DREAMS FROM 1975
DREAMS OF 1975
Most of my dreams prior to the 1980s are included in my daily journals and my trip journals. Dreams are placed unpredictably in the 1970s.
2/21/75
I'm sitting in the middle of a shambles in a room in a large elegant old house, and in a very few moments it becomes clear to me that a large group of persons of which I'm a member is robbing the house, and I become afraid that the police will discover us. I make my way through the public rooms, across some sort of gangplank of junk that has to be negotiated with arms and legs in a direction that's unclear, although it's either up or down, and I get back to the basement window near the bushes through which we gained entrance, and for SOME reason I have to go BACK to the central area I'd just come from. I keep thinking that if I'm not caught with anything on my person, I can't be accused of stealing anything, but I'm troubled by the additional thought that if the police arrive EVERYONE will empty their pockets and ALL of them will say they haven't been stealing anything, but obviously the house will have been broken into, and I settle into the probable charge of "breaking and entry." There are large pieces of furniture with drawers taken out and scattered over the floor, and somehow they change to MY furniture and I'm wondering where MY belongings were that were in the drawers, and at last I spot some brightly colored glass globes and shapes (colored like the Japanese paper-lantern lampshades in blues and reds and purples and yellows) which have been washed and dried, and I think "Well, at least that's the stuff from the BOTTOM drawer," and begin pawing through the debris on the floor to see what else had come from the drawer and can now be put back. There's the sounds of sirens, but somehow everyone knows the sirens won't stop here, but I get a glimpse, as on a TV show, of police officers scurrying around organizing a raid on the house, getting ready to surround it, though there's known to be so much time available that no one in the house is really worried about getting out: the only thing that concerns me is the ease of negotiating that junk-bridge when everyone's running out. There's some feeling of being caught with grass, too, but I somehow know that no one has any grass on them, so we're safe on THAT account. The whole scene is quite dim, with glints of light reflecting off polished wood.
2/26/75
There were so many fragments whirling through my mind that I was glad I had paper and pen by my bed to jot down some notes about three dreams:
1) Wandering Manhattan in the snow, riding in a car that's riding down a slippery street and it turns completely around when trying to stop, and I sit tensely in the back, rather knowing that nothing will happen (though not realizing it's a dream), but with the nagging thought that I might THINK that nothing will happen, but that had nothing to do with nothing actually HAPPENING, and have a vague worry if this might be the beginning of the ACTUAL end, but there's no time to follow this thought through.
2) Sleeping in a house with MANY people staying over, and I'm in some way responsible for getting people stretched out on beds and sofas and long chairs, and find that there's really enough room if I just keep calm enough, and I manage to find a place for myself and some unidentifiable man that I'm meaning to go to sleep with, but there was no thought of sex through the whole segment of dream, and I surely would have forgotten it if I hadn't written the note, though more details come back as I write about it.
3) Go into a theater that I note as being the Beacon, but it seemed to be more like the Rivoli, where I saw the "Top of the World" film, since it has the same side entrance to the balcony. I want to go to the orchestra, but a snotty usher dressed in black says that the orchestra is completely full, and that I'll have to go into the balcony, but I manage to slip around some way and find myself a seat in the orchestra. The film is something that might be entitled "Plague" and there are views of deserted streets, with a striking view of cars and VW station wagons and other vehicles parked in fields, looking rather like an ad with the sun dramatically low on the horizon, casting very long shadows of cars across the neatly edged farmlands on which the cars are parked, but there's no movement of people at all. Then there's a woman wandering down a lane with her daughter, and that's all I can remember of the dreams from the notes, and I'm glad I wrote them.
2/26/75
Incredibly vivid dream of sitting on the right side of a bowl-shaped theater suspended in an elegant green-chevroned, gold-leafed, black-trimmed auditorium. We're there for the preview of a new Cinerama film (based on the "Funny Lady" film that I tried to see yesterday no doubt), but I'm wondering which of the many curtains will lift to reveal the curving screen, and concerned that I'll be sitting on the side. But then one set of lush curtains begins to raise and other screens begin to lower at the front, but suddenly the entire balcony on which I'm sitting lifts curvingly into the air and then swings down rapidly so that I expand my limbs in my seat to keep from being buffeted about in the smooth movements. We sweep below a painted concrete curve, then soar again into an open space, and I'm appalled to sense that we're actually swinging upside down, but we don't have safety belts and my jacket falls up out of my seat arm and goes folding and spinning gently through the air. But then we curve down underneath it and I can reach out and grab it, wondering where we're going to end up, but without any transition I'm walking down strange city streets with somber buildings outlined against the sky, and the group I'm with is running quickly down the streets, over bridges, and getting lost in the crowds coming in the other direction. I feel annoyed that I'm in the rear, and start running after them, but when I come to the beach I find that I can't see anyone I recognize: indeed, there's no one there at all, and I feel frustrated and disappointed that the group didn't consider me highly enough to wait for me to join them in their tour. I wander around trying to get the feel of the place for myself, but my uppermost feelings are the shaking-of-the-head sort of grief for my own personal station that's sunk so low that I couldn't be sure they'd wait for me. Wake with the same frustrated feeling hovering over me, spreading a bit of sadness, and then a single phone ring penetrates my earplugs and I leap out of bed to the silent phone, and then a few minutes later Bob Rosinek rings me back to say he'll be here between 5 and 5:15. So I don't have a chance to BROOD about the feeling of being left behind, but then type this before breakfast at 10:10 am.
