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david | David: teenage dreams | My dad, a big fat Latin American, wants me and Laura to help him slaughter the hog he brought home for Christmas. He leads us out into a hallway with a brand new white carpet and pulls the huge, strangely docile animal out from under a shelf, holding it out. After a brief little argument over what cuts of meat we'll each get, "dad" asks me to please turn the head while he cuts the hog's throat. I do so, and as "dad" pulls the knife through the hog's throat he shouts and falls back. Naturally the place is now awash in blood. He seems surprised, but I think, What did he expect? So it now falls to me to spray the stain remover on all the blood in the house, even in the attic. I spray this noxious stuff everywhere and it poisons me half to death. I go up in the attic and spray out stains which are blood, again, and look uncomfortably like the scene of the biker's accident at L St. and M St. last week, after the cops had sprayed and labelled all the evidence. Only the stains are in miniature. Only then do I realize I've stumbled into a tangled web, a web spun by three spiders with voices. These, it seems, are Henry Miller's wives (I just finished Jay Martin's biography of Miller), and they have spun an intricate system of webs and strands to complicate each others' lives. Naturally I've stumbled through and destroyed the whole thing. I hear the voice of one of his "wives" say: 'Everything you've said about him and about us is no closer to the truth than anything else anyone has said. You can't say anything true about another human being, you just can't. In order to say anything true about him at all you would need to expand until you *became* Henry yourself..." I look down at the three wives of Henry Miller, now spiders, staking out their territories, fencing one another in, repairing the damage I did. I begin to levitate, and expand, floating on my back, until I *am* Henry Miller, himself... I wake in the exact same position I was levitating in. | male | 1990-1999 |
david | David: teenage dreams | It's a gift shop or a toy store or something. I'm walking around in it with my mother -- we're buying gifts for someone. But -- it's more like a party than a gift store, and people are hanging out all over the place. I see Sarah (old lust from Middle School) sitting in the corner, and this really trips me out. I walk over to say hello. She says hello back. I tell her this is really wierd, because I'd just been dreaming about her. As I talk to Sarah and all these other past acquaintances I lose track of my mother. Well, good, I think, and latch onto a group of friends. Sarah tells me she's going to a party, will I come along? Well, even though it's the middle of Los Angeles and I don't know what hotel my parents are staying in, I say okay, because I want an adventure, not another damn number of days ruined by my family. So I go with Sarah to this party in an apartment building. I keep hearing this jazz music. We go into the room and it's Thelonius Monk playing the piano! He's got a lunatic eight or nine-string upright bass, and he's trying to play with this amateur bassist, to show him a few things. I think, if he'll put up with that guy, maybe he won't mind if I noodle around a little on his piano. So I walk over to the shiny black grand piano and play a little bluesy ditty -- immediately I hear shouts coming from inside the piano. I get up and distance myself from it. Two groggy, angry skinheads crawl out and collapse on the floor, bleeding. They nurse the wounds I accidentally gave them and I join Monk at the piano. He shows me a melody and I improvise, but it's clear he wants me to go away, so I drift into conversation. I begin talking to two middle-aged black men. One is very lanky and shirtless, and has this wierd yellow fungus growing all over him. Vaguely as we talk I wonder if it's contagious. He has a very 'gay' manner. "You know who the French are erecting a national *monument* to?" "Who?" says the other. "James *Baldwin*, if you can believe that." "I know him," I say. "When I was younger, I read 'Another Country' straight through." It seems they didn't actually *like* James Baldwin, though, because I was then immediately excluded from the conversation. Baldwin, to them, was a fundamental issue. So Brad comes along and we go to a party outside, on the hill, on the grass. Charles Bukowski is there with his girlfriend -- they're both young. It's a very warm night. Bukowski recites a few poems and everyone claps. I start to 'thank' him for one of his books, but then I remember his comment about that [in a book I had just flipped through] and forget it. I just talk to him and his girlfriend. But soon, Bukowski has to leave to do a poetry reading tour. So he gets in his huge armored car with his entourage and they dash off. His girlfriend is standing there, crying. Sarah puts her arm around her neck and I rub her back and hug her. I feel sorry for her that Bukowski has to leave so often, but at the same time I sense sexual possiblities between us. (Boy am I sensitive!) Then we come back to the plot of grass in Los Angeles. We look into the sky and every constellation is crammed into this absurd tiny space of sky. The rest of the sky was pitch black. I think "I didn't know you could see the stars in L.A." Somebody points out one constellation I've never seen before, a bird made of green stars with a glowing vibrant blue star for an eye. Everyone points the bird out. When I look back down to the plot, I realize Brad is gone. "Well, shit," I think to myself. "Your ride's gone," says Bukowski's girlfriend. "That's alright. I don't even know what my parents' hotel was. I'll just catch a bus home later." As we walk away from the place, I wonder who would be more likely to sleep with me, Sarah or Bukowski's girlfriend, and I decide on the latter, since she's lonely now. | male | 1990-1999 |
david | David: teenage dreams | I'm in my parent's RV. I'm on vacation someplace, again, and I see we're at a college, but this college is unique -- it's set up like a theme park. Each department has its own 'land' to decorate. Thus, here is Physicsland, here is Archaeologyland, etc. I stumble into the department for the study of subcultures -- everything is grungy and citylike. There's graffiti pieces everywhere, covering everything. Hookers are standing around. A street sign that says "TWO" is on the corner -- this was supposed to mean like Second Street, Downtown, etc. Somehow, I stumble into the Porn department. It seems that some religious vandal has been through, ripping the place apart, throwing videotapes and movie reels, film, photos, everywhere. Some bureaucratic vandals have been through, too -- the Porn department is being cut, immediately. The head of the department, a clean-cut, sixtyish, solid woman in a business suit, explains what's happening. As I stand there listening, two or three young women come in, wearing very casual, California surfer-type clothes. When they hear the news they become very, very upset -- one is even crying. they put a lot into their department, after all. Quite apart from the lascivious thought that I would *love* to see the films these ladies made, I feel very sorry for them. They're obviously seeing a lot of their work going down the tubes right now. I talk to one or two of them and make friends; I team up with a graffiti writer, too. We go back to my parents RV but they won't have anything to do with me; I've befriended scum and sluts. Well then, I think, fuck you too. We 'escape', taking the train tracks. Halfway along a strange plant is laying in the tracks, half green, half red. I immediately recognize it for a ludicrously huge celery plant. The red is the roots. I examine it carefully with a special examining hat the graffiti writer gives me. A huge freight train comes by and obliterates the celery. By way of contrast, I suppose, a BART train comes by and is nearly knocked off the tracks by a clod of dirt. Now somehow in here we end up carrying all these huge vegetables. Well, we're going to make our final escape through this person's house, but *somebody* slams a door, and by the time we get outside, it's TOO LATE!!! Guards are everywhere, and we're trapped. Just then a huge Native American man comes by and strikes a deal. They'll let us go if we divide up our huge veggies. We lay them on a table. We have nine. We would have had ten, but the celery was destroyed. | male | 1990-1999 |
david | David: teenage dreams | Brad and I are in the City of Effaced History, trading comments on books. I tell him: "You know, I like authors who've got energy first thing, like Hunter Thompson, the Dalai Lama..." Brad throws his hands up in the air. "Yes!" We get to the house. It's being held hostage by a bearded guy from the Irish Republican Army, because of a schism over the interpretation of a Buddhist text. | male | 1990-1999 |
david | David: teenage dreams | Later: In a courtyard I've seen before. Old yellow adobe buildings with old neon signs -- you know, letters outlined. I need to take a crap, so I go. While I'm on this huge concrete toilet in a large stall, a 'gang' comes in and begins gruesomely killing the person in the stall next to me. A woman who looks familiar comes into my stall and tells me she's not into what they're doing; she's going to do every perverted thing to me she's always wanted to do to a man. Okay! So she proceeds to do so. Once she's finished, I turn around and see she's metamorphosed into Laura. I hand her a copy of "V." by Thomas Pynchon. "This is a good book," I say. The telephone rings. I pick it up and say a lot of things in French in a gravelly voice. Finally Eric says: "David? Is that you? I knew it was you. Where are you, dude?" "I was about to go down the coast, but it's been an hour and a half since Jimmy said he'd take me!" "Right," says Jimmy, pulling on his pants. I remember it's storming outside, and that all this had something to do with Rhonda (female friend from highschool). | male | 1990-1999 |
david | David: teenage dreams | Inchoherency. I'm in a motel in town. Brad and Kathleen are in the room, which is filled with many huge bags of cheap books. I'm at the desk, writing my book. I set down the pen and go out; it starts to rain. I explain the ocean while watching the actions of a beautiful vain brunette woman on a bicycle, who later poses before the mirror admiring her own body. Sometimes she wears sweats, sometimes wears a leather thong and nothing else. Phenomenal legs. Many many months pass. A bar that everybody went into, and never came out of. Jimmy, Brad, other friends come and go. I was writing an autobiography. Water running hard through gutter. Trying to jump and grab rafters at end. | male | 1990-1999 |
david | David: teenage dreams | Laura and I are having sex. On a bus. In China. The driver got lost on his way to the hills. | male | 1990-1999 |
