back of a carriage, on a train, over water (they seemed all to do with traveling). When it came your time to do your thing, you were brilliant, tickling a fox on its belly, letting it bite your gloved hands, and playfully pulling apart its hind legs to get a look up its internally lighted bum hole. The fox was invisible to everyone but you, though your interaction with it made it come to life in their minds. A doorway that didn't exist before appeared, cutting the room into a one-third/two-third split. It was the professor's home, this room, you noticed as you braced yourself against the door frame and crawled up to the top; there were markings of the children's growth over the years, their names and heights. A piece of the door frame came off in your hands -- a corner piece -- and you animated it, held it like a baby, made cooing voices, which delighted everyone in attendance except for two. Two men were talking loudly, ignoring you, so you waddled to the floor, door-frame baby still in your arms, intensified the baby noises to loud cries and walked right up to the talking pair. Of course, that shut them up. Unfortunately, it woke you up, mid-dream, mid-(brilliant)-dream.

You reached for the deodorant instead of the toothpaste; you reached for the water faucet instead of the light; you took out the can and the bag of coffee grounds.

Earlier in the night there had been a fascinating dream in which you drank a shot of tequila from your second oldest acquaintance's breast. It was at a party. She showed up. It was a joke or something, a dare, and suddenly her boob was out, the nipple was in your mouth, and lo-and-behold there was tequila in them thar hills!