3/4/75
Highly surprised to be having so many---and such vivid---dreams even though I'm smoking almost every night. This time it's quite clear that I'm climbing up the inside of what looks like a room-sculpture of blue beads strung along blue rubber-covered wires in the vague form of a cylinder with a spiral staircase moving up inside. I can feel the swaying of the whole thing as I move my feet higher and higher, and can even sense the cutting of the thin wires into my hands as I pull backward on the loose wiring. But when I get close to the top, I'm puzzled to see that either there's only the ceiling, or the entrance to the next floor is very small and complicated to get through. But then I've got a trick staying over in some house that's having a big party, but I talk to an old man who reminds me of Mr. Gentile on the ship in order to "throw everyone off my track" as I think of it. Then there's a costume party, and everyone I talk to is dressed in some elaborate costume, and I think that's better, since no one will particularly notice that I'm there with a gay guy, and anyone who throws a costume party can't be all that bad. I can't remember any more of it at the moment, but again I was impressed with the amount of color in the details of the house and the furnishings and the costumes, the amount of detail that I could remember at the time I just woke up, and the frustrated feeling knowing that I didn't have enough time to write DOWN the details while they were fresh in my mind, and that when I finally got to it there wouldn't be much of the richness left. I definitely again get the idea of state-oriented knowledge, and the only time I could POSSIBLY remember all the details of the dream would be in ANOTHER DREAM STATE, but then I'm usually dreaming another dream, and my whole capability concentrates on what I'm doing there. Actually, now that I think of it, I've never heard of anyone who dreamed they were asleep, or dreaming, or remembering or telling about a dream that they'd have, as if the state orientation EXTENDS to the EXCLUSION of dream-thinking IN dreams themselves, just as we usually don't think of ourselves as being AWAKE when we're going through all the motions we go through when we ARE actually awake.
3/6/75
There's a sense of déjà vu about the fragment, so it's got to be noted. The first section of the dream is fuzzy, somehow associated with playing with Jeremy at the Kipnis's place in Connecticut, where I'm playing with hectic children while parents move like shadows around the periphery. But the final section is much clearer: I'm talking to a married couple on the street, their children not in view, and I'm telling them about someone who visited a family and "took care of the children for a couple of hours, and the wife loved him for it," and there's instant rapport with the woman in the couple, as she looks in admiration, too awed to smile, saying that that was one of the most wonderful vacations that a person could give a mother, taking her children off her hands completely for even a short period of time, giving her a chance to live her own life for a few hours, enabling her to forget her erstwhile constant responsibilities as a mother.
3/13/75
I'm either in the Army or in IBM or a strange combination of both. There's definitely a military cast to everything, but at one point someone says, "Al Wallach's stuff was in that cabinet," and he was at SBC. Anyway, I'm working at my desk at the top corner of a high building, rather like my location at 309 West 57th Street, and I enter my suite or office into a room that looks like a shaded living room: drapes on the windows, in front of which stand shelves of books or plants; there's a table with a cloth over it with a vase of flowers on it, and the whole thing looks like a rather bare "before" room in a "House Beautiful" ad for redoing an old-fashioned room. But around to the right I go up a short flight of stairs (like Art's house?) and there's my workspace/office, quite crowded with a desk loaded down with stuff, facing outward to the steps, with lots of filing cabinets and glass-fronted bookcases along the walls. But somehow there ARE no walls, and though there's no wind or no bright sunlight, I'm concerned about the filing cabinet that's RIGHT in the corner, and the large gray storage cabinet (like they had so many of at ACC) just in front of it, to the right of someone sitting at the brown desk, just at the top of the stairs, seem not to be quite safe to me. So I climb on top of them and start moving the manila folders on the top of them, but the edge of the floor can't stand the added weight and it slopes down slightly---or the storage cabinet is weak, like those at ACC, and my added weight on top causes it to slump to the side---and I gasp as the two items tip outward. I jump for the desk and watch the two pieces of furniture tumble slowly down through the air and land in the grass-covered vacant lot next to my building---breathing a sigh of relief that they didn't land on the sidewalk, where they could have killed someone. I don't want to tell anyone about it, but when no one blames me for anything, I begin to think about going to the field to see if I can rescue any of the information that had been filed in these storage bins, hoping that all the papers would be still inside the crumpled ruins of the cabinets. But I never get downstairs to see what I can salvage from the ghastly accident.
3/13/75
Actually, I don't recall if this one came first or second, and I recalled it only as I was typing the previous page. I exited from some sort of Mexican restaurant that was closed for the night, and was appalled to see that I was standing on a narrow (maybe 18 inches) ledge just outside the door, made of asphalt or terra cotta that had little twinkling bits in it that glinted in the moonlight, and the whole thing gave me the impression of blue-blackness---and there might have been stars in the sky, because though it was quite black, I could still see some details of my surroundings. I had a glass jar in my hand (or it was at my feet) and when I, in panic, hugged the wall to get away from the precipice, the jar went over the edge. I could hear it rattling and tinkling down against the tall building on which I stood, but was rather confused when there was no distinctive crash when it hit the bottom. Then it was daylight, and I was standing in some sort of square, recognizing the building that I'd exited from on my left, adobe with a tiled roof, but when I looked out over what had been the precipice, I was amazed to see that it was a mural-backdrop, as a set for a movie or play, with the mountains and sky and villages far below the precipice painted onto it---and in fact it wasn't even a precipice anymore, but the mural-backdrop (it was too substantial to be painted on canvas, it was more like a wall decoration which was set back about a foot from everything else---I could see the dark areas of the recess around the sides and bottom to give the effect of a larger distance---though it was very solidly THERE) depicted buildings gently descending a hill from my vantage point. I thought again about the rattling descent of the jar, and figured it had gotten caught against the wall and had jostled around in the gutter below the mural-backdrop, and that there wasn't any danger of my hitting anyone with the flying glass from the broken bottle, and the first idea that maybe I could reach down and remove the offending jar came to my mind before I passed on to yet another dream in the rather incredible eve-night (WOW, that WAS to be EVENING!) of grass-less continuous dreaming.
