The Test of Love

This is the test of love, a pretty woman says to me. She leads me into a room with a couch and a television set. She flips on the television set and hands me a cable-remote with seven buttons. She tells me I can watch anything I like, and then leaves the room. On each channel is a pornographic video. As I study the channels, I discover that each video loops back after about eight minutes. On one channel, for example, a woman is being fucked by two men, but just at the point of climax the screen flips back to the moment when she is giving them both head. On another channel, a Mexican woman is bouncing on top of her boyfriend by a pool. He cries out something in Spanish, and she gets off him, preparing for the money shot, when she is suddenly bouncing on top of him again. After about thirty minutes, I discover the allegory, and know I am going to pass this test. Love is this brief moment, I think, this sudden rupture in the tape when the clip loops back on itself. I pull at the door handle, but the room is locked. I study each channel again, making sure I have identified all seven moments when the pornographic video clip loops back. Now I’m kicking and banging on the door. I have passed the test! I shout. Let me out of here! But something tells me that no one is coming for me for a long time.

Telephone Test

Your test, a woman in a white dress says to me, is very simple. Simply dial your grandmother on the telephone. She hands me a telephone. I begin to dial, 2-2-4-9-0-8-7 saying the numbers aloud in my head, but I mess them up, 2-2-4-9-8-0-7, or loop the numbers, 2-2-4-9-2-2-4, and each time I forget where I am and have to begin again. My fingers are dancing over the keys. My eyes are getting tired. The number 8 looks a lot like the number 9. – What will happen if I fail this test? I finally ask her, exasperated. – That depends, she says, on when you realize that your grandmother is dead.

Photography

I wake up because I am thirsty. I get up to get a glass of water. I see a flash of light from the window. In the garret across the courtyard from me, a woman is photographing someone. It is unclear what is going on. The thought occurs to me that I must put on my jacket, my slippers, run down the stairs, and ring their doorbell. I put on my jacket, then my slippers, and walk to the front door, glancing across the courtyard again. The woman is staring right at me. 

The Files

There are ten blank file folders on the table. On a slip of paper is written, “Please put these files in order.” I open the first file folder and inside it are ten more file folders. On another slip of paper is written, “Please put these files in order.” I am too scared to open the first file folder again, so I open the seventh file folder (in the first file folder). Inside are seven blank file folders, with a slip of paper which reads, “WRONG ORDER. PUT THESE SEVEN FILES IN ORDER AND THEN RETURN TO THE FIRST FILE FOLDER.”

The Lady Ape

An ape enters a room with a long beard that reaches the floor and he punches me in the ribs. He stands in the room and begins masturbating. I start to shout at him that I am being mistreated. I call him an ape. Then another ape comes in the room wearing a pink dress, which looks disturbing. She points to my shoes and starts to scream. I remember an anecdote a friend of mine told me that apes like to attack pregnant women, and that the ape’s way of attacking is to mutilate the face and genitals. I roll up in a ball, hoping that she will not realize I am pregnant.

The Russian

A short black man with a beard enters the room and punches me in the kidneys. I collapse onto the ground. He leaves the room. A Chinese woman comes in and lifts up her skirt and urinates on me. The urine is bright orange. She leaves immediately. A Russian man comes in. – Take off your boots! He shouts. I do. He begins to leave. – Is that all you’re going to do? I ask. He doesn’t respond. Then I look down at my feet and they are covered in feces.

Urine Bus Illustration

The Aluminum Vagina

I am sitting in a beautiful apartment on the thirtieth floor with Kelley, the prettiest redhead from Cornell Irving High, with whom I never spoke a word. She tells me that she always thought about me back in school and that she always wished I would talk to her. This fills me with surprise. I tell her that I am talking to her now, and she smiles and we begin kissing passionately. Her mouth tastes like peaches. She moans. I kiss her shoulders, her breasts, her stomach, and work my way down between her legs when my mouth hits something hard. I slide off her thong, and discover that she has an aluminum vagina. First I think it is a kind of erotic piercing, but after inspecting it I realize that her entire vaginal canal is solid aluminum, running deep inside of her body. I look up at her, and she is talking on her cell phone to her manager. – Kelley, I say. She glances down at me, then covers the receiver. – What’s the matter, she asks. Isn’t it clean?