david | David: teenage dreams | I was reading books that Will had just written. Very Will. The covers were dark, mottled, evil looking, with shadowy pictures of him all over them, smoking cigarettes, wearing his boots, being evil. I read them through. They seemed very much like something Will would write, very natural. I thought they were unfocused, diffuse, full of sarcastic laughter and evil -- very good. They were like other of his writings but much better. Then, Brad and I were working on a corpse. These were the remains of a French abbe, a monk who lived in the fourteenth century. We were smashing his bones in the name of research. Or rather, I was. Because earlier I had a choice of occupation, and I chose smashing his bones, because the other job, sawing through his meat, was far too grisly for my stomach. Smashing his bones was the least gory and unpleasant of all the research Brad had to offer me. Even then, after I had the abbe's bones all laid out on the table and I picked up the skull and my hammer, I had an enormous amount of difficulty bringing myself to smash the skull in. Something about it was still too human, still too alive. Then I guess I took a break or something, because all of a sudden I'm in a bakery, waiting in line. I ordered candied bread -- they didn't have any of that. So instead I got a loaf of raisin bread. As the baker, a young guy with blond hair and a yellow shirt, got the bread, I told him about my adventures with the abbe's bones. He was very unamused and glared at me with the most intensely angry, chilling blue eyes I have ever seen. Perhaps he was a Christian. Wisely, probably, I left the bakery and went back to bone-smashing. When I came back, I learned that we were doing this research in the name of the National Geographic Society. No sooner had I set my loaf of bread down and picked up my hammer to keep smashing monk-bones when hot damn but George from Seinfeld reportedly steps on the work site. The resulting crush of tourists made it all but impossible to work. Luckily, I only had a metatarsal or two to grind into powder, so I finished up and packaged the dust up for Brad. Whoops! Brad was suppossed to send the monk's bone-dust to "Cancun in China" but he sent it to somewhere called Xencin; transliteration error. Disastrous! The gleeful natives of Cancun, China nearly stole it for use as an aphrodisiac (Traditional Chinese Aphrodisiac: Powdered Monk Bones), but they sent it back to us after concluding they were on the side of science. Close one. I guess it's after work, because now I'm passing the downtown library. I walk by the window; sitting at the tables, reading books, frozen in sleep, are all my friends from highschool. They are all asleep, sitting up straight, holding their books open. Josh in particular (a short guy with a beard, shoulder-length hair, leather jacket, smell of cologne, very soft-spoken and intelligent) has a half-there smile on his face, as though he knew I was outside the window, looking in, but he's too sharp to let people know he's awake when he's supposed to be asleep. The library was dark and closed, so evidently all these friends of mine had gotten trapped inside when the library closed, and so they had to sleep there, in the middle of their studies. Though it was more like their bodies had been put in suspended animation -- there was a very strong feeling that my friends in the window -- Josh, Nathan, Mike, and others -- had been *preserved* there somehow from time immemorial, as though they only gave the appearance of life. As though dust built up on them day after day after day, like they'd been pickled or formaldehyded and stuck with pins into their current "studying" positions. Now I'm in some house, a hippie house in town. I'm in the main room with a very hostile guitarist. Every time I come near him he scowls and lashes out with a limb. So I keep to the other side of the room, amongst the huge pile of used books and board games. I see that these are separated into two main piles: civil rights materials, and a large pile of books and games about sex which dated from the seventies, and some porn magazines of the same era. Laura showed up from nowhere, and insisted I say something brilliant-sounding about the civil rights movement. Off the top of my head I said: "I think it was the defining political movement of the late twentieth century!" I woke up at this point to use the bathroom, then I climbed back in bed and tried to go back to sleep. Alas, awaiting me in that half-world between sleep and waking, was an intensely frightening blue face, perfectly round, set off in the darkness. It looked like it was made of blue metal. STARING AT ME. Just this BLUE FACE, leering at me with this stupid, malevolent, menacing look. | male | 1990-1999 |
david | David: teenage dreams | Laura and I are at Kelly's place. We're working down on the road with a bunch of religious people. Kelly tells us to go to their bagel bakery. The baker, Que Cho (ficticious person), will give us each a bagel. Que Cho looks like he was a professional hit man before he turned to bagel baking. His skin is sompletely pockmarked and scarred, and his nose has definitely been broken more than once. Que Cho gives us each a bagel. We go back to the road. At 2 o'clock I hear somebody ask How much longer will it be until 'Jesus Hour'? Fifteen minutes, the other replies. I run back up to the house and find Laura in Kelly's room. "Kelly!" I say. "They're about to have Jesus Hour. I didn't want to get caught up in it so I came up to get Laura." "Don't worry," says Kelly. "When they ring the bell for Jesus Hour, just go into the closet there to hide. Later you can go by the bagel place again." Kelly picks up a stack of papers. "I had to learn a bunch of songs for today's Jesus Hour, so I can't really skip out." They ring the bell and Laura and I go to hide in the closet. When everyone's gone, we go back to the bakery. We ask for another free bagel, and Que Cho gives it to us, but it's pretty clear that we're *really* pushing our luck with this guy. We get out as fast as we can. For one brief instant, I'm walking up the large set of stairs at the Green Middle School. I walk by my 8th grade history teacher's room, and he's teaching a class. Back in Kelly's room. Jesus Hour is almost over, and I really have to piss, but we can't find the bathroom, so I end up pissing in jars, cups, bowls, interrupting the flow every time the containers filled up. This went on for an absurdly long period until finally I woke up to use the bathroom. | male | 1990-1999 |
david | David: teenage dreams | We were cabin camping, Laura and I, but there was this strange guy following us all around the place. When he went away, Laura decided to do a little investigating and invaded his house: she examined the construction of his door, and the health of his animals. When we heard him coming we ran for it back to our cabin, and pulled the door, the blinds shut. Next day I left the cabin and out on the curb I met a Filipino kid with a skateboard. He broke something with it, he told me, and now he was fleeing his parents so he wouldn't have to 'pay'. I harbored him and his sister. His sister was younger than him, maybe eight years old, and she sat in the corner with her knees pulled up to her chest, skirt pulled up too far, rocking back and forth and chattering about everything a million miles an hour in a little squeaky voice. I remember that she was wearing white panties. I found a book on the floor that had a really creepy picture of how she would look as an adult in a leotard. Outside, the kid's parents were approaching. I told the kids: 'Go hide in the closet and pretend you're immortal!' This was supposed to protect them from their parents, but it was too late: the parents had seen us all together. They did this wierd bouncing thing, where they would take a step forward, sink down into their knees, bounce up, and step forward again, all with a transfixed glassy expression on their faces, chanting "Na na na! Na na na!" As if this wasn't enough, they were dressed like Mayflower Pilgrims. They cornered us -- the kids gave me something to read. After reading the kids' story, I said, "I put my faith in the children, not in *these* ruined adults!" and I threw a serape filled up with money at the boy. So the pilgrims shot me. Twice in the body, once in the mouth while they pushed me down into the creek. At this point I got a third person view of myself, and this person looked a lot like Mark Twain; not him, but it looked like him. They shot me/him in the mouth and the back of his head blew off, and green smoke began to pour out of his mouth as he sputtered and spit and sent teeth flying. Then he began to decay in the water. All the music stopped abruptly and I woke. Bleh. | male | 1990-1999 |
david | David: teenage dreams | Some crotchety old bastard was paying me to completely rewrite all of Douglas Adams' books, because he didn't like a lot of the things that were in them. And he wanted to get some things of his own in. I was instructed to give it a really long title in 18th century style: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, or, the adventures of Ford Prefect and Arthur Dent blah blah blahblah blah for twelve pages. I was shopping at the food store with Laura. They had a new system -- you bought your food and rung it up yourself! Laura told me to get certain things, and whenever I got the wrong thing (due to some misunderstanding) she'd correct me. I was getting really irritated with her by the time she corrected me about the cereal. I poured back the wrong cereal and poured into my bag a cereal made from long strands of wheat and long strands of dried carrots. Just then Laura began helping this guy with long hair. His hair looked just like the cereal. | male | 1990-1999 |
david | David: teenage dreams | (06/30/98)(Wartime in a besieged city. WWII trappings. Our hero is leaning against the wall, weeping, saying what may be his last farewell to his lover, who is also crying. A sharply dressed middle-aged man stiffly walks up to the scene. He is wearing a general's uniform.) THE GENERAL: "It is time to go to the Rue des Quatre Mains, sir." (The hero nods. Romantic music swells and fills the scene. The General moves off, and the hero delivers an impassioned speech to his lover.) THE HERO: "I'll never leave you, not even in the hour of death. If they catch me in the battle and execute me later, promise to understand, promise, that I will always be with you, always!" THE LOVER: "I promise!" (She wipes away a tear. The romantic music grows to a deafening pitch and weeping fills the theater. At the Lover's "I promise" the crowd in the movie theater does a standing ovation.) MEMBERS OF THE AUDIENCE: "BRavo! BRRRRrrrrravo!! What a beautiful scene! How touching!" (All the above noise cuts short as we see (third person view) that I am the author of the above scene. I am sitting on a rock, and I have just finished writing the final words spoken to the lover before being taken to his final battle. Two middle-aged women sit nearby.) WOMAN I: "I hear he's an author." WOMAN II: "That so? What's he working on?" WOMAN I: "A movie, I think." WOMAN II: "Hmm! Imagine that." | male | 1990-1999 |
david | David: teenage dreams | Doc (Christopher Lloyd) and Darth Vader were fighting with light sabers -- Marty McFly (Michael Fox) and Luke Skywalker were in on the action, too. At some point Marty McFly killed Luke Skywalker. Then Doc killed Darth Vader. Somehow, then, Doc was fighting his evil twin, and then somehow the good Doc became evil, too. In the end, the one evil Doc killed off the other evil Doc, and the surviving evil Doc began walking towards me, swirling his light saber around in a circle. Then the end of the saber kind of 'broke' and the evil Doc cut off his own head. It sailed through the air and hit the ground, spewing blood. Doc's head croaked: "Entire life's work... up in smoke..." Marty McFly jumped up and shouted "DOC!" like in the movie. A group of tourists walked by, but they didn't notice anything. | male | 1990-1999 |
david | David: teenage dreams | Dreamt about a concentration camp. I was going to rescue some people from Birkenau. A gaunt, half-starved Jewish man who looked like Kafka was guiding me. I remember, I didn't want to see the dead bodies particularly. | male | 1990-1999 |
david | David: teenage dreams | I dreamt all night long, but now I only remember snatches -- a spider dream, a dream about camping, one at the Hillside Library, and one about some strange backwoods country dance where one man had three dozen pairs of clay eyes running up and down the bridge of his nose, and this girl who was previously thought ugly redid her hair and ended up being gorgeous. "All the men's eyes" were on her, and the singer of the band with the three dozen eyes had them all trained on her. So the singer's three dozen eyes was supposed to represent the eyes of all the men at the dance. | male | 1990-1999 |