3/13/75
This was somehow an extension of the first two, since I vaguely remember the blue night-sky of the second, and the field in which the storage units lay seemed to be beyond the last building in the "set" for this dream. But I was eating in some sort of student cafeteria or restaurant in what could be called the "University of Greece," because when I walked back from the restaurant in the evening, I passed parks comfortable under the streetlights and saw the Greek National Museum in its white-and-yellowness off to the right, and wondered why the restaurant had to be so far from the dormitories, which lay in the government-type buildings beyond the museum. But as I walked along the road that formed a shortcut to the loop that went up to the entrance to the museum up a slight slope, I found myself in a souvenir-type tiny museum that I had to exit through a small wooden door. When I did so, kids pushed past me into the interior, ignoring the shouts of the woman who was the proprietor, behind me, and the sign that swung on the door, saying "Museum of the Home of Somebody Something," entrance 50 drachmas, but then thought it wasn't drachmas but whatever the smaller units were, so that it was .50 drachmas, and I recall thinking, in the dream "There are how many? Six? No, THREE drachmas to the dollar (and the number 17 floated into my mind), so each drachma is 33 and .50 drachma is 16.5, which is the same as 17---and that's the number that floated into my mind! Shake off this coincidence and find myself in a cambio, buying drachmas, and get handed money which is also a set of souvenir folders and envelopes, with some strange bank like Alimani Limeni inscribed on them---they seem very official in their elaborate engravings and colors of purple, green, blue, and red for various denominations (like 25, 6, 1, 3), but I can't really decide whether they're souvenirs, since the folders give all sorts of information, or whether they're cashable like money. But I'm loathe to show my ignorance by asking, and I'm still debating whether to take them or not, almost deciding they're worth it as souvenirs even if they're NOT money, so I really can't get stung (like my sending money for porno that might not come?), so I've sort of decided to keep it when THAT phase of the dreaming ends.
3/14/75
First I have another of those ghastly things in which I'm living at home and want to masturbate. I close my door a bit, but still there's light from the windows, so I pull the shades down, then undress and crawl under the blankets, and I think it's just like going to sleep, and then I'm somehow in my OWN bed on Hicks St. and feeling guilty about wanting to masturbate. UGH! Then I'm working in some sort of office, and someone's leaving, but I hadn't been invited to the farewell gathering in the front office and I'm feeling left out. Then I'm in the lounge and talking to a number of my coworkers, and there's Arno, and I feel glad that I'm back with him, even to the extent that HE joined the company AFTER me, so he can't accuse me of following him. I'm leaving for the day and go up to someone attractive to pat him on the shoulder and say something like "That's OK," but his upper arm and shoulder are bunched together and his hand comes up affectionately to clasp MY hand, and I sort of think there might be something there with him.
THEN I'm in a bathroom just like on Dietz, but someone has taken the green lid off the toilet and put it upside down on the floor as a tray, and it's overloaded with junk, as is the top of the blue toilet-tank top AND the inside of the bathtub. Some of it's mine, but there are two dresses on top that I fold and put into the bathtub; I see two khaki items from my Army days, like a canteen cover and an ax cover; and then there's a stack of my clothes, including a blue and white striped silk tie, and I'm putting my jacket on to leave work, thinking that I look BETTER when I leave with my jacket and tie on than I do when I'm working there.
THEN I'm in some woman's elegant apartment, and the living and dining rooms are totally surrounded by windows, with only thin black metal bars at the corners of the rooms, and everyone compliments her on her apartment. We move into the kitchen and I think it's wall-to-wall windows, but see that there's only one large window, then a lot of blond brick, then a smaller window looking into an air shaft, and the room feels homier for having these smaller windows, which I think is strange, and there's a bedroom beyond the kitchen, but that's all I remember of the, again, elaborate fragments of dreams.
3/17/75
I know I should be back at the dormitory (?) eating breakfast, but as I walk toward my destination, I see that it's an amusement park/zoo and that I'll be able to buy food there, though I debate about it, since I've paid for meals at the hotel (?) already. Walk along a narrow path along a stream that turns into a wild animal area far below, and the path has a concrete and wood fence on one side that I cling to in order to pass people and not be tossed into the valley with the animals. Pass that and find that the path has emptied of people and I'm climbing up something that looks like a huge wooden Venetian blind whose slats get progressively closer together as I climb to the top, until just below the lip of the increasingly steep slope I'm wedging my shoes into 1/2 inch indentations that look like steps for tiny Lilliputians. Just at the top, the top fastening of the area gives way, folds down under me, and I reach up for some palm tree fronds, or swamp grass tassels, ahead of me, and these support me so that I can climb up against a brick wall. I feel that this is getting somewhat extreme, and just mildly fearful. I reach up the brick wall and find it covered with some sort of felt on top, dusty from lack of use, and reach around to find that I'm clinging to some sort of brick chimney, but that the bricks might not be totally solid. I can almost picture a fault running through the cement that will cascade the entire chimney down on me, plummeting off the roof, if I grab too hard. Then I berate myself that I'm only thinking of the extreme circumstances as described in the book I'm reading "How to Master Your Fear of Flying," and then suddenly realize that it's only a dream anyway, so why should I hassle it? So I just grasp the chimney to my chest, debate about opening my arms and letting go, and wake up, still thinking about a possible ominous portent to this first dream in a long time in which I didn't come THROUGH with a solution to my problem rather than simply waking up (NO, now that I think of it, I've done it a couple of times before---it really IS easier to acknowledge it's a dream than to study for the test, fall, or get hurt. Maybe I'm just practicing on how to wake from LIVING into SUPER LIVING)!
4/5/75
I "enter" the dream having to move out of somewhere, and I'm due to leave and realize to my chagrin that I haven't packed anything yet. Then it seems that my departure time is delayed by something like an hour, and so now I can pack. It seems that I'm putting everything into two suitcases, and everything's going well, but then I need some things that I haven't packed, and I get a shopping bag to put a few things into, but by the end of the packing, that's full too. There are lots of odds and ends: toothbrush supplies from the bathroom, a washcloth from the kitchen, a towel from somewhere else, some small items on the table by the door. The similarities to other packings are striking: getting things together for the TDI trip, when last-minute items were stuffed into a tote bag; Bill's packing yesterday morning, taking two shopping bags with the last of HIS staff; my packing to go to Art's, making sure I have work and laundry and personal supplies for the two days; and my packing (now cancelled) for the marijuana program, which would have included lots of strange things. But in addition to this, the dream seems more fraught than most with intimations of something bigger: am I packing my life on the way to death? With side thoughts about getting this all down on paper as a preparation to other work. Am I thinking about leaving my apartment for another, or leaving New York for another city, or leaving the country for another existence? Then there's the old satisfaction about "getting everything gathered together" that I feel when leaving a hotel or vacation spot: "If anything happened here, now, all I'd have to do is carry this and myself out and it would be as if nothing of mine were ever here to be destroyed in the first place." Then, I'd smoked last night until midnight, but dreamed anyway; and then it's been a long time since I've had any dream at all: interestingly, none at all while Bill was here, as if the presence of another person destroyed whatever vibrations there are in me to dream (or, which is the same thing, to remember the dream when I wake up). And now it's stuffed into the middle of a lot of other things, but at year-end it'll find its niche in the DREAM book.
