Slides

Let’s look at slides, my mother says. Everyone at the party murmurs their consent, half-enthused. Chairs are set up. The slide projector is warmed up. The screen is unrolled. The lights are dimmed. The first picture is my mother naked, her legs spread open. – Oh. This is where George was born, she says. The second is of me, two weeks old. – This is George, she says. What a cutie! The third is of her, naked, her legs open. – George’s father took that, she says, laughing. The forth is of me, six months old, eating mashed-up pears. – That’s George, she says. Yummy! The fifth is just a close up shot of her spread vagina. – I don’t know who took this, she says. Many have gotten up, and are pouring more drinks, or feeling their way through the dark, bumping into one another, and laughing, thinking they would like to go into the garden and smoke cigars. – I have about six reels, she laughs. Could someone please pour me a gin and tonic?

Towels

He is shouting at her, she is crying, he is crying, she is threatening to leave him, she is stealing towels, he is making threats, there are people waiting outside, he is stealing towels, she is crying, he wants to disappear, she takes hold of his ear, he hits her face, she is screaming, there are people waiting outside, I’ve got enough towels, he shouts, We can’t steal all the towels.

Refugee

A very short Asian woman wearing black clothes arrives at my door carrying a hard black suitcase. She tells me she will be my lover if she can live with me, for she is a refugee. I do not find her particularly attractive, as she was VERY short, but I agree, for I don’t want to be racist. – But you must let me stay here, she says, No matter what. I nod. She follows me inside. All my friends are there. I must be having a party. The woman takes off her pants and is wearing only her panties. Now she doesn’t speak a word of English, and stands in the center of the guests, flabbergasted. My guests have been rearranging my house. They have thrown down carpets, a low table covered with board games and cards, and two double bunk beds in my office. – It’s hardly my house anymore! I say, and some guests laugh. I go into my bedroom and start to reassemble my bed, because someone has replaced it with a crib. I don’t want a baby, I think, wishing that my guests would all leave. I just want to sleep with my refugee guest.

Juggy Dad

I was awoken by a disturbing dream this morning that I was in prison and my father was the guard and he was trying to foot fuck me while beating me with a nightstick. Except his voice sounded like Juggy’s, and so I told him that I had not stolen any money from him and he said, “It’s got nothing to do with that, it’s that you didn’t like my screenplay about the professional poker players, and for that I will follow you to the ends of the earth, no matter where you go, and destroy your life.”

"Forbidden Fruit Makes a Man Accursed"

It is from an old French poem. I have spent five days trying to clean my little dungeon and make it look elegant. I live in a basement storage area. My friend was kind enough to let me move my things in amid his boxes and exercise equipment, providing that I do not use the living room upstairs or talk to his children or his wife and make my meals only at odd hours so that no one is bothered by my presence. Tonight, however, a woman will visit me. She has been in love for almost five years with another man, but she recently began to respond to my calls, and promised tonight to have a drink with me. Most important to me was getting the bed set up for her. It’s an old bed. As I screwed it together, I realized how ridiculously small it was for this tiny space. I jammed boxes under it, and got it to fit only by a miracle. When she comes, we’ll have a glass of wine at my desk, which faces an air duct and is crammed against the basement toilet, which I have scrubbed clean, and then we’ll go straight to bed, because there simply isn’t room for anything else.

Johnnie Walker

I am trapped in a tiny apartment under a citizen’s arrest. There are people below vowing to kill me day and night, citing all the hurtful and wrong things I have done in my life. Behind a volume of Don Quixote, I discover to my delight a half-full bottle of Red Label. The bottle is soft, and I notice it has two breasts in the front of it. – Touch my breasts, the bottle says, from a little mouth that I cannot found. – I would much rather drink from them, I say. The bottle begins to change in my hand: the breasts become testicles, the neck elongates into a penis. I lift the bottle up and begin to drink.

Leaving Tomorrow

No dreams at all.

Moby George

Captain Ahab is beating a woman mercilessly. Then Captain Ahab pulls off his mask and he is a woman. All the sailors that were appalled at first feel just fine. And I think this is a kind of cheap trick but when I speak out my mouth is full of pebbles. And Captain Ahab shouts, “Aha!” And two sailors wrestle me to the ground and pry open my mouth. They are looking for clams. Among the pebbles in my mouth are the fattest clams that have ever been found in New Bedford. Captain Ahab has got a golden hook and he drops it in my mouth, just for show, and pulls out a clam, tearing my cheek apart with it.

White Sleep

It is early tomorrow morning. You can’t sleep. You’re still up. There is nothing to sleep for. No: you can’t sleep. You close your eyes and see a white line. The white line will prevent you from ever falling asleep. No: you just can’t sleep. The harder your press your eyes together, the brighter the white line glows. You open your eyes; the birds are singing. Tu-weet! Tu-weet! No, no. No. You will never sleep again. No: you can’t sleep.

Death

My name is Death. I am also known as Love. You may know me as Anything You Have Ever Thought Important In This World Except For The World Of Your Selfish Career. I have come to kill you. Look down at your hand. You are dead. This is not a dream.

The Burnt Man

A burnt man reaches his hand toward me. His arm near the bicep splits open and pink muscle shows through. He contorts his face, which then tears in places. He wants my help. – What is your name? I ask him. His esophagus is burnt away. – What is your name and where do you come from? I ask, knowing it is an absurd question, the wrong question, but a question that just comes to mind.

Camp

Help me, Jesus. I am here and I can’t sleep. I can't breathe. I want to go home.

Take it

You have ten seconds to kill this woman from Palestine with a fishing knife. Here is the fishing knife. Take it!

MOVE ON

MOVE ON a woman says to me. MOVE ON. It’s time to get going. I don’t know where I am. - MOVE ON, she says. You’ve been doing the same thing for days and days and nights and nights. I want to move on, I really do. Is this a dream? I see only some vague orange shapes and then feel cold. - MOVE ON. There’s that voice, too. But I don’t where she is, who she is, where I am, except that it is Monday, going on Tuesday, and every day has become the same.

The Final Test

This will be your final test, a voice says to me. (I had been dreaming about tests too much.) This test is very simple. I am given a set of three couch cushions each of different colors: pink, orange, and purple. The couch is white. – Put the cushions in the prettiest pattern, the voice says. After some calculations, I realize I have six options for color variations from left to right: pink orange purple, pink purple orange, orange pink purple, orange purple pink, purple orange pink, and purple pink orange. The couch also has three positions in which cushions can be placed in ten combinations: three at the left, three at the center, three at the right, two at the left and one in the center, two at the left and one at the right, two in the center and one at the left, two in the center and one on the right, two at the right and one at the left, two at the right and one at the center, and finally, one at each position. Since I have six different color schemes, I have sixty options to find the prettiest combination. So I have a one in sixty chance of passing the final test.

The Test of Fire

This is the test of fire, a man in a long black cloak says to me. Remain sitting at this desk for as long as you possibly can. After twenty seconds I feel the chair heating up. This is horrible, I think. What kind of test is this? After another thirty seconds, the heat becomes unbearable. I jump up from the seat, checking my back and my legs for burns. But there are no marks, and the pain has disappeared. – The chair was not hot at all, I say to him. The man nods, and embraces me. We burst into white flames. I can smell my clothes burning and my skin melting but there is no pain at all.