david | David: teenage dreams | I was on the bus to Hillside, and I noticed that up by the front of the bus there was a table with a pile of books for sale to whoever would want them. I flipped through the pile and they were all good books, but I didn't have any money, or not much at least. Eventually I got a Hemingway book, "A Farewell to Arms", I believe. Back at the bus station to pay for my book. As I'm waiting for the driver I hear gunshots; people right next to me have gotten their heads blown off. One guy has half his head across the way and is writhing all over the place. I calmly step over the bodies and head for the bus. But the bus is leaving! Shit! I begin to run down the street in an effort to arrive at the next bus stop before it does (usually an easy thing with the Hillside buses) but suddenly everything in that part of town turns into a really dense meadow with really tall grass, and I can't get through it fast enough to catch the bus. Somehow, later, I'm walking along, flipping through my new copy of "A Farewell to Arms" and suddenly I'm in 1920's Italy. Early 1920's. (Hemingway's book is set in 1917-1918 Italy.) I'm in the ballroom of a really fancy Italian hotel. It is filled with all kinds of people. A curtain draws back and we see Ernest Hemingway. He reads a notice: "All fairies, raise their hands!" A naked, hairy, fat man raises his rifle, hoots, and shoots out the light. Confusion ensues. When the light comes back on, there are 20 or 30 transvestites in shiny evening dress standing around a pool. One by one they're shot and fall into the pool. I think it's all Hemingway's doing, and that he must be standing behind that curtain, shooting them down. I think it's sick, but I don't know how to stop it, and besides, I'm out of my real time (echoes of Back to the Future again) and I don't really want to either endanger my own life or mess up history. I escape this madness by using the emergency elevator, which basically just drops you to the first floor, knoking your lower jaw through the crown of your skull on impact. Or that's how it feels, anyway. The doors slide open and I stagger into the lobby, and out onto the steps. It is a peaceful spring morning in Italy, Florence, I think. Firenzi. It is the 1920's. Hemingway is sitting by the exit, bandage wrapped around his head, staring off into space, whistling an aimless tune. | male | 1990-1999 |
david | David: teenage dreams | Laura and I are half-buried in the mud at the bottom of the train tunnel, laying down and hiding out. We were hiding there, I explained, for the same reasons the bums hung out at the opening end every morning -- it was a hell of a lot warmer than any other place at that time of day, due to the draft. Suddenly they built a train station around us. It would take you to New York City. It was all shiny and modern-looking, and Laura and I did go to New York. I considered how close New York was all along, and wondered why we never went. We came back and I went to work at the Green City Library with Larry. That woman Patti was at the desk. At closing time, a woman walked in and Patti refused to help her. "We're closed. Sorry. That's all. We're closed." Then she started *doing her makeup* and putting on jewelry. That annoyed me a lot. She refused to help someone at one minute to closing because she wanted to put on makeup? Larry walked with me across the wierd hills to the train station and explained how he could take my job on Mondays since I didn't like it on that day. And I was going anyway. "Yeah, but I want to *save* money before we go, and I'd lose $120 a month that way!" ($120 is 1/3 of my paycheck; I work 3 days a week.) "Besides, Laura wants to take Biology 3C and..." "But, I'm not *in* highschool anymore," she protests. "We could leave any day!" | male | 1990-1999 |
david | David: teenage dreams | I dreamt that I was writing quite a bit. I remember squeezing Laura's breasts, and somebody was passing around an inflatable woman. | male | 1990-1999 |
david | David: teenage dreams | I'm waiting to be picked up to go somewhere far away with Jimmy and I'm not sure what music to listen to -- after a while I pick Tori Amos. I pack and get all ready to go. Remembering my experience last time of not having anything to read, I load up my backpack not just with notebooks but with about 20 books, mostly 3 big shiny books by Bernard Shaw. I get into the van with Kelly and her new trucker boyfriend who wonders why I read so much. Then we're taking a bit of a break before leaving and I'm crossing this huge, rickety, wooden footbridge over the river at night. It's raining pretty hard and everything's wet and glistening. Halfway along I notice all kinds of loose change scattered across the bridge, so I go about picking it all up, especially the pennies, because "I'll need all the luck I can get." I find one really huge penny -- it's about a foot in diameter. This one's really lucky. As I'm kneeling to pick up all the change, a man comes along with his two kids. I don't want to look suspicious, so I open the cabinet in the side of the bridge and pull out two cans of Coke. He shines a flashlight on me, then goes away with his kids. | male | 1990-1999 |
david | David: teenage dreams | I was a delivery driver in Green City. Here there were a special kind of spiders which would help you find your way: they laid their eggs around a light and made it glow. Then I was in a fancy Indian Southwestern hotel which was like a movie theater. There were a lot of porn stars, and an orgy. A lot of dead rich people. They left me and Laura stuff. | male | 1990-1999 |
david | David: teenage dreams | Laura sold the minivan and bought, for $6000, an inflatable Mustang hovercraft. She called it an Air Car. If you drained it of air, you could fold it up and pack it away. We went for a ride in it. She told me more about it as she stood in the kitchen, naked, intermittently drinking from a glass of water. | male | 1990-1999 |
david | David: teenage dreams | I was in my parents' house checking email, and somehow or other the dream got transferred to some kind of workplace. One of my coworkers was a black woman and I discovered to my horror that somebody had sent her a message IN MY NAME inviting her to a movie and calling her a nigger. In my parents' house I found a dream notebook containing several lost dreams, or dreams I thought I had lost forever. I sat down at the computer to type these out in email for Jimmy; that's when I discovered the email thing. Well, it changed into an office and I went to apologize to the woman and explain how appalled I was about the message, that I would change my password. I saw a large poster of a middle-aged man with a moustasche above her desk. Supposed to be her father. The caption read: DADDY IN A BAD MOOD: WATCH OUT! There was the same picture with caption on the desk. And now I'm at some kind of graduation. Everybody needs to wear a tie, even me, even though I'm wearing a hooded sweatshirt. A lot of people are there: Andy, Jimmy, Brent, Larry, and so on. Someone gives me a tie and I sling it over my shoulder, pretend to be an aviator, antics like that. Then I notice Larry is tying a red tie. I call out to him: "Hey, Larry, this is kind of wierd. I dreamt about you tying a red tie just like that..." "At a graduation," Laura says, eyes wide. "Just like this," I finish, in growing fright. Fright, because I "realize" I dreamt the whole thing before in every detail, exact down to the last, and it has now come %100 true. The scare was so wrenching I woke with a shout. | male | 1990-1999 |
david | David: teenage dreams | We bought property in Montana, and a huge stretch of land north of there was a national park. | male | 1990-1999 |
david | David: teenage dreams | Last night I dreamt I was at the theater, some kind of theater production that Dylan was somehow involved with. I saw him and called him over, and we talked a while, and he invited me to go over to some cafe down the road. So we walked down the street and he showed me this cafe. All the walls were pink and stuccoed, and the barista stood behind this hole in the wall where he took your orders. Well, Dylan grabbed a 1-liter Coke and left the money on the counter, but I didn't want so much soda, so I ordered a can of Pepsi and set some quarters on the counter. Turns out the guy who ran the place was John of John's Liquors down by Eastern High School. I leaned through the hole in the wall to place my order and saw Jack sitting there, not really doing anything besides staring off into space. He took a shot of whiskey and ignored me. Then I noticed his entire extended family in the back of the cafe: his grandparents, sleeping in bed, his parents, and so on. Then, of all people, Elizabeth Church came in through the back door and gave Jack a very loving hug, just as though they had been married and were totally in love despite the 30-year age difference. Eventually Elizabeth got me my soda and I thanked her, and talked with her a while, updating her on what was going on in my life and trading info and so on. Then Dylan and I left the cafe; he waved goodbye to Elizabeth, and we walked out onto the street, which had become a field of wildflowers in the meantime. We walked through the field and I told Dylan I was going to visit that cafe more frequently in the future, since I knew so many people who hung around it, including him and Elizabeth, whereas in other cafes I went to nobody knew me at all. I told him about everything going on in my life, my plans, my book, my girlfriend (soon to be wife). At this point Dylan said something like, "The artist's job, you see, is to frame beauty in its proper setting," and we nearly tripped over Laura, who was laying on her side, naked, in the wildflowers. I introduced her and Dylan, and then we stepped over her and kept walking through the field, discussing. | male | 1990-1999 |
david | David: teenage dreams | A huge volcano long thought to be extinct, was erupting outside the house in Green City, sending down enormous flaming chunks of ice. I finally got into the house safely along with some few teenage girls, friends of my brother. I sat down in a booth in the living room -- it had booths just like a restaurant -- and played the guitar for my grandparents. I then went and fetched from the car some Hemingway book I bought in hardcover. Somehow, the Starship Enterprise, with warp drive beams emerging fromt the eyes of Worf and Captain Picard, had something to do with the erupting volcano. I got into a conversation with this guy in the house about language and how we develop habits of hiding behind smiles and kind words in conversation, when all we really want to do is smash in their goddamn faces. He tells me this with a strained smile. At this point my dad stands up, excusing himself to piss. I've got to do the same. We were all waiting out the volcano, see. | male | 1990-1999 |
david | David: teenage dreams | I was a little fat boy chasing a strange bird. It had the face of a rat with huge eyes, and huge black wings with gold tips that it beat as quickly as a hummingbird. I chased it into a meadow, whereupon I learned that the way it disguises itself is by burying itself headfirst in the dirt and sprouting a flower out its ass, so you can't tell the birds from the flowers nor the flowers from the birds. | male | 1990-1999 |
david | David: teenage dreams | Jimmy wanted to do something for my birthday, something I didn't want to do. Naturally, he didn't listen when I told him so, and I was constrained to hide in the old wood stove at my parents' house (I used to hide in it when I was very little.) | male | 1990-1999 |
david | David: teenage dreams | Bitter and angry about everything in Hillside. The Market was closing, and they wouldn't let me withdraw money. Ended dream by strangling Jimmy because he wouldn't park his damn van, just kept driving it back and forth. Laura ran up at the same moment and asked what I was doing -- just then I woke up and she was staring at me. Angry like I can't usually be -- at *everything*. Punching walls of the van. Then, after getting rid of Jimmy, we had a bum in our room. We were sitting there talking and he kind of transformed into Alan. He tells me (gold ring in his ear) It's better to be a free man than a bondsman. (Echoes of Thomas More!) I told him that all walks of life come with their own worries, troubles, bothers. He then changed into that guy from a local coffee shop, the grey-haired guy with the leather coat. He began to lecture me in that condescending way bums have when they think you don't understand just how demeaning and uncomfortable their lives are. "Now listen John, Joseph, James Josh..." He began every sentence directed at me with this formula. At one point I opened the door to force him out. | male | 1990-1999 |