4/7/75
Strongest remaining image is walking along what seems to be an artificially constructed path: metal edges, sloppy construction that permits water to seep onto the path and that leaves gaps between the path and the carpet-like material of the sides of the path. And finding a six or seven-inch tall mushroom seemingly constructed out of the same soft plastic used in the mannequins I'd bought long ago. It's got patches of virulent green and purple, and when I pick it, I find that it has EXACTLY the feel of a huge cock within a copious amount of surrounding skin. I show it to others with me, and we all laugh at it and enjoy feeling it.
Then I'm existing in a way that I felt was like "living a novel" in which I was struggling with a door, trying to attach it to its proper place on the wall, but there were round metal pieces that had to be slid into the proper grooves, vertical bars that had to be mated with slits in the doorway, and the metal pieces kept slipping around like tiny cymbals and I couldn't get everything to go where it should because everything was so loose and jangly. There was water running somewhere here, too. Then I was in a classroom being tested, and I went up to the desk to talk to the teacher while all the students were talking loudly back and forth with each other. The bell rang, and the teacher commented about the fact that the rest of the class seemed to have no "rapport with the teacher." Now that it's two days later, it loses something in the delay.
4/14/75
First dream of shit ever, or at least for a very long time. I'm in something like a department store or hotel, and go into the bathroom to see that there are two johns, but one is lower than the other (like the double sinks that Art and I were looking at) and filled to a depth of about four inches with piss. I have my rubbers on, but it really seems that I'll be in over the rims, so I wait until the guy in the higher one comes out. There are two doors across the room, but they seem to lead into a maintenance area that doesn't have another toilet. The guy in the john comes out just as one, and then two more, men come into the john, and as I enter mine and lock the door, I can hear the others opening the other door and remarking about the piss on the floor. I have to take a crap, so I sit while the others complain about how long they have to wait, and I almost feel like calling out, "I'll be IN here for awhile." But then it seems that the door changes from a sheet of metal into an opening covered with wooden slats, like a very coarse bamboo rollup blind, and many slats have fallen away, leaving foot-high gaps in two places. I stand to fix it, and there are pins stuck into the tops of the loose slats, and I try to attach some kind of sheet or fabric to the pins, but the slats rotate, and I finally draw up the sheet and push it through two slats, then wrap it around and THEN the pins help to hold it in place, and I go back to the john. (And now I remember all the "Shit or get off the pot" by Eleanor at Art's yesterday). Then, without transition, there are women coming to this department of the department store (and DISPLAY is about department stores!), and the side wall has gone completely, and I roll a sweater or coat in my lap so they won't be able to see any of my flesh. A woman shops along the wall to my left and starts to ask me a question, then sees her mistake and smiles as I smile and say I'm just a customer sitting down here. Other women are seen coming closer, and I can't imagine why they'd put a toilet right here in the open. I'm chewing on something (or hawking up nasal mucus) and I ooze it out my mouth like a white marshmallow in a tongue-like mass and throw it at the women, saying something like "What's the matter, never seen anyone shit before?" And they're incensed and go through the doors to another department. STRANGE!
4/15/75
I'm sitting with someone in sort of a television program control booth, watching the progress of a quiz program, and the woman who's in charge of the contest is obviously biased against one of the women on the panel. There is some sort of drive for the final solution to an acrostic, and they have the first three words, something like "There are some" and there are a number of blanks, and someone suggests something like "spreaded thing," but there are only twelve spaces and that has 13, and it's "obvious" that the solution is "breaded thing." But there's seven seconds to go, and then there's a break for a commercial, and the woman is frantically recomputing the scores, and there are scores like 22 and 15 and 7, and she's revising downward the score of the woman she doesn't like and revising upward the score of the man and woman she likes. It's obvious that the puzzle is solved and who the winner is, but suddenly the scene switches, and the woman, who's turned into Barbara Walters, is doing something VERY rapidly for only a split second somewhere down in the bowels of the machine room of a ship, and after just an instant, she's swinging on some sort of rope down from an upper deck, and the camera flickers upward to show her plummeting toward the sea, outside the railing, and everyone gasps at her athleticism, without questioning what on earth she's doing, and the camera shifts to about twelve feet along the deck, showing her splash into the water. The waves are very cold and washing over a deck without a railing that's covered in ice and snow (like the pictures of Toronto that Cathy showed us last night), and the snow and ice is so thick that there's only a gentle curve up to the deck (the ship seems very low in the water, looking almost like an icy shore or floe than the deck of a ship, but there's obviously the deck ABOVE, and there's a hump that covers the benches against the wall of the ship) that the icy waves lap over. There are spreading circles from where she's entered the water, and no commentary as everyone holds their breath for Barbara Walters to surface, but she doesn't; there's a long pause, murmur of aghastness in the background, and then the camera pans back swiftly to show the relatively tranquil ocean beside the ship, the picture goes black, and I wake with the thought "I wonder if anything HAPPENED to Barbara Walters at 8:55 am on 4/15/75.
