A peculiar dream.
B---- works at a 24-hour shoe store over in Madonna Plaza. He's been called in, with all of the other employees, to a company meeting. All of the employees, no matter what their normal shift, have been told that they are required to attend the mid-morning meeting, so when I arrive, the employees who had been up all night working the graveyard shift look brain- dead, and are standing around slack-jawed staring at the walls of shoes waiting for the meeting to start.
While the meeting is going on, a single clerk is running the store, and I'm milling about, the only other person there, chatting with her about the slow-seeming shoe business. Three children come in - I think they're from Camp San Luis - one of them is wearing tennis shoes that are several sizes too small. In fact, his feet cannot really fit in the shoes, so he has his toes in the toes of the shoes, and the arches of his feet resting on the back of the shoes. The two younger kids are trying to think of some way to convince us to give them a pair of shoes for their friend.
But it turns out that two of the kids need more than shoes - they need their full set of vaccinations and their childhood initiation rite. So up on the counter they go, and while the clerk fills the baster with vaccines and vitamins, I try to ease the kids into it, insisting that it's not so bad and that it's over really quick. Soon the clerk is back with the baster, shoving the end under the skin just above the spine in the upper back and squeezing the bulb to inject the goods. The kids cry during the injection, and grab onto her shoulder and wince, but it is over fairly quickly.
Next, we paint their faces in sharp designs of black and red, and the clerk sticks skewers through the skin of their faces so that the skewers stick out like porcupine quills. The kids don't think much of getting their faces punctured, but they like the fierce look they get from the paint and the quills.
At about this time, a group of Navy seamen come in and want shoes. They're a little miffed that they have to wait on this whole face-painting, skewering thing, but grudgingly mill about, waiting. The meeting ends, and the rest of the employees come out of the office. The store is run by a couple whom I guess might be B----'s parents, although I never find out for sure.
The woman and B---- are going to be running off to Foothill shopping center on some errand or another, and I volunteer to come along. B----'s kind of tired and sullen in the back seat of the convertable, but I'm gabbing with the co-owner of the shoe store in the front seat. When she brings us back to Madonna, I ask B---- if we could check out Waldenbooks, where my ex-girlfriend C---- used to work.
Well, things have changed, let me tell you, since the last time I was in Waldenbooks. It used to be a pretty standard-order chain bookstore, but now it's an enormous condo of some sort, with lots of twists and turns and unconventional architecture, a spacious basement, big TVs in every room. It's quite a pad, but hard to find your way around in.
I'm trying to find C---- to say "hi," but I'm having a hard time finding her. I go upstairs, but there's a couple there looking like they're in the mood to be left alone, so I close the door behind me on the way out. They looked familiar, but I don't know their names. Also downstairs, there are two women I think I've met but don't know very well, in their jammies eating popcorn and watching the tube. I finally find C----'s room - it's a strange room, with the hallway going all the way around it so that the room is isolated in the middle of the house. There are two doors, one next to a window, but the window has blinds covering it. I try to peek through the blinds to see if anyone is home; I see two person-sized lumps under the covers of the bed, and so decide not to knock. Then I wonder if she saw me peeking through the blinds and wonders if I'm some sort of pervert.
I go down and join B----. He's sacked out on another couch watching TV. It's a Carol Burnett show of some sort, and she and some guy are singing an Indigo Girls song together. Later on, as I'm passing C----'s room again, the blinds are open and I see her and some guy I don't know trying on childrens' clothes together.
Another section of the building (or maybe another building entirely, it's hard to tell after all of the twists and turns) is where D---- lives with a bunch of old punks, semi-punks, and new punks. It's a big, three- story place with lots of sun (in the top storys anyway) and lots of room. They're cleaning things up because in a few hours the landlords are coming by. But we've got things pretty much under control; there isn't too much that needs to be done and we've got a few hours to do it. Except D----'s room which is a wreck, and she's gotten a late start on it.
Somebody gets a call from the landlords and it turns out they'll be there in a few minutes, not a few hours, so we all dash down to D----'s room to help out. It's a huge room in the basement, also with a big TV, but there are huge closets packed to overflowing with futons, pillows and beanbags (all earthtones) - and there are still some on the floor! We have to neaten things up, but we've run out of space to put things.
But with all of us chipping in, it doesn't take long to make the place presentable. It's a nice house, and I hope I get to hang out there more often. But I've got to go. I'm going downtown with F---- to check out where that movie is being shot.
It looks like this must be a wedding scene of some sort. F---- and I are hanging out, leaning up against this white Ford Bronco which is parked directly in front of the church, observing and talking some. It's a bright, warm, late-spring day. The first people start to mill out of the church, wearing upper-class formal-casual California clothes. Reminds me a bit of the extras in L.A. Stories. One guy is a performance artist, and as he stands on the church steps, people in the growing crowd start shooting at him. The people shooting I recognize as being past presidents who had either been assassinated (like Lincoln) or who had assassination attempts directed at them (like Reagan). The performance artist whips out a gun and returns fire. I'm getting the impression that the performance artist is trying to point out that these under-fire presidents were themselves very trigger-happy, and was casting the assassinations as some sort of self-defense.
So I'm mulling this over when who but George Schultz (Reagan's Secretary of State) comes out of the church. All he's wearing are socks, boxers, and a tank-top. I comment to F---- that if the performance artist is right, he might as well be naked. Schultz gets into his dark presidential-limo-style thing and is off.
F---- & I are wondering if we should go off to the beach with the other extras in the film, since that's where the next scene in the movie is, but before we come to a conclusion, the Bronco takes off - and us with it. Apparantly the sidewalk we were sitting on, leaning up against the Bronco in the shade, was actually part of the Bronco, and is being carried with it. We end up at a huge warehouse of some sort, where the extras are milling about socializing and eating while the technicians fill up an enormously deep pool of water (much too deep just to be simulating a swimming, diving, or beach scene - they must be reenacting a shipwreck or something).
At some point in the film a rock and roll band will be playing, so there's a table set up, selling T-shirts (four different varieties) to the extras. I forget the name of the band, but I'd heard of it before; it's the sort of band that you'd find at Lollapalooza. F---- & I split off and socialize. G---- comes up to me at one point, as I'm looking at the T-shirts, and gives me a big hug. As we break off the hug, a photographer appears and snaps a picture of us. It all seems suspiciously choreographed to me.
G---- tells me that F---- and some woman I don't know, but who is apparantly connected with G---- somehow, are hitting it off very well. "They're twenty-threes together," she says, or something like that - I forget the actual number, and I didn't know the slang, but I understood from context that it meant that they were flirting heavy with each other. Well, G---- has some sort of investment in this lady already, but she and her boyfriend would like to try some sort of group thing with F---- and her and she wants to invite me along.
But it sounds like I'm being included as an afterthought, or because
I'm connected with F----, and she realizes this and then quickly to be
tactful trys to concoct some sort of reason why she wants me specifically
to join this orgy. But she really doesn't know me very well. She hasn't
been with the punks for years, and when she was I was sort of a wallflower.
She thinks she remembers some party where some sort of group thingamabob
happened and she saw me masturbating and thought that it was nice that I
was so unembarrassed by my body and sexuality in a group situation. I
don't remember this party or the events she describes, and I tell her so,
but I try to convey my enthusiasm for the upcoming events and that I'm not
put off by the way in which I was invited, so she relaxes.
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