Dream

I'm on a city bus heading towards a play that is also, somehow, a Democratic Party fundraiser. My roommate, my roommate's girlfriend, and a goodly collection of my roommate's loose social circle are on the bus with me, all dressed for success. I am not in the play and am on the bus only because of them. It is my roommate and her girlfriend and hold my attention. These other people are phantoms. Shades.

So I talk to them as our bus draws further and further from the side of town I know. We enter a place of gentle, rising hills and enormious houses. I know this is no part of my adaopted city and yet keep on.

The bus arrives and the social circle begins to depart. My roommate's girlfriend stands up and I'm face-to-crotch with her in the bus' isle. They have preperations to make because the play's the thing and they are only players. "We'll see you," my roommate says. Then they're gone.

I disembark and find myself on a green lawn that slopes down to someone's lake. There are few lakes around these parts so I do not know its name. The ground is half lawn, half highway rest stop because I find a wooden table and have a sit in the dream sunlight. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) and her daughter, Chelsea (now blonde, for some reason) spred a towel across the grass. I think of introducing myself the New York's junior Senator, telling her this is no time for anyone to give a shit about flag burning, least of all the hotshot law school peacnick from Illinois I know sleeps, somewhere, within that centrist, professional shell.

I turn to think about what I'd like to say, only to turn back and find the Clinton females gone. They've retired to the house.

The dream house is two parts palatial mansion, one part the apartment I'm staying in now, and like all dream houses it is as maliable as the dream itself. I sneak my way in through an open door and the interior resembles an aging school office. Desks squat on all sides, filled with papers. Papers crowd out ever flat surface--even the wide, polished oak banister that cradles the staircase. I run my hand over them as I make my way downstairs, trying not to knock them off an annouce my presence to whoever might lurk below. I am uncomfortably aware that I have no business being here. No business chasing down the junior Senator from New York...or her daughter...no matter what I might like to say to either of them. (Most of what I'd say to Chelsea falls into the, "Hey...nice shoes...wanna fuck?" category...thankfully this is not one of those dreams.)

Below the desk farm is a long, cement corridor that reminds me of the labyrinths under my high school gym, gone but not forgotten. There are people there. Too many people, seated in the benches that, improbably, march up the side of the wall. Who in their right mind would put a gym inside the bottom of their house? I wonder as a rustle moves through the crowd. Bill is comming. Our Man from Hope is about to arrive and in these times we so desperetly need hope.

All I need is a bathroom, and an escape route from the impending mob scene. So I turn down a corridor and find carpet under my feet. The corridor leads to a spacious, white den, big screen TV, couch and all. A woman glides by me (the way dream people do) and tells me, "It's to your right."

I thank her and take a left, finding a spiral staircase leading down. I wonder where it goes, unconcerned my need to pee has vanished. There's a sound behind me. Voices. Whoever they are, I suddenly know they are on their way for me.

So down I go like I'm two thousand flushes, taking the spiral staircase in one leap. I find myself in what could be a hallway next to the open door of what could be a child's room. There's a green couch in there, one end propped against the wall, so long it almost touches the ceiling. Who the hell would lean their couch against the wall? What kind of children live in a crazy place like this?

"He went that way."

Indeed I did. And whoever they are they certainly saw me. Thankfully one wall of this hallway is made of sliding glass doors. I open them and fine myself back in the yard. Enormious flowering plants bloom, supported by wicker trellises. I crawl beneith one, my dream heart pounding, as two men in red suits exist the house, looking for me. The suits are lycra--running costumes--and the men are fat. It's not a pleasent sight. They look around and shake their heads. The Uninvited One has escaped them. The elite are safe from class conscious interlopers...for now. The men in the red suits move away. And just as I'm about to leave my hiding place among the green and the dirt I wake up.

And that's that.