4/17/75
I'm a tour guide for a large group, and there are so many people mixed together that I have no idea whom I'm in charge of and who isn't in my group. It's the first day out and we've just flown from New York to someplace I don't know which seems to be some combination of Scandinavian or English, with islands and channels and tours across the waters to the east to the lands beyond. They ask me lots of questions as we finish breakfast in some hotel, but I don't know the answers to any of them, and I go to my room (which seems like a cabin on the ship) to sort through the things that I have, deciding not to wear my gray Brooks suit, taking off my jacket and tie and taking a blue jacket, and then decide that I have to take my black shoulder bag into which I sort two large folders that I look through quickly and decide I haven't read them yet, and they're just the itinerary for the whole trip. There's a lovely thing with all sorts of maps, but I can't decide whether I've missed a stop or a day: I don't seem to be connected. Then there's another folder with cardboard information brochures that seems important, but I don't have time to read them. Then it occurs to me that there should have been a tour this morning, but it's 11:30 and I haven't been on it, and have no idea when it left or where it went. To the lobby to see a slotted bulletin board behind a slanting magnifying glass, but today's activities are high up on the list, and though I stoop to my knees to try to read it, I can't, and the place is crowded with people that I try to avoid. Then a couple comes up shouting "We've got 45 days!" and they say that they didn't like the rigors of the two-week trip, so they paid extra and got extended to 45 days, and I'm first happy that they're happy, then sad that they'll be leaving the group and I won't be tipped by them. Part of this stems from the frustration I felt last night when I'd missed the "National Book Awards" by some labor union at the Americana Hotel last night, some stemmed from TDI thoughts and the dinner at Arnie's on Monday, and some came from my confused evening of sleeping and getting off schedule. Things seem confused in general and this is NOT the happiest time of my life.
6/30/75
Incredible LONG dream about BEATLES. Party in large house, I sort of divided between John Lennon and Paul McCartney (in fact the others hardly entered the dream). They seemed to let me talk, and at one point I said I was very pleased with myself for having come out, for being publicly gay, and I recall them saying "Wow, that took courage." Paul seemed rather stupid, but sweet, John very intelligent and interested, and he kept coming back to me. I kept leaning over him on a sofa and he liked touching me. Then it got light and we were resting on plush sofas looking up out of a window, earth on SIDES, canyon at BACK and I marvel that the house is built UNDERGROUND, and the monkeys are playing outside in the dusty streets. We're in Mexico, OLD wooden buildings along roads and large barrel-shaped fungus with five-star sea-star tops and I say "Are those ____ ?" meaning hallucinogenic mushrooms, and he says he thought they were. We drove off in a car, and he was on my lap, my hand just TOUCHING one side of his leg and alongside his cock, and he gradually got harder and harder, it sort of grew into my fingers, and it was VERY thick and long and meaty, and I delighted in it, finally grabbed it, and he sighed and groaned and we began having sex. I kept wondering where the viewers were, knowing they were straight, but at the party I kept seeing the small woman I always see at the opera and some OTHER familiar faces, and I was pleased they saw ME there, talking with the Beatles, too. Then we stopped the car, he took off his shirt and had a MUSCULAR pale body like a Michaelangelo painting, twisted in the same way, great torso muscles and tiny hard-nippled tits, and he sat on my cock and I fucked him as he posed above me in the dawn light, and someone passed outside, and then he was sitting in a hotel room and his female agent or lawyer was reading him a blackmail note from someone who'd seen us and maybe even had photos. Then I flicked off TV when an ad came on and couldn't find the Beatles movie again, searching the TV listing, and Mom suggested that maybe I was turning the dial the OTHER way, but I never did get back to it and the alarm rang at 6:58 and I got up and wrote this to 7:07 am!
8/22/75
Dream that I'm living in some sort of newly built commune in a canal-lined town, and there's an evening's entertainment in which we're all supposed to do something. I get the idea to do a transvestite ballerina, and get the tutu and shoes but find that my apartment (which is just like Dietz Avenue) doesn't have ceilings high enough for me to go on point without hitting my head on the ceiling, so I move out (seeing John coming from the Stribling house next door and looking ALMOST at me jerking off before my mother's mirror as he looks in through the bedroom window, but when I check him from the bathroom window, I see that he's not seen me). So I go to a larger house that has a door-lined hallway that it seems I can use, about 18-foot ceilings, except that I have to close the door, which is glass, and I worry about the servants passing by in the T-cross upper hall, but wrestle the broken door around on the splintered doorjamb and block the entry when I wake up. Awake, I decide that just an imitation is too common, but that I will give a ballet LESSON in a Sid Caesar-ish Russian: walksy comme this, mit feet prettiovitch (and then exggeratedly walk with pointed feet out-turned), not like sosky (and clump forward on heels, head bobbling, fists clenched). Then turnsky (and turn on point, grinning goofily) rather than sosky (and glumly clump around in circles on heels, shoulders waggling and sunken). Then through runsky, leapsky, fallsky, crysky, etcererasky. Then when I'm ready to leave, someone like the plump Italian secretary at SBC comes up for me to copyedit and evaluate an article she's written about the new town, pasted into a phony newspaper, but I see that it's 6:55, we have to be there at 7, so all I mention is that the photographs she used seemed to show the waterline very HIGH in the city (almost to the bottom of the garage doors), which makes it look sort of dangerous, but she says that's OK. I have to gather up my notes of what I'm going to do, that I left on the sofa inside the door at Dietz, and we're off. Then a woman like Toni in est does the same thing BEFORE me, and I start rehearsing my speech "I probabalsky started before heresky, so THEREOVITCH," but decide to get out of bed at 9:15 before spending any more time on this dream-connected nonsense.