david | David: teenage dreams | I dreamt I was going to meet Frank at the Green City Movie Theater for a movie. But I got stuck at the Hillside Library trying to find a copy of Steinbeck's book, Sea of Cortez, in a really cheap edition put out from someone's typewriter and facsimile machine. Came time to go--20 minutes past my shift's end. I ran down to Hillside and boarded two enormous German Shepherd dogs. This was a really archaic form of transportation, apparently, like caveman-transportation. I rode on the back of one until it got tired and then I switched. These dogs didn't know me too well, though, so I got a lot of bites and scratches. | male | 1990-1999 |
david | David: teenage dreams | First I dreamt that I was operating a little RC research car on the planet Mars. While the car was going around collecting samples of minerals, etc. I was sitting in a station somewhere on the planet. I screwed up somehow at some point and the little RC car broke open the door of my station, allowing the zero-atmosphere of Mars to rush in and destroy all life inside, including mine. | male | 1990-1999 |
david | David: teenage dreams | I was standing on a road near Hillside, in the middle of the night, with my supervisor. She handed me a library video and told me I needed to return it. I agreed to return it for her, and I walked over to where the Denny's is in reality. In my dream there was another building here which I lived in. I got into my room all filled with books and records and food, and suddenly there came a knock on the door. Somehow I *knew* the knocking was some old friends of mine I didn't want to see, so I didn't open the door. (My room, by the way, was like a janitor's closet in some institution. There were no windows and the only light came from a bare bulb hanging in the middle of the room.) Still, it was nice to have visitors, so I went ahead and peeked out the door. Mistake. Matt and Steve forced their way into the room. They made havoc out of a good deal of things until Robinson Jeffers showed up (poet, American, 1887-1963). I imagined him from a characoal drawing on the cover of a collection of his poems I just bought. I really had to pee, but the only thing around was a paper bag, so I pissed in that. When it was filled up and beginning to leak out the bottom, I ran into the hallway to dump it out. Naturally I had to pee when I woke up at this point. | male | 1990-1999 |
david | David: teenage dreams | I was down on the road I used to live on in Green City, at the bottom of the driveway where Cara used to live. Here there was a soft, marshy sort of area and in the middle of it, a tombstone. I forget what the exact words were on the thing but the gist was: some kid had run away from home and accidentally stepped into this marsh, which sucked him under and killed him. The tombstone had been placed there to warn all future runaways. I don't know how the tombstone stayed there. A whole bunch of other kids gathered and sat down around the tombstone and talked to me about it. Yeah, it's really sad, they agreed, but some kids really *need* to run away from home. Besides, there's not that many marshes out there. | male | 1990-1999 |
david | David: teenage dreams | I was at work and needed to take the bus back to town. So I walked down to the pickup point to get on the bus, and found there was no bus, only three or four beat-up old pickup trucks driven by good-ol-boys. Some disreputable old people from the apartment complex, Morton and his wife, plus another guy that stares at me a lot, were waiting in line, too. "Morton" and his wife were shouting at one another as usual, and the other old guy just stood there, being unnerving. Luckily, they all got in this one blue pickup together. I got in the red one behind them. As I got in the car, I asked: "So. We're going to S City?" Without really answering, the guy said: "Shuttle to B Town!" I was clasping a dollar in my hand and I resolved not to pay if I could possibly avoid it. There was a long drive along a crazy screwed up road, and the upshot was, in order to get to B Town at all we had to drive over the treetops of this really dense forest. So the goodolboy begins driving over the trees and the guy in the back really begins protesting violently, which makes the goodolboy lose his concentration (it takes a lot of concentration to drive on treetops, you know!) and the car kind of tips like a boat taking on water, and then finally falls through the trees twenty or thirty feet. Lucky for me my window was open -- I clambered through the window just as the car tipped onto its side, and took refuge in a branch. When the car hit the ground I climbed down the tree and joined the people. The other passenger was laying motionless at the bottom of a chainlink fence (wind knocked out) and same with the goodolboy. They were both alive, though, and arguing enough that I could sneak off without paying. The chainlink fence, as it turned out, was guarding my parents' Summer Palace. This was a huge sprawling mansion, most of its rooms hardly even used, three or four used intensively. The place was a thorough disaster. In one room the walls were lined with peeling cork. (Proust?) There was a stack of books like the donation pile at the Hillside library. These were paperbacks I have looked at in the used book store, but have decided not to buy. I was very happy to find them just sitting here now, though, because it meant I could have them for free, when it wasn't worth the two or three dollars apiece to buy them. There were books by Melville and Henry Fielding, both of whom I've had a lukewarm interest in this past month. Laura was with me in this room. She said: "Gee, it's too bad my mother doesn't live here. She deserves a big place like this." Just at that point, her mother showed up and whooshed around in her normal way, apologizing for the mess and attending to one thousand little errands at the speed of light in order to get them all done before dinner in a half hour. You get the feeling she's been going like that all day long. In an aside she mentioned to me that if I wanted to give music lessons, I can do it in her name and she'll pay me under the table, since she's registered and it would be a pain in the ass for me to register, since I'm going to be leaving in a few months. Then Laura and I walk into the next room. Here are where all the registration forms are to be found. Laura hadn't heard her mother tell me I could give lessons in her name, so I begin telling her. Right as I'm about to give away the game the old lady in charge of registrations totters up and asks me what I'm doing. "Registering to give piano lessons!" She hands me a registration form, and tells me sweetly that I really must register, since it's very illegal to give lessons without registering, etc. etc. etc. I smile and let her dodder off into the other hallways of the mansion. I turn to Laura with a look like "Whew! That was a close one!" and I wake up. | male | 1990-1999 |
david | David: teenage dreams | I kept dreaming about an underground room. I woke at one point thinking, 'Gee, that was Freudian." Later I dreamt of a box in a tall cabinet containing beans Laura and I had sprouted and forgotten about. They had grown somehow into lush green plants, vines which clung to the walls of the cabinet, with leaves that resembled staghorn ferns. | male | 1990-1999 |
david | David: teenage dreams | My supervisor tried the lights in the main room of the library -- for some reason they wouldn't go on for her. Me either. So we decided to tell Lauren we couldn't open the library because there would be no light. Lauren showed up and banged on the door -- I let her in, scowling, and told her what was happening, whereupon she tried the lights and found they worked for her. DAMN. So we had to run through the whole process of setting up, and I was angry with my supervisor for having raised my hopes in the first place. In the other room it was exactly the way everything had been in my room in Green City, except instead of my bookcase there was the pamphlet file, and of course I had no bed there. Hiding behind my chair and a large pile of books I poked idly through the 'A' file. In between American Artists and American Indians I was secretly composing a book, a few pages at a time. At one point Lauren burst in, but thankfully she didn't notice what I was doing. Somehow I began reading a pamphlet about Ed Ricketts, and I began to see the scene as it was narrated by a Steinbeck-like voice: "Back in the thirties, we hired Ed to do some rock crushing for us." (The view slowly zoomed in on Ricketts, who was standing behind a large pile of rocks in work overalls from the thirties, holding a shovel. He was beckoning me over. Narrator:) "Come over here," he said to me one day. "Look at this." (I walked up and saw that he had dug up some strange sort of tree, one which had branches coming off it like a trimmed palm tree -- that is, the branches had been sawed off -- but these chevron-shaped branches had the color and consistency of celery. Narrator:) "Ed! Thank God you cut this off at the root, because that's a part we can regrow. This is a water-bowl tree, Ed. It'll bring us a fortune!" (Ed flushed and looked abashed. He helped me pick up the tree and load it into the nursery. While this scene was going on the voice-over said:) "I think the waterbowl tree brought us $900 in 1948, the year of Rickett's death. With the money we established a memorial. I hope Ed, wherever he is, understands what we have done. These words were taken from John Steinbeck's "My Life in California"." | male | 1990-1999 |
david | David: teenage dreams | I was at a party of some sort, with all kinds of people from the Middle School. The crowd at this party is a very select group. They are people from the Middle School, whom I subsequently met, after gradution, under different circumstances. Thus it is an odd collection: Kelly J. and Jasmine are there, as well as that girl named Shannon. Many people who would never mix are here, because I ran into them in later life. Notably absent are most of my infatuations, though I later met some of them. The only one here is Amy. I talk to her for a little while, and she gives me her phone number, tells me to call her, and then, after I talk to Kelly J. a bit more, I dreamt I woke up. But I woke up in some mythical apartment; I did not wake into my real life but into some alternate life. Here I write down the phone number Amy gave me in my dream and after a brief hesitation, I dialed it. A man answered the phone, presumably her father, and I asked for Amy. He got her and we talked for a while. "But how did you find my number?" "Well, it's really wierd... I dreamt you gave it to me." The upshot of the conversation was I was to come and visit her, in the state she had moved to, so we could talk. I promised I'd be there as soon as I could. So I got in a car and drove to her house. She greeted me and showed me her room, and we sat down on the bed and started to talk. We had a lot to say. So much had happened in the meantime. She produced a thick bundle of papers which she had written up for college, which described everything in her life and everything she believed in, everything she wanted to do with her life and so on. I had nothing comparable so I went to the car and retrieved the first five chapters of my novel and gave it to her. We sat on the bed -- I mean laid down, and kissed and exhanged a hug. We looked into each other's eyes a while, and decided that we had made a mistake in ever separating. | male | 1990-1999 |
