(no subject)
I spent the Fourth more or less plastered, and while the entire city was up on their rooftops or down by the river hoping for a glimpse of the Esplanade, I was staggering into nearly-empty trivia nights where they were playing neutral milk hotel's king of carrot flowers, with its lush sentimental were's and would's and tortured memories of repeated past action- the imperfect has always been my favorite tense.
I had lunch with my mother the other day for the first time in a while, and I found it necessary to provide her with some long-overdue clarification on the topic of my sexuality, as she was apparently rather confused. My poor mother- sitting alone all day out in the suburbs with her dog, worried sick about her depressed fuckup son, inventing all kinds of wild things to fill the gaps in her knowledge of how I live. She sees a red mark on my arm and asks if I'm on heroin.
Last night I had an epic series of dreams about both my mother and the imperfect tense. I was the administrator of a large government nuclear research facility that was being raided by my mother and her redoubtable storm troopers. It was divided into several levels, and, just like in The Andromeda Strain, the most important, dangerous, top-secret equipment was located on the bottom level- in this case an experimental reactor of some kind. There were 12 doors between the entrance on the top level and the reactor on the bottom level, and my mother had keys to 11 of those doors. I hurried down to the bottom and locked the 12th, but I knew it would only buy me so much time. I quickly set the reactor on overload and climbed into this teleportation device (another of our secret projects) to make my getaway before the whole place went up in a giant flaming mushroom cloud, but as the teleporter was powering up my mother's storm troopers burst through the 12th door and shut down the reactor.
I repeated this scenario several more times, and it became a sort of video game that I just couldn't seem to beat. Eventually I got tired of it and walked outside the facility, where Humphrey Bogart was trying to teach the French imparfait to a group of middle-school students. He was in an irritable mood, and kept swatting his neck as if he were being bitten by mosquitoes. But mostly he was irritated (and, I suspect, deep down, secretly flattered) because his students kept staring at his enormous cleavage, which was conspicuously on display in a low-cut red dress. Venais, venais, venait...YOU AREN'T LISTENING he would scream in his shrill Captain Queeg voice.
The two dreams alternated back and forth for a while- Bogart, the Reactor. The Reactor, Bogart- until they found their uneasy synthesis in a third dream about this beautiful, androgynous race of beings who at one time were dedicated purely to love and the pursuit of pleasure, but who were now in the decadent phase of their civilization, spending all of their time senselessly fighting each other with snake-swords. My snake-sword kept biting me whenever I tried to use it.
I had lunch with my mother the other day for the first time in a while, and I found it necessary to provide her with some long-overdue clarification on the topic of my sexuality, as she was apparently rather confused. My poor mother- sitting alone all day out in the suburbs with her dog, worried sick about her depressed fuckup son, inventing all kinds of wild things to fill the gaps in her knowledge of how I live. She sees a red mark on my arm and asks if I'm on heroin.
Last night I had an epic series of dreams about both my mother and the imperfect tense. I was the administrator of a large government nuclear research facility that was being raided by my mother and her redoubtable storm troopers. It was divided into several levels, and, just like in The Andromeda Strain, the most important, dangerous, top-secret equipment was located on the bottom level- in this case an experimental reactor of some kind. There were 12 doors between the entrance on the top level and the reactor on the bottom level, and my mother had keys to 11 of those doors. I hurried down to the bottom and locked the 12th, but I knew it would only buy me so much time. I quickly set the reactor on overload and climbed into this teleportation device (another of our secret projects) to make my getaway before the whole place went up in a giant flaming mushroom cloud, but as the teleporter was powering up my mother's storm troopers burst through the 12th door and shut down the reactor.
I repeated this scenario several more times, and it became a sort of video game that I just couldn't seem to beat. Eventually I got tired of it and walked outside the facility, where Humphrey Bogart was trying to teach the French imparfait to a group of middle-school students. He was in an irritable mood, and kept swatting his neck as if he were being bitten by mosquitoes. But mostly he was irritated (and, I suspect, deep down, secretly flattered) because his students kept staring at his enormous cleavage, which was conspicuously on display in a low-cut red dress. Venais, venais, venait...YOU AREN'T LISTENING he would scream in his shrill Captain Queeg voice.
The two dreams alternated back and forth for a while- Bogart, the Reactor. The Reactor, Bogart- until they found their uneasy synthesis in a third dream about this beautiful, androgynous race of beings who at one time were dedicated purely to love and the pursuit of pleasure, but who were now in the decadent phase of their civilization, spending all of their time senselessly fighting each other with snake-swords. My snake-sword kept biting me whenever I tried to use it.