9/19/75
I'm in a tour bus riding through snow-capped mountain passes, and there's someone riding with me who's very sexy. Every so often I touch his crotch and get the idea there's the possibility of lovely sex there. But then the scene outside the bus windows becomes so bizarre that I forget about everyone inside the bus and stare at the sheer cliffs rising from rivers so far below that they're invisible. For the cliffs have shacks clinging to their sides, shacks that look rather like colored Easy Money houses glued to the side of the cliffs, but there are also paths and roads meandering through the vertical villages, and the automobiles are huge and clunky, but I get the idea that the heaviness of the wheels is necessary because they have to be attached by ratchets to the road so that they won't fall or slide off the road due to the impossible slant. I see people peering out windows (rather like an Escher drawing) but don't see anyone outside the houses or on the streets, so I have no idea whether they creep on hands and knees or go swinging from one handhold to another along the vertical walls of the streets. Nor can I see inside any houses to see whether they live on the floor or on the lower wall. There's also the slushy remnants of snow on the houses, and as I look just above the level across from where we are, I can see the snow line distinctly, and the village rises even higher, where the houses are increasingly covered with snow, and then the village, tumbled upon itself, is lost in the swirling clouds that encompass the top of the mountain. I've lost sight of everything else except the crazy spectacle of this village plastered on the side of a hill, and it's almost as if the mountain were an earth unto itself, with its own centering gravity, and the people living there would be drawn to the center of the mountain rather than the center of the earth, and thus they wouldn't be bothered by their strange angle at all, but would look across the chasm at US and wonder what we were doing in his vehicle that was clinging to the overhang of the mountain that cut out huge portions of their sky. We didn't go past, only sat opposite and stared at the jumble of straw-roofed houses cold in the snow.
10/24/75
10/23: Didn't remember much except that it was the old shaky-elevator theme, this time going up into the dome-like top of an unfinished building, and the elevator shaft isn't strong enough to support it, and the whole thing bends over, splintering wood and grinding metal, and I don't recall more.
10/24: Odd one about having taken just a few dancing lessons, and I'm in a company that needs someone in a variation at the end of a piece, and I'm appointed to the central man's part between two women, one of whom is named something like Corinna Tallchief, and I'm glad, because I know that she's very tiny but very good. Keep hoping that I'll get a chance to rehearse to make sure I know how to lift her without destroying myself or her, but the time drags on and finally it's the evening of the performance and I still don't know what I'll be doing. Visualize that I'll rehearse it in a studio with someone humming the music, but then it's the actual time of the performance and I haven't done that yet. Don't know what to do about makeup or costumes, but the person in charge keeps saying that everything will be OK, but I'm beginning to doubt that, since I have to know SOMETHING about what I'll be doing. Gradually it dawns on me that my part is VERY small, maybe only coming out (but do I smile, keep a somber face, what?), doing a few steps (but what kind of steps---they may be simple, but I still have to know what they'll be---this is classical ballet, not improvisational modern!), and then doing one lift which will take her off the stage. So there's nothing much to worry about, but how do I let her down? I can't just let her fall: if I damage HER I've done more harm to the company than if I damage myself. Don't even think of the possibility of being "discovered" even though I'm fairly proud of having gone into ballet at "30" and still getting some parts. The actual piece is on, and I don't know the music or the choreography, but still the woman in charge says that everything will be OK, and I keep waiting around to be told what to do, and that's all I remember, and now I even try to avoid thinking what it might MEAN because I'm at the bottom of the page and there's no more room to write anything.
11/12/75
I'm in an auditorium like City Center or the State Theater which is filled with people waiting for a ballet to start, but it has something to do with school. The principals are introduced: first someone like Patricia McBride and then Jean-Pierre Bonnefous, but then I have to cross the stage opposite their entrances and go up the steps they've just come down, saying hello to the second female lead as I pass her. Then in the hall I meet Marge duMond, who's preoccupied with something. We'd taken seats in the second or third row, but they were filled now in the third act, and we had to go back to our original seats on the side of the first row of the second balcony, and we were concerned about someone from the back of the balcony having moved down, but there was no problem with that. Then suddenly I was sitting on a bus, driving somewhere, and we drove out onto a promontory rather like the spine of Mt. Fuji featured in the hang-glider flight on TV yesterday, and the bus had to turn around and go back. In backing up, the driver miscalculated and the rear wheels went off the cliff, so that the bus teetered at the edge. I was sitting in the back (but somehow it was now the two wheels on the DRIVER'S SIDE that were over the cliff) and knew that people had to move AWAY from the cliff so that the bus wouldn't go over, but no one seemed to understand this, and I had to DRAG people away from the side of the bus over the cliff as it teetered, teetered, but finally almost everyone was off, and I looked around the packed luggage racks for my suitcase, but it wasn't there. Instantly I was on the street in some city, maybe in front of a hotel, again looking for my suitcase, and I remembered that I couldn't find it on the bus either, and wondered where I'd left it. After I woke and was running through the dreams in order to remember them, in a semi-dreamlike state, I knew that I was going to be hungry, so I went through my pockets, and remember vividly the conclusion: "Lots of stuff in the pockets, but nothing to eat," and then I woke totally with the revelation that this was so typical of my LEARNING: so much in my MIND, but nothing that I used, nothing that gave me sustenance, nothing that I acted on: I KNEW what I needed to know, now all I had to do was ACT on what I knew and everything would be provided for.
11/15/75
I'm on some sort of relief program that takes me across the river from Manhattan to New Jersey to sleep in some dormitory-filled hotel for the night. Then next morning I get up and eat a simple meal provided by the city, and then line up on the corner to wait for a bus across the river, admiring the skyline, and thinking that being on welfare isn't bad at all! Also, there's a vague feeling of the Salvation Army connected with this section.
Also, I'm attending a performance in what could be a modified old Met, with me sitting in a balcony that's very close to the stage, and it's a strange opera with a little girl and an old man (I don't remember any singing, however). At the end, there isn't any curtain, but the old man comes out for his curtain call, and the audience is completely silent. I think this is strange, but then I see that the house manager is standing near him, and that all the people who have been getting up to go are milling around him, so that there's no real clue that he's taking his bow. I see that the first few sections of the orchestra (which has become level and runs into the stage itself) is filled with men and women, mostly the latter, in the bright red uniforms of the Salvation Army, and I think two thoughts: that they really wouldn't know much about opera and how to appreciate it anyway, and that they were part of the dream about the relief hotel in New Jersey.
