My Baby Shot me Down

We were in a retro cottagy place playing games on an old commodore 64. A weekend cooped up inside, lying together on couches cuddling and listlessly watching the screen while others played the game and adjusted the contrast. I felt like I had been there before in that cottage. I felt so much like I had been there that I told someone I had. “It’s such a coincidence!" I said to one of the girls. "I didn’t know it until now but this used to be my aunt and uncle’s cottage.” Then I wondered how often this cottage was rented out and who actually lived there now. They were all pretty girls but plain in a way. I didn’t recognize any of them but it was as if I didn’t NOT recognize them either. They just seemed comfortable. She got up from the bed and I watched from behind as she pulled up her thong which had somehow gotten tangled around her knees. Then we were in a section of the cottage where their were jacuzzis and white tiles and candles. It smelled like incense and chlorine. Suddenly some Japanese women came out from a staircase and seemed to be in a daze. They would pose in various dance positions and scream to us but they were in some kind of trance. They told us there were evil spirits and they would move their hands through the air as if pushing charkas and invisible energy.

Some couples dressed in leather and fishnet came with their plastic toy guns and sat down at the picnic table. They looked like they were straight out of a Tarantino flick or something. I thought it was all an act but I wasn’t sure so I joked with them about “watching out that I didn’t get shot” to ease the tension. Looking at the stranger with a dark black mustache, a leather red shirt and black cowboy boots and his girlfriend –both dressed like people out of a super hero comic, I hoped they weren’t actually here to fight. But they smiled and seemed to like my joke. Their expression was as if to say “you’re alright buddy.” Now that they were gone, I took the gun and pretended to shoot the Japanese women who were dancing to the theremin music, ridding the bath house of the evil spirits. It really was as if they were hypnotized because as soon as I pointed the plastic gun at them and said “bang bang” they started falling and would grab at their sides as if they had been shot. Others joined in the game firing and firing until all the women who had been dancing and “ridding the place of evil spirits” were lying on the floor. The music cut out as if someone abruptly ripped the cord out of the wall. Later we sat down in another session and I talked to an older man who was darkly tanned about how apparently everyone was dying right now. “It’s the thing to do these days,” he said. He reiterated to me about a friend who decided one summer that she was “just going to make billions. She just started digging and that’s where she is today.” Fascinating! So this was the secret to money-making! I wanted to get in on the conversation so I told him: “Another idea is to be a funeral director. I mean, tell me, I know they do a lot of different things but what do you need to do really besides coordinate with the families that are dying and preach a good service to them?” It seemed straight forward but I left that place without ever remembering that I had gotten an answer from him. I was walking out in the sun, presumably home. I felt like I wanted a cigarette but I didn’t have any.

Then I woke up and realized that it was all a dream. The sun was almost down and in a few hours, I would be due for the midnight shift.

Sleep Deprivation