The Pink Rose

I am in a dining hall of a private school. I have a pink rose. A beautiful nurse is sitting at the head table. I get up slowly, my hands shaking. I walk down the center aisle. The children stop eating and look at me. There are sneering. Some are giggling. As I approach her she smiles at me. She is all in white. I place the rose in front of her. I turn around, and walk slowly back to my seat, triumphant. I am Christ, I say to myself. I mean it partly as a joke but in this dream there is no irony. Her scream pierces through the air. It is terrible. It is a scream of horror. I know that if I turn my head I will see something no one should ever see. My legs feel weak under me. I am swirling into the vortex. The nurse’s face in my mind is a pink rose. She is being swallowed by the shark of the pink rose. I cannot turn my head. I will never turn my head.

Urine Bus

I cross the street to use a telephone. A bus passes by. My only thought is, “autobus.” I wake up and find that I am beginning to urinate in the bed, and stop abruptly.

Waterslides

I am in a magical city that I know by name only in my dream. The city is covered by a huge dome. There are indoor waterslides and I know they are the greatest waterslides in the world. Haseed and I have to wait for almost twenty dream time minutes for access, then we begin a slow climb up the long staircase to the top of the slide. As we climb, we talk about how this effort and this seemingly endless staircase will be worth it because the waterslides are the greatest and most exciting in the world. When it seems that we are nearing the top, Haseed stops abruptly and says that this is a waste of time. I felt hurt and ask him if he is disappointed that he came. He smiles and says that he is not. He is happy now that he has given up hope. He wants to leave. I point up the staircase as though in protest, and then realize we are still at the bottom. We leave, arm in arm.

Hotel Baby

I am staying in a beautiful fifty-story hotel. I get in late after a night drinking single malt scotch and playing a board game in the lobby with old friends. When I return I remember that I left the baby in my apartment. I feel horrible and guilty. I look in the bedroom and find it lying on the floor, still alive. The baby is as small as a coffee mug. Instead of a face it has a folded mass of skin with two bright black eyes. It doesn’t speak. It seems to grow in size. I pick it up carefully and immediately it starts to poop all over me. I get into the shower with it and wash it off. Later I am cooking and it crawls between the fridge and the stove. I pull the fridge away. It is covered in grease, scratching against the wall. Frantically, I pick it up, check for burns, then take it to the shower again. It is clawing at me with its little thin hands, pooping itself, and growing in size.

A Friend

There is a man at the door. He is wearing an orange raincoat that is torn near the sleeve. I open the door and he smiles and comes in and takes the raincoat off and hangs it in the hall cupboard. I ask him what he wants and who he is. He laughs. I ask him again what he wants. – What are you up to? He responds. I realize that he must be an old friend that I have known for a very long time. He follows me up to my room. I start working on my computer. He looks through through my comic book collection, then starts playing with my Slinky. – You have a lot of cool stuff, he says. Then he lies down on my bed, and asks me to play some music. – I’m looking for a job, he says. But I've had no luck. Play some music. I put on a Leonard Cohen album. - I hate this old stuff, he says. I realize that this man is incredibly boring and we have almost nothing in common. He is so boring to me that I don’t even remember being friends with him.

The Return of the Terrible Child

Last night I dreamed about the terrible child again. But in my dream I was “remembering” an aspect of the original Terrible Child dream that I had forgotten. The father and the terrible child were older now and the father still had the bungee hook stuck in his brain. But his hair had grown around it and he looked just fine. The terrible child was standing on a molehill with a crowbar, about to do something terrible to a little girl, when suddenly the crowbar dropped from his hands. His father asked him why he had dropped the crowbar. The terrible child became shy, and blushed, and whispered to his dad that he was getting older and that he was tired of being terrible and that he wanted to take the girl out instead to the movies.