Finally, I'm taking a bus somewhere, but the service needed is so small that the bus is actually a station wagon, and the woman driving just lets us all out where we want to get out. She stops the car to let three people out with all their luggage, and I think "Oh, this is going to have something to do with luggage again" as the previously recorded dreams did (see DIARY 10255). But I'm getting off in a bit, and I can see the country scenery going up around a curve of the hill, and I know that I have to go around one block and just what houses I'll see before---and I have no idea what my destination is or where I'm going, but I'm perfectly comfortable sitting in the station wagon, being driven where I want to go. Then I wake up and determine to type out this page before I meditate and forget (or think about) all of it.
11/18/75
Whorls of dream fragments between 8 am and 9:15 am: visiting somewhere with Mom and Rita and Helen, and I have an argument with Mom and she leaves without me. Then they're setting up a gay orgy on some lawn, along a street with police watching on the other side, and everyone's saying that it can't possibly be done, but the beds are being drawn near each other, and I start removing my clothes. But then I try to figure how I can change clothes without exposing myself, hoping the shirt or sweater will come down over my cock. But the bright, sunny day seems too CLEAR for doing such things, and it dawns on me that we WILL be arrested by the police, so I simply walk away from the beds, mingling with the crowds that have come to watch, and I see Helen calling to Rita as they both walk along the sidewalks gridded between squares of lush grass. Though they're down some street, I call after them, and Rita comes running back for a hug and a kiss, and I'm glad I decided not to engage in the orgy. Then I wake, look at the clock at 8:10, and want to remember the details. Then I'm back on the University of Akron campus, and AGAIN it's the old thing: I'm late for registration, I don't even know where it is, there are lots of new buildings on campus, and I just walk, passing students with books who seem to know where they're going, and I hope I've remembered rightly that trigonometry was on Wednesday evening because I'm looking for the trig class, hoping to get there before it ends to be counted as present. Down a slope in the twilight, bright lights from the building windows, and there are rows of desks and tables set up with states, foreign countries, "old people," and other pennants with the descriptions of people who will register THERE. Through a brick archway some darkly tanned person is lying on the stone roadway wearing a red silk bikini, being crucified as a student protest while two women in red silk bikinis agonize alongside him. Some old auntie goes "Ummm" behind me, and I know it's for ME rather than for the crucified doll, but I can't tell which of the crowd gathered up the stairway to the church has done it, so I continue on my way, more confused than ever, and then look at the clock at 9:15 and come right out and type this page until 9:25, having NO idea what it all means for me.
11/24/75
Again it seems centered around ROOMS of various kinds: I'm staying in some sort of barracks or YMCA that has lots of beds stretched across a large floor, and I bring my belongings to a bed near a dark corner, aware that the person across the way is awake and reading, but though his light shines on the folded tabletop that acts as a headboard when it's folded, I know that I have earplugs (sic) and won't be bothered by the light. But I'm surprised to survey the possessions of the person who's not presently beside my bed: he's building some sort of computerized game or light board which has all sorts of futuristic components on it (shades of "1999" last night?), and even a pile of papers on the windowsill behind his bed is surmounted by a pile of red-white-and-blue 21 airmail stamps that I marvel that anyone could "find a use for" and take, and I marvel at his trust. Then, suddenly, without any knowledge if the two rooms are connected, I'm in a sort of a kitchen with a small breakfast room as an annex (and I think the whole thing looks familiar, as if it could be Joe Safko's home, or Richard Daley's home that I remember from the time I was a kid: that particular low archway that led to the tiny enclosed breakfast room, surrounded by windows, but only containing room for a small table and two chairs), and I'm making a midnight snack. Remember hearing someone say "Oh, there's bread there for him," though I have no idea who it may have been, except it was female, and so I automatically go to the bread box that's standing above the stove (maybe to keep the bread fresh, I think inanely) and find there's a cellophane-wrapped single slice of bread with a crumbling crust, and I debate taking it, but I remember what the woman said and figure it IS for me, so I take it out preparatory to dropping it into the toaster, and then I wake. But the impression of the memorableness of the ROOMS is uppermost in my mind: that THIN quality to the walls, as if they were movie sets, the uniform uniformity of the plain ceilings, as if they were canvas, and the usual total ignorance of what the floor is like, or even what the room would like from the OUTSIDE, to make the similarity to a movie set even more striking: movies of the mind!
12/2/75
First comes the dream about crossing a street to a friend's apartment house at twilight, and it rather resembles the NORTH side of 55th between 6th and 7th, except that the sun is setting to the RIGHT of it, so it appears to be on the SOUTH side of the street, on the OTHER side of City Center---it looks like that ornate building on top of which I once had a chance for a penthouse for something like $265 a month. Anyway, my friend who lives there says that from his room he can see some elegant courtyard which is next door (or that he CAN'T see it and that it's worth a look from outside), so I have some spare time (how UNcharacteristic!) and look at the building next door: it's mostly below sidewalk level, and at the top is a duplex, each floor of which is a single glass-surrounded room, but the topmost, elegantest floor has a "telephone" sign lit at about desk level, and I think THAT'S strange that this ritzy office should have a payphone in it, and then see someone's head in the greenish light of the booth contrasting with the pinkish light of sunset, and decide that the booth's OUTSIDE, and it's as if the city put the booth there to MAKE the elegant duplex more mundane, but I figured that the view from the phone booth into the duplex would be clear, so I went down to another telephone booth on a lower level, and I could see into the courtyard about three stories below, and it WAS elegant in a Piranesi-bridge, Doré-engraving, English-prison look, with turrets on other parts of the building dark against the sky, and I think "Didn't know there were such places in New York City, and fancy my friend lives right NEXT to all this."