david | David: teenage dreams | I had a dream the other night that me, Woody Allen, and Laura were all sitting around a big oak table in the middle of a sparkling white kitchen. We were having a conversation, I don't remember what, but it became clear that this was Woody's beach house and we were staying there a while. We all went to sleep. In the morning Laura and I went out through the kitchen around the side of the building, along a boardwalk which stretched to the beach outside. It was just dawn. My wife was carrying a volleyball, a tennis ball, and a golf ball. When we got to the beach next to the house, we began throwing the balls back and forth, but they all accidentally fell under the house, through those rectangular vent-holes, you know what I'm talking about? My wife tried to get them out with a stick, but that project failed. In the end I tried shoving my arm through the hole and reaching for the balls. I got my shoulder stuck for a minute or two, and at that point Woody Allen joined us. He made the observation that I was stuck in the vent, and the two of them yanked me out of my fix. Then we all stood around in a circle and tossed the volleyball around. | male | 1990-1999 |
david | David: teenage dreams | I was standing before the mirror, applying shaving cream to my beard and hair with the back of the razor. Only, I kept getting confused as to what was hair and what was beard, so instead of shaving off the beard like I'd intended, I ended up shaving out little chunks of beard and hair. It looked horrible. I approached my father in shame. My father, in this dream, was a Tibetan nobleman. I set down the camp mirror and made sure everything was set in the camp, and my 'father' and I began to walk up the street. Towards the house. Just outside the house, I found three pennies on the ground and picked them up. Remeber, we're in Tibet. "Odd money," I said. "European money," he said. "No, American." He grabbed them and flung them into the street. Startled by his rage, I said: "Oh, right, dad. Somebody can, uh, trade them in. Buy an apple." He glared at me, then looked up at the menacing clouds in the sky; they were rushing across the sky and were amber-colored and grimy-looking. We entered the portico and I whispered to my father, so the kids wouldn't hear: "Those clouds spell trouble." He nodded, and said: "American money." He fixed me with an earnest look. "They have arrived." | male | 1990-1999 |
david | David: teenage dreams | First I'm in a nondescript house. My 'sister' is one of the clerks at the Hillside Market: a short, small, insubstantial brunette girl who always wears piles and piles of clothing, perhaps to add to her size. Anyway, she walks through the house wearing black sweater, black sock hat, black everything, trailed by her simian boyfriend. He has a sloping forehead, eyebrows growing together, he slouches, wears a leather jacket with a chain over a T-shirt with some band logo on it, and dirty jeans. In the meantime the place has coalesced into something resembling my mother-in-law's house, where we're sleeping tonight. I go into the other room to get my biography of James Joyce, and find that my old friend Steve has placed a band logo right over the front cover picture of Joyce, so that the cover looks like a band logo in a straw hat and tailored shirt. I'm somewhat annoyed, because my copy was in perfect condition and it's a good book, but I figure I can get the sticker off. Then I realize that Steve has signed it on the title page: "Hey David This is you're old budy Steve hey!" Idiot. God damn it, I think, dropping the book, because I realize that they've ALL been here. All the old band members of every band I've ever been in has come in and left his sticker and signature on one or another of my books. Thankfully, only some two and a half dozen books, mostly paperbacks, have been ruined, so it's no big loss. The main damage was to Ellmann's Joyce biography. So I go out into the hall carrying nothing, intending to tell Laura about this, when I find my way blocked by my younger brother, Nick. Except in the dream he's my older brother, and over the course of the following conversations and actions, he becomes the actor who plays Frazier's brother on the T.V. show Frazier. He shows me a jar filled with something grey. "What is it?" I ask. "Ashes." "Ashes?" "The ashes of Cary Grant." "Cary Grant was quite a womanizer, wasn't he?" "Yes, he was," says my brother, who shows me a film about all of Cary Grant's women. We then find ourselves in a storage room in my parent's house, riffling through a desk. We're looking for the photographs of Cary Grant's women. I turn up a small rubberbanded pile of hot rod magazines, kept, it seems, primarily for the swimsuit models. Because Nick turns very red and says: "Put those back! Now!" I kind of laugh and say, "What's wrong with them? What's the big deal?" knowing full well why he's so embarrassed, but wanting to cure him of that embarrassment. It doesn't work and he shuts the drawer himself, saying: "They're mine. You can't have them." Now we're in Arizona, my brother and I, with a bottle of Cary Grant's ashes. We're sitting at an old picnic table below a freeway. On the other side of the freeway is a huge red cliff. I open the jar of ashes to get a better look, and like an idiot, I spill them. Now, that would have been fine, except it was a picnic table, so the ashes begin to pour through the spaces between the boards. Frantically, I try to contain the pile and put as much of it as I can back in the jar. My brother, apparently (now the actor-guy) knows all about cleaning up Cary-Grant-ash-spills, and he gives me a straw. He shows me how to clean up the spill and retrieve every ash: all you have to do is put the straw in the jar and point the jar at the cliff; then, you eject the ashes at the cliff. The ashes bounced off the cliff face and swooped around the back of the table, then swooped around you again, hit the cliff face, and bounced back into the jar. The straw was to direct the initial flow, so the outgoing and incoming streams of ashes would not collide and make a mess. | male | 1990-1999 |
david | David: teenage dreams | What's happening is that I grew up in a big city back East, and my parents for some reason have decided to move to a suburb in California. Well, they pick a part of town that reminds them of their neighborhood in the old days, and my mother asks me to do her a favor: could I please get our new poodle puppy baptized? I take the little white poodle and begin walking down the street to the church. Even though at the beginning I was supposed to have grown up in New York, reality flashes in for a moment and now I think: good thing I grew up here or I'd never find the church. I make one left, one right, and I walk down a huge corridor of brownstone buildings. Now I begin to descend into the church area, and now the little poodle has been transformed into a little black kitten. I approach the church and its yard, which is filled with people doing things. It looks more like a firestation than a church: it too is made out of brownstone, it is blocky and square, and right in front there are four square fountains, filled with people doing all sorts of outrageous things: playing water polo, having sex, performing religious ceremonies. Well, I start to walk down thinking: it ought to be easy to get the kitten baptized in all this craziness. But right as I begin to get near a pool, one of the Hillside library patrons, a woman I've never talked to or heard talk to anyone, steps forth with her finger out, shaking her head. "No. No. No kittens are allowed in the church." I argue the point with her for several minutes, pointing out the water polo, the sex. She responds that those are human activities, not kitten activities, and that if I wanted the kitten baptized I'd have to go to a kitten church. I'm pretty annoyed by all this, and as I leave I see another one of the library patrons, a big Middle Eastern guy, shaking his head. "Don't you hate that," he laments. "Oh, I don't really care." I had resolved to tell my mother I got the kitten baptized anyway, because it didn't really seem to matter. "Senile old women," he says. "They are all senile." "Well," I try to think of a diplomatic way to disagree. "Some women are old, but not all are senile." At this point I dreamt that I woke up in Laura's mom's house and began to tell Laura the beginning of my dream, which I lost by the time I woke up for real. We have apples and orange juice, (as we'd agreed on the night before for breakfast) and as I'm telling her I keep getting interrupted: people are arriving. An odd assortment of people: Brad's younger brother Stephen, who begins to set up a computer in the corner and some homeless hippie types with boxes of leaves. The hippie types had come up in Hannah's car, and Laura and I sat in the back of her grey station wagon sorting through the boxes of leaves with tweezers. Finally I get to the part where I'm trying to baptize the kitten, and the hippie types demand their boxes of leaves, so we go back inside. I retell dramatically the part where the woman pushes me away, saying 'no', and at the whole discussion involving kitten churches, Stephen just erupts into laughter: he thinks what I'm talking about is real, because he missed the beginning. As he laughs, he begins to drool, and when he wipes his mouth on his sleeve, he accidentally stretches his lip so that it hangs to his chin. Whoops. | male | 1990-1999 |
david | David: teenage dreams | Andy sent me some email at some point in the past, and we're standing before a blackboard, discussing the topic: improving social skills. Andy makes a very amusing algebraic equation about the dynamics of meeting new people: "Okay. You're variable a. Right now you're talking to b. a plus b is equal to i, which is a conversation. Meanwhile there's this other person, whose existence you are not even aware of. He's constant L, for Life, because he's a part of existence you don't know about, but who's always there. Now L would like to interpolate himself on the sum-side of this equation..." And he goes on and on in a very erudite manner, graphing it and everything. Now I meet his grandparents and talk to him for a little while about this and that. He tells me something astonishing and I joke: "Well, Bob's your Uncle!" "Grandpa," Andy corrects. "Yours too." And he's right: both of us have grandparents named Bob. Now I'm in S City with Andy, Laura, two guys from Junior High who I haven't thought about since, and the main character of my book, Richard Sampson. We're just walking along, talking; Laura, as usual, is about a mile ahead, trying to avoid conversation. The two guys from junior high are talking about pizza behind us. I'm still talking to Andy about his email message. We begin to climb the scaffolding of the new parking garage downtown, and I'm telling Andy how amusing I thought his email message was, and I sort of respond to it, when Andy intervenes: "Say, shouldn't we really save this for email, to give us something to do when we log on?" I agree and we begin to climb down the scaffolding, having had enough of the view. The two pizza guys behind us suggest going to a pizzeria: apparently they know of a good one. Only, Laura is now two miles ahead and I *know* she doesn't know where the pizzeria is. I wake up before we can all regroup. | male | 1990-1999 |
david | David: teenage dreams | Dreamt that I went to visit my old house. My mom was there to greet me: but this was no ordinary Mom. No, this is the anti-Mom. This Mom has her own life. She has things to do. She's busy. She's together; she isn't neurotic. And she's been living in this house all along. Well, she had a job she needed to get to, but she agreed to give me a tour anyway. There was a little girl there, my analogue, or I suppose my homologue, since she would have served a different function in the life of the anti-Mom from the one I serve in real life. The girl was very bouncy and happy. | male | 1990-1999 |