The Terrible Child

I am reading the book about a terrible child. His father is driving a red car and has to stop by the side of the road to try and calm the child down. The child gets out of the car and begins smashing the headlights with his bare fists. A woman walks by and the child trips her, then kicks her with supernatural force in front of an oncoming semi-trailer. She is crushed, her right arm tears off and sprays the man with blood. The child then runs into a nearby house. A woman screams, china shatters, and flames light up the upstairs windows. SUDDENLY, I AM THAT MAN. I am standing there beside my red car soaked in blood and everyone is staring at me in shocked horror. I get into my car and start to drive away. Then I see in my rear-view mirror that the child is holding one end of a bungee cord. The other end is attached to the frame of my driver's side window. As I accelerate the car slows down, tilting right. The tires squeal. The child flashes a smile as wide as the SPIDER KITTY'S and ten lets go of the cord. I hear it zooming toward me. I hear it thunk in my brain. I wake up drenched in sweat. It’s 11 a.m. Candace has already gone to work.

Castration Epic (Part 5)

- George, don’t leave me. I have something to tell you, my mother moans. She lies on the bed, naked. Her legs are swollen and almost bulbous, and thick dark hair grows on them. I am frantically looking for my Air Jordans. My fingers are broken and I can’t pull on my shoes. I run downstairs and finally find the bathroom but when I look in the mirror I see my mother’s face. Her smile extends beyond the bounds of her face like the SPIDER KITTY's smile. That is it, I think. I am going to get a knife and murder everyone. I’ve got to remove the faces and the fingerprints of everyone in this house (à la Gorky Park) and then I'll take my grandfather’s car to Mexico. I go into the kitchen and find three Cuban men wearing wife-beaters. They look like they are having a conversation, but they are all just moaning like they are having orgasms. My grandmother and grandfather are watching them, almost cheering them on. – George, what are you looking for? My grandmother asks. – I need a knife, I tell her, bursting into tears. I have lost my hair and my teeth and my fingers are broken and my mother has taken my sex from me. – What you need is a peanut butter square, she says. I collapse by her feet and tell her I love her and the black man because they didn’t castrate me and ask her to please bury my body by the crabapple tree outside. – What you need is a peanut butter square, she says.

Castration Epic (Part 4)

I am completely bald. I have lost my teeth. My dad lies drunk, perhaps dead, on his bed. The black man has disappeared. Someone has dimmed the lights. – George, my mother whispers. Do you want to see the renovations upstairs? She leads me with a cold hand up a long stone staircase to a floor I never knew existed. It’s a massive room, with a raised platform and a king-sized Victorian bed on a pedestal. Red velvet, silver studs, and a giant down cover. My mother, now wearing a negligee, walks through a pair of arches to another room. The walls are painted deep yellow and red. Along the wall are low tables heaped with cakes and coffees. I follow her into another room where the walls are covered with holes. The sun leaks in. There are tapestries and hanging plants, racks of old musical instruments collecting dust. – The room is very unsteady, my mother said, but I hope you appreciate it. An old man entered and said he was the caretaker, but my mother introduced him as a geologist. He looked at me like I was a criminal. I was enthralled with the instruments and the colors. My mother walked back to the bed and sat on it. – Mother, can I bring my friends up here to show them around? I asked, thinking how much Haseed and Roger would love these rooms. – No you may not, my mother said. It is time for bed. Come here. My mother’s eyes seemed unusually puffy. She peeled away the top or her negligee and I looked away, panicked. – Give me your foot, she snapped. I backed away but she had my foot in her cold hand. She placed it on her warm, naked throat and she began to moan. It felt good. Her mouth opened, she spat hot fluid at me which covered my face and legs.

