Which Is Where We Are Now

I’m very coy and I seduce one girl, then another. They are dorm-mates in the house with me.
We are in a military barracks in some tropical region. Still, the barracks are spacious, clean, and simple.

Tammy (childhood dog) walks away from the barracks; she seems lost. I follow Tammy… out the fort, onto streets; I travel the paths next to streets.
Willa comes by in a plastic toy car. It’s a strange moment: neither of us is entirely excited to see one another; we resignedly say our hellos and a goodbyes.

I follow Tammy to the military city. A giant deluxe hummer as wide as the two-lane road is exiting. I grit my teeth as Tammy walks right across its path; however, the driver sees her and waited before moving the vehicle. As I walk in, I’m arrested for being AWOL (being late). I am interrogated by a chubby man and then his superior: a Condi Rice type of woman. I’m Hawkeye Pierce. I explain I was drafted into this. She corrects me. I re-explain I was drafted into this, then hired myself out as a soldier after the war.

Back at Pizza Hut.

I’m helping out with a lady doing prep work. In my helping, I disturb some personal items she had laying on the table. I move on to the cut table.

This theme of helping only to be overwhelmed and hurting the people I try to help repeats a number of times; I forget the details.

At the cut table, the pizzas are stacking up at the oven belt’s end. I’m not cutting them fast enough. Nazer is there, with his professional no-nonsense, completely above the game and in control.

Then, dairy items start protruding out. A whole long rack of milk bottles, cakes, breads stand in a cool refrigerated room which was pushing out a crowd of molten pizza a second ago. It takes some time for me to investigate the items and to grasp the totality of the change.

I’m in the library. I look for something to checkout; eventually, I decide against checking out anything.

As I leave and turn a corner, I see two teenagers, a white and black boy, steal books from behind the librarians as they help patrons checkout their books. The stealing is going inside to outside, back and forth; it’s all visible because the library has lots of glass in their walls.

Why steal from a public library??

Should I call the police? Yes. I call the police.

They go up the street. I chase after them. A policeman drives up; he knows I made the call.

Two older guys — thin, white, intelligent, college-age men — are walking around the park where the land is level. The are the brains behind the operation. Also involved are a group of small children, innocents.

I confront the black kid. He pulls out a gun. Somehow I manage to get the gun away from him. It turns out the gun is just a bee-bee gun.

Cut to in the school room, perhaps in a church. I talk about the stealing to the students, who are children of various ages.

I explain the two men arraigned it as a social protest of some sort. As I say this, I’m reminded of my own youthful demonstrations and I feel a pang of embarrassed regret at myself.

The black and white kid are in the class! It’s a strange, subtle confrontation with them here.

It’s hard to keep the students’ attentions; so, as much I want to explain the details completely, I try to wrap it up to preserve some semblance of effective communication.

I go to an adjacent interior room to get some object. I find something like a white orb in a small cubby area; I turn off the lights. Wait, there are teachers there, especially an older black lady. Lights back on.

I wake up thinking the Arthurian legend about the sword in the stone is referring to one’s true, scrawny self calling the shots, despite the seeming inappropriateness.

I’m flying in a fighter jet, trying to shoot down the enemy planes.

It’s hard going. I get closer and closer to the ground — hard to pull up.

Eventually, I quit.

Cut to a lady in a red pickup truck talking into a CB transponder: “What am I going to do with these CDs?” she asks.

Passing and getting open, all the way to the goal and getting pushed out.

Still, I huff it back towards midfield. Why?

Just then a forward approaches; I’m now onside; he passes to me; I pass back; I’m open for a pass to take the shot.

I’m hanging out after school with my junior high algebra teacher. It’s a vaguely flirting conversation we have.

I’m working on an test question, an essay question. The page is labeled 10/10 for page 10 of 10. I take the whole hour of our time to work on the essay.

Now the regular class fills in; the classroom is my high school physics classroom, though the subject is humanities.

Students fill in the class. They are completely at ease. They all took the test at home: not just page 10, but pages 1 through 9.

I beg to do the entire test; my classmates laugh.

I receive pages 1 through 9. There are multiple choice questions with unfamiliar diagrams. The essay was tough going; this is even worse: I can’t wrestle down these multiple choice questions.

The teacher leaves momentarily and the students, without fear and in casual progress, exchange tests, improving each others answers.

A girl at the back of the room is so bored she has a relaxed spontaneous orgasm.

In an attempt to concentrate better, I move up to the front of the class on the right-hand side, but it’s no use. Frustrated, I stand up and approach the teachers desk. In an honest confession I quit the test and turn it in.

After this dream, two other dreams follow with the same tension and then quiting of a test or trial; I forget the dramatic contents.