david | David: teenage dreams | Hard to describe. First the wharf. Walking along the wharf at night. But it is more than the wharf: it is an entire waterfront, a vast wharf the length of three wharves and the width of twenty wharves. I'm moving with the loose crowd. Suddenly the ocean is filled with dozens of sea monsters. These are vast sea dragons, creatures like giant dogs with scales and spinning paddles for legs, enormous snakes with frayed tails. All the creatures are reptillian. I'm whisked along to the library. A man returns a book on tape which has many of the wrong tapes. Some of the tapes are to be used with a good computer: you pop them in and a movie runs on the screen. Most of the cassettes are audiobook tapes. One is a feature film. Several are porn movies. All are issued by the same individual: a man named Ulric. I grab one of the porn tapes and watch it on the computer. Now I'm in a castle. I ascend to the top floor, porn cassette in hand, intent on finding some private place to jack off. Lo and behold, I soon find Bill Gates' bedroom! There is a curtained bed in the room, just like kings had in castles like this. I go over to the bed, and find that, inside the curtain, there is a state-of-the-art PC installed in the bed. Perfect place, I think to myself: private, comfortable, and fully equipped with just the technology I need. Yet I'm nervous about doing this in another person's room, when I don't even know where that person is. So I decided to forget about the movie and walk downstairs: I need to take a shower. I find a shower room and begin to enter: inside the room, with her back turned to me, is one of the patrons from the Hillside library. She is large, not especially attractive, and about fourteen years old. She is stripping to take a shower. I consider: I don't give a crap about her, and I need a shower. But then: it is highly likely that she would be embarrassed and perhaps even disturbed by the presence of a nude man. Ah, shit, I say to myself. I don't want to upset anybody. So I go off in search of a different shower room, knowing fully that there is no other shower. In my search I find Ulric, who decides to hire me to read a book on tape. But then I tell him I live in my car and this bearded, balding, fat middle-aged man tells me I'm worthless, and he gets very hostile, cancelling the earlier agreement. I tell him I'm going to Mexico, and the bastard begins testing my knowledge of Spanish. I play along, though, never pretending to understand when I don't, and soon enough I uncover the holes in his Spanish. I ask him about a word he used, and he's totally speechless. He can't tell me what the word means. It's like he made it up. Bastard. | male | 1990-1999 |
david | David: teenage dreams | I'm going to elope with a gorgeous Jewish woman. But who's standing in our way? William S. Burroughs. I must pass his tests before we can elope. What does his primary and most important test consist of? I must take a one foot length of silk ribbon, and tie it around my neck. Now, while leaving it on my neck, I must stretch it somehow to run down my back, down my pants, around my feet, back up my pants, up through the front of my shirt, and around my neck again into a bow tie. Needless to say, I fail the test. Burroughs goes cackling off, dancing a little jig. We decide to elope anyhow. | male | 1990-1999 |
david | David: teenage dreams | I am the Devil, and I'm scheduled to appear in a musical. Everybody else thinks I'm a mere mortal *playing* the Devil, but I know better. I show up at the right time. The musical begins; everything is very Babylonian. There is an enormous man in the middle of the room, wearing a turban and sitting on a throne. The jungle drums begins. He throws his arms up and shakes as the chorus sings: "Seven hundred twenty eight pounds/six hundred of them fat!" Now, it is his part in the musical to jump on me, and then I was to pretend to kill him with the fake weaponry. But since I am the Devil, after all, unmitigated evil incarnate, I opt for hacking him to pieces with my axe for real when he lands on me. The audience marvels at the special effects as I walk off the stage, leaving the dismembered fat man stewing and quivering in his own blood. | male | 1990-1999 |
david | David: teenage dreams | I'm on a ferry with my family. The ferry is also a submarine: it's like a submarine/cruise liner. We dive underwater; I'm the only one who missed the notification, and as the ship dives at a ninety degree angle, I careen through several hallway openings before finally crash landing at the front of the ship. I land in a dining room with Nick and the family, and for a while we watch the fish floating by the outside of the glass. The dining room is designed for undersea watching, you see. Nick and I decide we've had enough and go to get our luggage. | male | 1990-1999 |
david | David: teenage dreams | Soft piano music with a string orchestra in the background. Autumn leaves fall around the road in a crisp wind. The sun is angling through the trees, casting a gold glow over everything. The massive RV has a large empty space in the middle, and everybody is laying around under blankets inside. The RV is slowing to a halt. It's clear our journey is coming to an end. It is my job to distribute the magazines. I give one to Laura and set one aside for myself. There are two other people I don't know in the RV, and I give them their magazines. I approach Kermit the Frog, who takes a copy of People, and thanks me profusely. I go up to the driver's cockpit as Dr. Teeth (who has been driving) brings the RV to the side of the road. I show him what we have left: Country Living and the Jarvis Catalogue. "Oh yeah man, thanks, just what I need, alright, absotively, possolutely!" He takes them and I retire to my blankets in the back of the RV with my magazine, as the piano music slows and quiets down. I drift slowly out of the dream, feeling very warm and content, thinking: Ah, what a nice dream. It takes me at least ten minutes to begin laughing. | male | 1990-1999 |
david | David: teenage dreams | A baby hangs from a ledge by its fingertips, a lit cigarette hanging from its lips. | male | 1990-1999 |
david | David: teenage dreams | I was in school again, in those regimented rows of desks, as the teacher (old P.E. teacher) blabbed on about the usual nothing, and then forced us to take one of those standardized tests. In my dream I resisted everything passively but passionately; I somehow managed to lose my test sheet, for instance. And the whole time I felt that sharp adolescent despair, as of a trapped animal, without even words to express himself. | male | 1990-1999 |
david | David: teenage dreams | The town had become this strange peat bog, all hemmed in by mist. At one end was 1st and 2nd street, and right after that came Miramar Avenue, on which was Will's house. I was being chased and I found refuge in Will's house. I kept going into the wrong rooms, though, which were all full of his family members, all sound asleep. Finally I found the right room, with Will and all his friends watching a horror/sci-fi movie. Apparently Will was throwing a publication party: Will had had some long school project to do, and so he had farmed sections of it out to each of his friends, and we all wrote a bit of it. The final thing ended up being like 300 pages. The teacher had thought it was so good he had it published as an anthology! I found my bit in it and read it over. The whole thing was printed in a really cool font, with unique margin illustrations on each page. But the odd thing was, this whole innocuous-sounding dream had a very strong atmosphere of foreboding. | male | 1990-1999 |
david | David: teenage dreams | There was a burglar burrowing under the house, preparing to drill a hole through the floor under where we were sleeping. I ran to the phone to dial 911 and Laura and I got in the van to escape. | male | 1990-1999 |
david | David: teenage dreams | I was getting a tattoo, or rather I wanted to, but for one thing it cost too much and for another thing all the sample designs were pretty unappealing, childish even. I mean, there was one design that looked exactly like a three-year old's drawing. But while I was in the parlor trying to leave, I struck up a conversation with a man who had a really impressive series of tattoos on his head. He had a shaved head (of course) and he had tattooed a celtic band all the way around the base of his skull. On the back of his head was an *amazing* rendering of Quetzalcoatl, and the rest of his head was covered with intertwining Aztec, Mayan, and Celtic designs, which worked together very well. He seemed to be interested in Mexico so I told him I was going there. He told me that when he went there, he had had a good time, but wherever he went people would just stare and stare and stare at him. He was genuinely puzzled as to why people would do this to him. | male | 1990-1999 |
david | David: teenage dreams | I'm in my mother-in-law's house, but in my dream this is the new house my parents are building. The back room (which connects to a deck) is Nick's room, in the process of construction. Plastic sheeting is hanging everywhere, and the walls are covered with irregularly placed (but identical) splotches of glowing plaster. In an adjoining room is something called a genealogy machine: you place a book of family history open on it and there it does something, God knows what. This is obviously a nod to the presence of my mother. I went out onto the back porch and realized I was being pursued by Richard Madden, a character in Borges' short story 'The Garden of Forking Paths', who is never described apart from his name, and his function: namely, to chase the narrator with a gun. I ran out under the deck and ducked. Now I'm in the side yard and there is a blonde woman on the porch. A man behind her waves and shouts: "Good bye, pa!" There is a limosuine cruising down the road: a window rolls down and the barrell of a shotgun pokes out. The woman is gone and the man who was standing behind her crumbles a head of garlic over the edge. The cloves hit the ground. There is a bang. Richard Madden has killed the woman instead of me. I walk to the gate and across the driveway a very fragile and ancient Hindu man wearing blue earmuffs shuffles by with his eyes closed. | male | 1990-1999 |
david | David: teenage dreams | I was laying stretched on the bed in an Aculpulco hotel, staring through a golden light. Suddenly an amazing rainbow colored cat, made out of light, appears. I recognize it as a dream, and it shrieked. Somehow I managed to keep dreaming, and changed the cat into the pretty chambermaid who I'd been looking at for days. We made love, but she kept trying to turn into the cat in a very irritating way. I had to keep concentrating to keep the figure I was making love to focused as the chambermaid. | male | 1990-1999 |
david | David: teenage dreams | I was having sex with a woman whose body looked a lot like Laura's, but I couldn't see her face and it definitely wasn't Laura. | male | 1990-1999 |
david | David: teenage dreams | There is a dorm. Laughing. Judi is there; so is Cait. Cait whispers something I'm not supposed to tell Judi. She goes away. I talk to Judi and accidentally she figures out what Cait told me. But Judi isn't disturbed. We laugh and lay down together, and continue talking and laughing. | male | 1990-1999 |
david | David: teenage dreams | Somebody was telling me that I should hang on to my fortune, rather than spending it all. | male | 1990-1999 |
david | David: teenage dreams | The three of us -- Brad, Laura and myself -- go to a local bar. Instead of it being a grungy bar, it is a very nice multicolored restaurant. We sit down to table on a second floor with three young women. One of them works at a nearby cafe, Stella's; the other two I've never seen before. We all order food. Schoenberg's Op. 11 is playing as background music! | male | 1990-1999 |
david | David: teenage dreams | I have a gun for self defense. It's a pistol. There's a switch on the side. If I flip it up, it becomes a light, a flashlight. So I can see through the darkness. If I flip it down, it becomes a weapon. I'm travelling through the Schwarzwald and I hear a noise. Quickly I shut off the light and shoot in the direction of the noise. I hear a howling: it was a cat. I flip the light back on: my sister's cat. I've grazed the left side of her face, which is now a raw bloody spot. But her eyes are fine and she's not seriously injured in any way, only frightened and in pain. I try to catch her, which is hard in the dark, but I eventually do and somehow manage to contain the struggling, howling, scratching, biting, hissing, screaming cat until I can take care of her. Meantime I must watch out for the Germans. | male | 1990-1999 |