The Spider Kitty

Castration Epic (Part 3)

Bald, ashamed, smelling like urine, the fingers on my right hand broken, trapped in the back seat, I stare out as we drive through a wealthy neighborhood of Los Angeles. My grandfather is pointing to different condominium properties he owns, as well as the buying price and their worth today. My mother and Shelley listen in silent awe, and Shelley has taken off her bikini top. We arrive at my grandmother’s house. I rush into the living room, where a television is blaring, then into the back porch, the kitchen, looking for the bathroom. Instead I end up in the back bedroom with blue wallpaper where my father is sitting in just a pair of stained white briefs. His head is in his hands, and a six pack of beer is beside him. He has gained over a hundred pounds. He looks up at me, tears in his eyes, a kind of crustacean forming around his mouth. – George, I’m so happy you brought the dog, he says. – What dog? I say. Immediately, Alex, my dog as a child, comes running into the room, filled with joy, barking. Charlotte, my favorite cat, slowly follows him and watches as he rolls around with my dad. Alex tries to sniff Charlotte and she viciously smacks his face. He yelps. She stands up on her back legs and runs beside a coat rack and pretends to be the coat rack, her arms out in a “Y” pattern. [She was posing as the SPIDER KITTY, a terrifying castrating demon who haunted me as a child.] Then she leaps forward and grabs Alex. – You’re being a baby! she shouts. - You must stand on your back legs and stop acting like a dog. She pulls him up and tries to teach him to play paddy-cake. My mother and the black man now enter the bedroom [yes, he returns again, as if just to remind me that my dream has no part for him] and my mother begins talking about how dogs and cats are much smarter than we give them credit for. Charlotte is now smacking Alex’s face repeatedly with her paw, repeating the paddycake rhyme. Alex is losing consciousness. Human teeth are falling out of his mouth. He is looking at me sadly, as though mourning that he is human. My dad sits back on the bed, gloomily, and drinks the last of the beers. – Alex, I’m sorry, I say, but my voice is only a murmur. I run my tongue along my gums and realize I have lost all of my teeth.

Castration Epic (Part 2)

I’ve got to get out of here, I think. I leave the table and run up to my room. I begin pacing, looking out at the forest from my window. I find a Winston cigarette from an old leather pouch. The cigarette is yellow and smells like urine. I run downstairs, three stairs at a time, speaking to no one, burst out the front doors and head straight into the woods. I go deep, where no one can find me. The woods are filled will blueberries and trees with yellow flowers. I reach a chasm of luscious vegetation with a little path leading down. – It’s beautiful! I shout, as though to waken the stones. Immediately, I am in the back seat of my mother’s car on the highway, staring at the same landscape zooming by. – What did you say, George? She says. My grandfather is in the front seat and Shelley is on his lap. She is wearing a pink bikini top. – The landscape is beautiful, I say. – You smell like urine, my grandfather says. Jenny laughs. My grandfather returns to his story about being on the corvette ship in the second world war. His wrinkled hand caresses Shelley's skin. – You've got nice breasts, he says to her. I try to open the door but I hear my mother flick the child lock from the front seat. – You just sit tight, George, she says. I lean back and look up at the sky from the rear window. My long hair is blowing all over the place. I touch my head and my hair is coming off in clumps. I am going bald almost instantly.

Castration Epic (Part 1)

I am sitting at a dining room table at a fishing lodge with my grandfather, Shelley, a pretty girl I grew up with, and a black man I had never seen before. [Someone complained to me a few days ago that my dreams were filled with white people, which is probably why he was “added” to my dream last night.] We are eating roast beef. My grandfather is going on about the Middle East, and Shelley is politely trying to tell him that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about, since she is a Middle East scholar, and he is just an old man. Suddenly my mother erupts into a long digression about how I was an effeminate child, and that I made strange sound effects wherever she took me. She says that it was difficult to take be anywhere between the ages of 12-16 because I used to embarrass her. Shelley looks down, embarrassed. My grandfather stares at the wall in front of him, thinking about this. I am furious and want to tell everyone that my mother is a drug addict and that she traumatized me as a child. But I know my grandfather will think I am spoiled, since he had already enlisted in the army when he was 16. And now there is no way Shelley will want to come up to my room make out with me on my bed. I begin cracking my knuckles, until I realize I have broken two of my fingers.

