Decide for yourself whether these are dreams I actually had, or just made up.

11/8/96 8:30am

Doing a puzzle with my brother, John—big, colorful pieces, medieval theme matter: a county fair, bathers, a trial. We misjudged the size of the thing once and had to make more room in the interior of it for more assembled pieces. Once I was working on parts that had been assembled over stray pieces. Later there were pieces on the floor and I had to stamp my feet to get John to help me pick them up; when he finally did, he knocked a corner off. Big sections frequently come out of the box completed and just need lifting into place. Had to stamp my feet again to get Dad to show me the picture.

12/26/96 6:45am

I’m selling some weird kind of sexuality quiz-related device that seems to be kind of like Post-It™ notes. I do "man-in-the-street" (or telephone) interviews, asking people (or just men?) four questions about their sexuality and relationships. The process is a little maze-like in that depending on the answer to question 1, question 2 changes.

Anyway, I’ve sold one of these to my brother and his wife and I’m visiting them for Christmas. I look at the device in their home—it’s like a small telecommunications or hard drive unit of some sort—and it’s covered with Post-It™ notes and Christmas decorations, so it would be really hard to open and maintain properly, so I can’t tell what the results of its use are: I don’t know if they’re still together, happy, or what, whether this device has had a positive effect on their marriage or destroyed it or whether they’re using it at all. They appear still to be living together, but…

12/26/96 9:21am

I am in a used bookstore looking through albums; Liza Minelli has arrived to do a book signing. I come across an album and say to the person I am with in an outrageous, pseudo-Brooklyn accent, "Now just last night, I was at the movies and they were showing trailers and they showed a trailer for a movie with Shirley MacLaine and Liza Minnelli that I’d never heard of—what was it called? The Inside of Us. And here, not 24 hours later, I’m rummaging through these record albums, and what do I come across? The soundtrack! And for only a dollar, and I can get it signed, no less, for a dollar!" And we look at the album and it was $15.95 at Tower and I see that the record itself is missing and Liza and the manager come over and show me that no, the record’s there, it’s in the front of the jacket, and I notice it’s been released on Deutsche-Gramaphon. Mid-sixties, seventies? Liza is very lovely and doesn’t mind my loud, boistrous behavior a bit.

12/27/96

A terrible leak in some girl’s apartment—not Ellen’s—as we’re sitting around on a rainy night. I try to catch the water with my hands until she gets a vessel; she brings in some small glass spherical pots from the hall. The water is going everywhere. I continue to cup my hands and she’s using the pots to pour water everywhere. I’m getting frustrated. Ellen comes home from Phoenix. I notice that the oven in her apartment is on and don’t know if that’s because she left it on the whole time she was gone or because she turned it on the night before to keep warm. There’s lots of Amaretto-flavored non-dairy creamer in her fridge—I wonder if some of it could be mine.

12/31/96 11:30am

Big long dream in my parents’ house with the whole family but Mom doesn’t play a big part. Flooding. Parading in circles. Fights over the bathroom. Showers. A performing arts complex. Seeing someone I used to date there, ignoring him; perceiving that he was hurt by that. Waking up and writing it all down (in the dream); my therapist appears and explains what some of it means, particularly the part where I send her away—something about assigning numbers to people and sitting in a steam room. I want to get it all written down before I forget it, so she goes off to sit with the others in the steam room. She seems enthusiastic about this dream, excited about what it all means and the progress I am making; not as excited as I am. In the dream, I am writing out the dream on a pad made from orange carpet samples.

1/3/97

I am back at college. I am a little nervous because I just kind of showed up without an acceptance letter; I assumed that once in, always in, even though I’m now too old to be accepted there.

Lost my keys—I stashed them somewhere downstairs to recover later and now I can’t remember where.

Took a long bus ride through Center City Philadelphia—remarkable that such a lovely park is so close by when you have a car, but not by foot. Not too terribly far to walk, though.

1/12/97 10:30am

I’m walking down the street on my way to Denny’s. A young black woman is preaching—or panhandling. She blocks my way, impassioned plea for Christ’s sake—"he did the suffering, it’s done now " —I go to her and trap her in a huge hug. She allows it; a nurse appears. "It’s all right now," one of us says, and I ask her how long? "Two months," she says. We hold each other. While I have trouble maneuvering my car into a slot in the parking lot, collecting my coat and change, etc. She collects her things, ready now to go with the nurse to whatever institution it was she came from, to finish her work there. We smile at each other and joke about how I keep dropping the change.

1/17/97, middle of night (still dark)

At my parents’ house. As I am luxuriatingly ice-skating across a frozen lake (Lake George, someone called it—who? Phyllis George?) and I am writing—finishing, really—a draft: beautiful violin/piano music. Gorgeous, romantic stuff, and as I lie in bed that night I am singing it to myself with a voice my parents—and even I—didn’t know I had: high, perfectly pitched. I hear them tell me to cut it out, it’s nighttime! Mom fed Kiska that night. That was always my job. Whod’ve thought I could skate so beautifully? And sing so beautifully— but so quietly! How did they hear me?

5/3/97, 9:43am

I am back at the job I left over 19 months ago; I think I arrived on time that day. A woman and a man (who is obviously gay) are my bosses and they are conspiring to get me fired. They are pulling incriminating evidence out of a cabinet: items they offer as proof of my sloth and ineptitude on the job, proof of hours wasted, personal things given to me at work by colleagues, all of it terribly petty, most of it irrelevant. I ask him, "To what shall I bill this hour?" He says, "Camp and insolence." I ask, "To what do you bill your camp and insolence?"

6/24/97

Cousin Perry and I have driven down to the J. Paul Getty museum. A tour guide tells us to be prepared for how empty it is. We spend the night (separate rooms) before starting the early morning tour. Perry has a lot of trouble with the outside staircase, a large, sweeping carport-like thing.