david | David: teenage dreams | Brad is describing a joke that Hannah once played on him. As Brad tells his story, I see what happened. Brad is climbing up a ladder, embracing a gigantic can of Mountain Dew. He reaches the top and I see that he's on top of a pool slide. Right before going down the slide into the pool, he opens the can. But Hannah had set a trap. The can explodes, drenching Brad with Mountain Dew. He looks so pitifully silly that I wake myself up laughing. | male | 1990-1999 |
david | David: teenage dreams | Laura gets undressed and takes a shower. The mirrors are placed so that I can watch her from the bed. I watch and jack off. Later, when she's done, we go into the bathroom together; it's hot and steamy. She informs me that she figured out how to get rid of all her excess cynicism. She opened the window and pointed to all the water condensed in the metal grate in the window. "All that represents excess moisture in the atmosphere." She opened the door and turned on a huge standing fan outside the window. The switch is by the bathroom door. The fan begins blowing, spattering us with droplets of water. "That's what I have to do with my excess cynicism." "What," I joke, "spray us with it?" | male | 1990-1999 |
david | David: teenage dreams | The movie theater where I work is different, a wierd amalgamation of an old theater in town, the theater I work at now, and an auto mechanic's shop. Josh is working on something in the back room. He was playing music on a CD player, and we debated how these people got famous and why. Josh points out that the guy we're listening to worked here before. I'm not sure whether "here" referred to the actual theater or just crappy jobs like it. Josh takes his paints, his music, and leaves. Unrecognizable people and myself discuss the fact that Josh has left, and we go out into the second lobby. The box office has been moved here for some wierd reason. We hire a new, sexy girl, who looks a lot like Kitty from the Mayan. She also looks like a girl who works in the local copy shop. Her voice is distorted. Laura shows up late, wanting coffee, but it's too late, all the coffee is gone. Laura begins to describe something she dreamt, and the dream is taken over by that for a while. She finishes. I go into the office, which has become a huge garage. All kinds of tough-ass cowboy types from Wyoming are there. These are the friends of Sasha (supervisor). They beat people up for a living. I drive my old van out of the garage, taking an unusual direction, and find myself in fenced-off corner of the railyard. I park the van at the garage's exit and walk out into the railyard among all the crossings, under a mottled brown sky. The ancient station looms in the background, only it's disturbingly spongy. The earth is brown, rocky, and a little spongy. I see a sign on the building: "Warning: Fast Moving Trains." This looks exactly like the signs over the light rail tracks downtown. A man wearing khaki overalls and a khaki shirt and glasses runs out of the garage. He looks a lot like Harold Lloyd, the silent movie genius. He grabs me by the shoulders and pulls me off the track I'm standing on. A moment later a train screams by. I move to a different track but he yanks me off of that one right before another train nearly obliterates me. This time I notice that the trains are made of the same dry, rocky, spongy stuff as the railyard and station. The tracks are iron and wood. I talk to Lloyd as a third train rushes by on a distant track. Is there any way I could take one of these trains to the South part of town? "Sure," he says, "but go to the goddamn station. Your stuff will catch up with you later." Meantime we'd better get off the tracks. He's the switchman, who sends all the trains onto the right tracks, and only he knows the schedule by heart, well enough to avoid getting pulped by a train. "Look, I can't babysit you all goddamn night, so you better get out of the yard or you'll wind up dead before long." I go back to the van and dig through a U-haul box. I take the most important stuff and fill the backpack with it. Then I drive the van into the garage. The garage had changed into more of a parking garage with ramps and levels. But there's still tools and equipment strewn around everywhere. Before it was a very straightforward auto shop with three or four bays; now it's a confusing maze. To further complicated things, they blocked the entrance, making it necessary for me to go in backwards. The mechanics are irritated with me. | male | 1990-1999 |
david | David: teenage dreams | There is the theater. A man asks if there is a donut shop nearby and where. I tell him where and he goes. A woman comes by and asks the same question. I lead her halfway there and she goes the rest of the way. Before long I hear her frantic screams for help. I know that the man I talked to earlier is to blame. Swallowing my fear, I run in the direction of her screams, also shouting for help. | male | 1990-1999 |
david | David: teenage dreams | There was a nightclub on the penthouse floor of Smith Tower. Everyone called it "The Smith". Brad said that he for one was getting sick of stepping over piles of dried vomit, passed out drunks, and "other excretions" in the elevator every Saturday and Sunday morning, when he went downstairs to buy a paper. From now on he would take the stairs, since he only lived on the third floor, and drunk people never take the stairs. | male | 1990-1999 |
david | David: teenage dreams | I'm at the theater to watch "Xiu Xiu" with Laura. Laura goes into the auditorium and I go to the bathroom. The bathroom is an outsized, dirty locker room, a lot like the locker room at the public pool. I have to piss, and wind up peeing in the disused ashtrays. I hear a voice: Judi emerges from a stall. She has obviously been crying. I ask what I can do and we talk for a while. At length we get far friendlier than usual and have a good fuck on the floor. Afterwards I realize that Laura's probably wondering what the hell happened to me. By the clock only ten minutes had passed, but the sex felt too satisfying for it to have been that short. I decide my watch is wrong, and cross into the lobby. | male | 1990-1999 |
david | David: teenage dreams | Something about a nude club for teenagers, who are in general better swimmers than those who go to clubs where swimsuits are required. The connection is never explained. The patrons of the nude club are all issued brown towels, hence the nickname of this club, "The Brown Towel". Gah. While at this club I run into Heather. She's older, taller, more slender, has short tousled dishwater blonde hair, and is really desirable. She's basically standoffish towards me. I ask if she's still in magazine work, and she says yes. She's an editor at a small magazine, but soon she's going to move on to something bigger and better. Then she started up a computer and began working on something. I saw her in profile, and she kept changing into a woman with black hair, severely thin, and basically ugly. | male | 1990-1999 |
midwest_teens-f | Midwest teenagers (F) | All I remember was being with my two friends and I was eating something in my dream and my teeth fell out, but they were like still there. It was like the end/bottom of my teeth fell off. I remembered because I was eating in the car with my two friends that were in the dream and it just popped into my head. | female | 1998 |
midwest_teens-f | Midwest teenagers (F) | My dream was short but all that I can remember is that a kid from school that totally hates me with a passion and I feel the same (we hate each other), well, anyway, he was talking to me and we were having a conversation about I don't know but we were like friends again. And that's all that I can remember about it. | female | 1998 |
midwest_teens-f | Midwest teenagers (F) | I was walking into a door and I was scared because I had to go through a room that was full of snakes and I had no protection from them. But when I was almost across I woke up. I always step on them but they don't bite. | female | 1998 |
midwest_teens-f | Midwest teenagers (F) | I was walking down the hallway with an older guy friend as I always do and all of a sudden he grabbed my hand and everyone in the hallway spun around and said oooooo ... then continued on their way. | female | 1998 |
midwest_teens-f | Midwest teenagers (F) | It was in a guy's house, I knew what it looked like but it wasn't the same in my dream. Me and a bunch of my friends were getting high around a table outside. I was acting stupid but so was everyone else. Then a guy took me upstairs and we had sex. | female | 1998 |
midwest_teens-f | Midwest teenagers (F) | Up at cabin with friends. Went in my boat, but it was really a car and we're going around the lake trying to find this certain fish, so we had a pile of rocks and we had to throw the rocks in a specific place to find this "magical" fish. Then it just kind of transitioned to playing softball in the woods. I wasn't disturbed at all during the dream. Pretty much relaxed through the whole thing. Friends were people I know, my age. | female | 1998 |
midwest_teens-f | Midwest teenagers (F) | I was in a mall with my cousin and ran into one of my old male friends - I didn't want to talk to him but we ended up going to a movie and he annoyed me and I wished I hadn't come. Next I knew I was in the mall, alone this time, and I was walking into a candy store. I didn't recognize the place but in my dream I knew where I was. The boy was 16 and we were good friends until we had a fight and haven't talked since. | female | 1998 |
midwest_teens-f | Midwest teenagers (F) | The people were me and my boy friends who's 17. The setting was in my bedroom and other places in my house. It was a very pleasant dream. My feelings were like, it felt good and I felt happy. We were in my bathroom and he set me onto the counter and we were kissing and he was between my legs. Then we went to the bathtub and took a very great bath and his sensual body touched mine. Then we went into my bedroom and had freaky sex. Then when we were done we went upstairs and my parents came home. | female | 1998 |
midwest_teens-f | Midwest teenagers (F) | Took place at: somewhere I'm not sure of (can't remember), though it was some place familiar to me like a video rental store or the library. The people were me and my friend, another female I've been dating off and on. The feelings were pleasant and happy, excitement. We were just sitting there, lying around. She recited a line from the movie Reality Bites (we had watched it a couple of nights ago) and then we kissed. | female | 1998 |
midwest_teens-f | Midwest teenagers (F) | It seemed like four dreams combined into one. One was I was driving someone's car to somewhere and I never got there. It took forever so I think I was going to go to sleep. Then the next one was I was at a concert and I remember some strange guy in a mask and buying souvenirs from him later (I can't remember much of that one). Next I was at my house but it wasn't mine, it was someone else's but we were living there and I was with someone but I can't remember. Next I was at work and when I got done the same person from the last part was driving my mom's car and my mom was in the passenger's seat. They don't know each other, I remembered, so I'm not sure why they were together. | female | 1998 |
midwest_teens-f | Midwest teenagers (F) | Enrique Iglesias (he's 23) and Alicia (23) (both singers) were going to sing here, but no one knew them so the manager, the one that was in charge, told me to sing for Alicia. So I was going to sing for her but I didn't know a whole song (I just knew parts of it). At the end Alicia came for real so I didn't have to sing any more for her, but I wanted to. | female | 1998 |