Bridge

I am walking to the castle along a dirt road. At a wooden bridge an old man stops me. – I am your grandfather, he says. – You are not my grandfather, I say. My grandfather was killed in the war. – Nevertheless, you must unlock my head, which is the real castle, he says. I laugh. He turns around three times and then throws himself over the railing of the bridge. I continue walking across the bridge when it stops. I look down and there is nothing but mist and clouds. I look up to the castle. But there is nothing, only mist and clouds.

Hockey Coach (Part 2)

The game begins. A tall man dressed entirely in orange is hammering slapshots at everyone: at a goalie with his mask up having a drink, at a girl that has fallen on the ice, at two people in the crowd, at the coaches in the boxes, even at the Zamboni driver as he is closing the gates to the ice. I hear two men laughing and discover that they are sitting on chairs on the cement floor. Their skates grate against the cement floor. – You two had better show me what’s in those bags, I say to them. – Screw off, faggot, they say. I look at my clipboard to write a complaint, but the form has become one of Van Gogh’s paintings covered with little numbers and lines. My assistant is wrestling with one of the men for a cassette tape. I hear a moaning, and look back to see Fat Matthew, the fattest boy from my high school, wearing nothing but a jock strap. He’s grown man now, his body nothing but dark hair, blubber, and welts from where the pucks have hit him. He’s crying, being hauled off to the penalty box by a coach who has him by the hair. An explosion at one end of the rink made shards of ice fly in every direction. The man in orange comes flying around the net, using his hockey stick to keep a football up in the air. I decide to head to the dressing room in order to decipher the Van Gogh. But the man in orange is coming right at me. He spins around backwards and smashes the football right at me.

Hockey Coach (Part 1)

I’ve been assigned to coach a hockey team. Someone has given me a clipboard. It’s twice the size of a regular clipboard. And there’s a giant calendar on the front of it. My first task is to inspect the hockey bags piled up along the wall by the rink. Orange, red, orange, blue, green, blue, orange. I write each color down and have to circle either 7 or 8 for its score. I have an assistant, about four feet tall. I tell him to unzip the first bag. He looks at me and then slowly unzips it. There’s a pair of old roller skates, styrafoam containers, coffee grounds and old banana peels. Maggots are crawling all over the garbage. I give it a 7. – Unzip the next, I say. – I don’t want to, he whimpers. – No one wants to do it! I shout. He does, and there’s a pile of green mush. I peer into it and a fish jumps right out. My assistant squeals. – Zip it up! I shout. He’s crying, his hands shaking. I like being in control. I give the bag an 8. Something about the next bag worries me. I decide to pass on it, giving it a 7. My assistant opens the fourth bag, the blue one. I cover my face, expecting a wolf to jump out. Instead, there’s a sickly looking woman, almost folded up, wearing a black dress with a strap coming off her shoulder. – Are you playing? I ask her. – Everyone has to play, she says, and steps out of the bag, teetering on her white skates which are not done up well. Just then I hear the crack of a slapshot. My assistant screams, as though he had been hit. The girl turns her head and looks back at us, sadly, a puck in her mouth, teeth and blood falling onto her white skates.

Drop of Doom

We are drinking Black Russians. They taste like martinis, but that is OK. They are black, and we are smoking long, white cigarettes. We are both wearing black T-shirts, with white padding down the front. It is the latest style. I don’t know who I am with. Together we decide to ride the Drop of Doom, the most terrifying ride at the amusement park. As we walk toward it, drinks in hand, matching shirts, long cigarettes, everyone is looking at us. Everyone wants to know us. But the crowd thins out as we get to the ride, and finally it is cold and dark and muddy and there is a couple arguing. The woman is crying like she has been betrayed. I tell the man that we want to ride the Drop of Doom, and he says that it is broken, and that there is only one ride left that is working, and it’s called The Table. He points to a table in front of him. It’s just a table. Suddenly, my companion collapses in tears on the table, finally coming into view. It is Candace, only she is about forty pounds lighter. – It’s lost, she cries. – What is lost? I ask her, stroking her soft hair. Some of it sticks to her red cheeks. – Everything is lost, she cries.