midwest_teens-f | Midwest teenagers (F) | I was with someone driving in a dark parking lot. Everything was in full color. We were in a high-speed chase. It felt like some sort of action movie. We jumped from balcony to balcony, we ran, and at one point we ran right past the cops that were also chasing these criminals. It was like a never-ending chase. Sometimes we would get back into the car and cruise in the parking lot, making sharp turns and going up and down parking ramps. I couldn't see who we were chasing though. It was exciting. The setting felt like a huge shopping center, at night. | female | 1998 |
midwest_teens-f | Midwest teenagers (F) | At home getting ready for my uncle's (who is living) funeral. I can't miss school so am reluctant to go. Then am in a big hall with uncle's casket in front. I go give my grandma a hug and say good-bye to uncle. Am suddenly going up the staircase of the chapel with a friend, telling her I know how she felt when she lost her dad. We are close to a hot fluorescent light fixture. We limbo under it. In a new school I say I don't know where to go, but surprisingly familiar. I go to my locker. | female | 1998 |
midwest_teens-f | Midwest teenagers (F) | My dream took place in an area that looked like a mix between southern Arizona and Minnesota. It felt like a spring day, and I was on a beautiful well-built horse with a deep chest and strong fore and hind legs, wide back, and a smooth gait. It was a chestnut mare with a black mane and tail and a white star on a wide forehead. Birds were twittering, and I was flying at a full gallop, the thrill of the ride filling me and making me vigorous and full of life. I was happy and at peace. | female | 1998 |
midwest_teens-f | Midwest teenagers (F) | I was inside at a local soccer field. In real life I broke my leg and in my dream I also had a cast on my leg and I was playing soccer. Dreaming this dream I believe helped heal my leg a little faster. | female | 1998 |
midwest_teens-f | Midwest teenagers (F) | I was on a vacation in a tropical place, with all of my friends, no rules, no parents. | female | 1998 |
midwest_teens-f | Midwest teenagers (F) | Me and a friend were in the bus stop at the mall and some girl (around my age) started talking shit. I happened to have a 24-pack of Pepsi and started throwing them at the girl; then I started busting her over the head with the cans. | female | 1998 |
midwest_teens-f | Midwest teenagers (F) | Setting was half in gym class and half overlooking the beach. It was familiar. I dreamed of old friends in California and new ones all together in one place - my age, mostly girls and people I was friends with. I was happy, completely happy. I was in gym class with my new gym teacher with old and new friends. We had to line up. I remember bright pink dice, the furry kind people hang on their car mirrors. I saw things from Minnesota and California. Then I had to go with this girl to the nurse's office and we got there by running on the beach. Along the way I kept finding pennies in the sand. That was the end. | female | 1998 |
midwest_teens-f | Midwest teenagers (F) | There were tons of people in the high school stadium, and they were all waiting for two kids fighting. The track coach told me earlier that I couldn't run ever because I wasn't at spring break practice. I got really mad and went to his office. His office was a room outside, across from the stadium full of people. I told him to come out and he did and we fought. I kicked his ass. He fell down and everyone in the stadium went crazy because I beat him up. Then I cried really hard and my 6th grade principal heard me and I cried because I still wanted to run. And then he came over and said I was a good fighter and I should run more. | female | 1998 |
midwest_teens-f | Midwest teenagers (F) | I was talking on the phone and the person I was talking to told me to call back in an hour, so I was in the bathroom blow-drying my hair when the doorbell rang. I answered it and it was my boy friend and he said, "Come on, I got a surprise for you." So we walked outside and there was a limo. We got in the limo and he gave me a dozen red roses and took me out to dinner, then back to his house to watch movies. | female | 1998 |
midwest_teens-f | Midwest teenagers (F) | It happened at a cabin, not mine though. So my parents and my sister were cleaning up and I just went out the door to go outside. It had snowed. Two guys were having a snowball fight and they asked me to join, so I did. I hit one of the guys in the face and he fell backwards. Then I grabbed some more snow and shoved his face with snow while he bent my head down and then I woke up. | female | 1998 |
midwest_teens-f | Midwest teenagers (F) | I had a dream in a town, it was not familiar to me. It was dark, but the middle of the day. It was in a shopping mall, an outdoor one like a street mall. I was buying dog leashes with Tom Cruise!? We were looking for a specific color, my dog had broken her leash and she needed a new one. My dog was not actually in my dream, just mentioned. I don't remember any dialogue or talking, we simply kept moving from store to store. When we walked out, his wife (Tom Cruise's) was waiting outside in a car for us. We got in and she gave me a hi. | female | 1998 |
midwest_teens-f | Midwest teenagers (F) | I had this dream where this devil guy was at my house. He was morphing into things. Example: my cat Kally. I was standing in my living room and I saw my cat Kally and a cat that looked exactly like her, so I ran to my room and grabbed the cat treats because Kally usually comes running when I shake the box. So I shook the box and Kally came running. I picked her up and said, "Good kitty" and Kally morphed into that devil guy. It wasn't Kally! I was so scared. The devil dude said, "Am I a good kitty?" Then he started laughing this devilish laugh. He told me the downstairs was on fire (we live in a duplex) and I had 5 minutes to get out. But I couldn't tell my mom there was a fire or else I would die. So I was looking for my cats cages and I couldn't find them. So I grabbed a box, threw them in there with some food and grabbed my photo album of all my friends back home. Then I told my mom to come outside with me and she said, "No, I'm really tired." And I said, "Please, mom, please come outside, I have to show you something." So she came and I told her to grab her purse. So she did. We were walking down the stairs and she said, "Sierra, the house is on fire, Sierra, Sierra...." and then I woke up and my mom was saying "Sierra" and waking me up. | female | 1998 |
midwest_teens-f | Midwest teenagers (F) | My dream was about me and my boy friend, and we were getting married. It was at my church, and his family and my family and relatives were there. His mom was crying, and my bridesmaids were kinda too. All I know is that we were together forever, and no one can take that away from us. I was very happy and so was he, also all our family, friends, and relatives were so happy for us. We both love each other very much, and we were 23 when we did get married. | female | 1998 |
midwest_teens-f | Midwest teenagers (F) | I went to this girl's house and she had a voice fader on her C.D. player. Her name is Cara and she is a new friend of mine. I had never seen her house before - we were in her bedroom. I asked her if I could use her voice fader to block out Mindy McCready's voice (a country singer) from her CD so I could tape just the music and use it in a singing competition. She told me I could if I paid her and I said OK. | female | 1998 |
midwest_teens-f | Midwest teenagers (F) | The dream took place in a place that was familiar to me but I couldn't tell what it was. All of the people in the dream were friends of mine, close to my age. It was a pleasant feeling. It was something that could happen in real life, but probably wouldn't. We were all just hanging out and talking and one of the guys pulled me aside and started telling me how much he was attracted to me and how beautiful I was. I got embarrassed and turned away. Then he turned my face back and kissed me. It could happen but considering the guy in the dream it probably wouldn't. | female | 1998 |
midwest_teens-f | Midwest teenagers (F) | Setting: the woods inside a castle (unfamiliar) and a friend's house (familiar). I went to visit my boy friend at his house but his best friend told me to be careful. Then the setting changed to a castle where a queen wanted to kill me for visiting boys. She chased after me until we got to a lake in the woods but we were still in the castle. They took my cloak off to behead me but when it was taken off, a bright white light flashed and when it went away, everyone was scared and they let me go. Ages: 16, 17, 20. Characters: all familiar (boy friend, friends), the queen even is a friend. It was unpleasant until I got away and then I liked it. No animals except a bird that was in the background of every scene. | female | 1998 |
midwest_teens-f | Midwest teenagers (F) | I dreamt that the world would end the next day as the bible predicted it. My family was in the dream along with three of my closest friends. My friends are all the same age as me. I remember trying to say good-bye to my friends and family because I knew we all would die the next day. I can't remember specific settings, but I do remember a field/meadow where all the grass was brown. I was very stressed out throughout the dream. | female | 1998 |
midwest_teens-f | Midwest teenagers (F) | My family had to go to some hospital because our exchange student had given us all a terrible rash and we had to burn all of our clothes and blankets. I was super mad at her (and was in real life also!). When I woke up I was even more upset at her. | female | 1998 |
midwest_teens-f | Midwest teenagers (F) | I was at my apartment building but it was on the beach on the Pacific Ocean. My brother, dad, and I went to the shore and had a picnic. There was a lot of green foam washing up on our food. My dad went for a swim and my brother and I stayed on share to talk to an old man. The man told us a story about the lions that lived on the beach. The lions ate humans. Then everyone on the beach was running and screaming because the lions were running behind them. My brother ran into the building but I didn't make it on time so I pulled out my building key and got in the first door before the lions could get me. | female | 1998 |
midwest_teens-f | Midwest teenagers (F) | I dreamed that I was flying on an airplane to Paris. I was sitting there in my seat when all of a sudden Matt Damon walks up to my row and says "hello." I was so excited. My heart was racing faster than I could feel it beat! He sat down next to me and we started to talk. I also remember that I was in the middle seat with Matt on my right and this really big heavy man on my left. I had to squish closer to Matt in order to sit more comfortably. But I don't think I had any objections to that!! We talked and laughed the whole way to Paris. It was great. | female | 1998 |
midwest_teens-f | Midwest teenagers (F) | My friend and I were on a religion trip to Canada. There were about 15 kids on the trip. We had two fifteen-passenger vans. I remember that we had fun and played softball. | female | 1998 |
midwest_teens-f | Midwest teenagers (F) | I had a dream that my friend moved back to Minnesota from Maryland. He is 17. In my dream it was day time and we were just talking and getting reacquainted because we haven't seen each other for six years. I was happy in my dream because (I think) it is something which I really want to happen. I dreamed that we went rollerblading with him and two of our other friends, the two which I got his address from. | female | 1998 |
midwest_teens-f | Midwest teenagers (F) | I dreamed that one day I came back from school and I was on the bus. Then my friends said "Gosh, every day when our bus gets off here to drop you off, there is a car full of guys waiting for you!" I said, "No, they might just be waiting for someone." I was a little afraid but then I got off the bus and they followed me. Then I walked faster, then I opened the door and ran upstairs and walked into my house and locked the door. | female | 1998 |