Secondly, I'm flying in a plane, but somehow, either before it took off or while it was in flight, I opened a small door near the tail and got into a section that was closed off: much like the back of the balcony of the City Center (mm, THAT again) was closed off: a partition was built to make the cabin smaller, but the seats in the extreme tail were still there, unused, BEHIND the partition. I sort of sprawled about, enjoying my aloneness, and then we were about to land, and I debated going BACK OUT the door and along the fuselage, somehow, and getting back into the regular passenger area, but that was too dangerous, and I consoled myself with the fact that if anything happened to the plane, I was safer near the tail ANYWAY, though I was concerned that there weren't any seatbelts back here. Then the plane banked sharply and, with no inner tremor at all, I looked out to see the tail wheel coming down, blocking out part of the landing strip, edged in red lights, below, and knew we were VERY close to landing. I magically get to the apartment to which I'm going in New York, and there's Mario, coming in from shopping, surprised to see me---no, he's come in from the AIRPORT, because he said he met the 10 o'clock plane, but Jean-Jacques and I weren't on it, and I said "No, you were supposed to meet the plane that arrived at 10:30, because I was ON it," but since I'd taken my baggage along (don't remember any in the compartment I was in) and didn't have to go through checkout procedures, since I was in the tail of the plane, I'd gotten there much earlier and he should STILL go to the airport. However, he's asking how I've been, and his face, below mine, has a graying stubble, but it's more handsome and craggier and ruggeder (raggier and cruggeder?) than it was before, and I can't resist kissing the lips, sticking my tongue out, and he frowns and says, in his accent that he'd never lost: "You always stick you tongue out, just kiss with lips, like this," and we kiss and kiss gently for instant erection in both of us. When I see that he's getting hard, I feel there's hope for us renewing our sexual relationship, and I go down on him while he glances over his shoulder to see if he can be seen from the building across the street---and the building feels to be across Park Avenue, but it's the SAME building that "my friend" lived in that the courtyard was beside in the FIRST dream---and then leans back against a radiator cover while I take down his trousers. His curved cock is heavily hard, and I'm glad it isn't as big as it was before, because now it fits better into the hand and into the mouth, and I'm beginning to play with it when I wake up at 9 am with a great hard-on that feels very good to twiddle with, and I end up coming with crunchy cream before I get out of bed for the day at 10 am for this, finishing typing at 10:30.
12/22/75
It seems I haven't dreamed in AGES, so the fragment is worth recording. I'm sitting in a theater and the review-members are dancing on the stage nude, and through the riffraff of entertainers and women in the first two or three rows, I can see the bodies of the nude males in the back, the one on the left a very tall and handsome athlete with one of the smallest cocks known to man (or woman), but the shorter blond next to him is dancing with an erection, throwing the smooth shaft to the right and to the left with remarkable unconcern, and I think it'd be nice if he came closer, and then suddenly the row I'm sitting in has been switched to a TABLE, and he comes to the other side of the table, somewhat less hard, though the tip is bright red and the shaft still seems hard though it's more sunk into the flesh of his stomach above and his balls below, though he's still thrusting slightly, and there's a cast call for anyone who wants to dance, "particularly black 'sports'," and I think it's awful that they'll emphasize black freaks just to get attention, and have the image of someone who's broader than they are high, bouncing back and forth from one stumpy foot to another on the stage, agreeing that it would help get in an audience. Then in the shadowy place between dream and waking, I think that such a review WOULD work on the stages of decadent New York, but realize that "Hair" and the "Dirtiest Show in Town #2" are IN FACT in production, so the straight audience can have nudity whenever it wants, and then the gay crowd has the scenes at the Anvil, and I think that it FITS marvelously with the tone of the times, and that the Anvil IS really entertainment, except that the market is in nude male bodies, and even GAYS aren't into simply the beautiful display of a beautiful body, but it has to make it "OK" to admire with dancing or sex acts of S/M acts to "take their mind off their actual admiration for the male body." That's making a lot out of not much, but, as I say, it's the first dream in a long time, this is the last page of the day, and without too much hassle I've gotten down to the bottom of the page.
12/24/75
Appropriately, I was eating some enormous meal, going and coming to it in a number of ways, being directed to a huge table after most of the people from SBC had eaten and left, sitting on a corner of another table wondering why I was last to finish, ordering something for $12 and knowing that the filet mignon was $26 and cutting myself a piece of filet mignon and eating it in one piece, almost as if I'd broiled it myself, and then seeing the person next to me ordering it and seeing the waiter cut each section of meat out of the enclosing fat and gristle, seasoning it with something that looked like salt-plus, and then marinating each section and cooking it separately, and I was torn with the idea that I might have to pay $26 for the PORTION of filet without having had it PREPARED for me in the proper way, and the analogy to my life at the present time is irresistible: it's as if I'm charging through EVERYTHING so quickly that things really don't have time to make an IMPRESSION on me: as if I see so many NEW movies and plays and ballets and read so many NEW books that I don't have time to appreciate what I DO have, either by reseeing, as "Pinocchio," or rereading, as "Perennial Philosophy," or reading after seeing, as "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern," which I read on Monday. As if I'm at a feast, will HAVE something of everything, but insisting that I have it MY way will defeat the BEING of people who might LIKE to do something for me, and who could do it for me BETTER. As if I will allow MYSELF to do things for others (proofread Joan's play, contribute to Pope's and Bill's and other's understanding of things, even listen to Eddie and Rolf and Don about their psychological problems), but refuse to let anyone listen to MY problems, refuse to rely on anyone to help ME out, or even to let anyone DO for me, although I surely enjoy Arnie's cheesecake, Pope's color-organ Christmas tree, Don's apartment and New Year's Eve party, Joan's friends, and Steven Waite's sex. But I could do it MORE, rely on them MORE---though this might be AT the point of diminishing returns, when I'm getting so OLD---but I MUST STOP THAT, things ARE getting better, and I SHOULD start thinking about YOUTHING again for a bit, rather than aging. It'll certainly be good for me.
12/31/75
I'm working at an overloaded desk in the corner of a room, and under the pedestal frames of my desk and the storage frame behind me are stored all sorts of electronic components with wires sticking out of them. Someone comes up and wants to store something ELSE in my corner, and I simply refuse, saying that I'm in the process of getting RID of stuff, not getting new stuff, and she doesn't quite know what to make of that, but I'm obviously adamant, and she leaves. I put some of the piles of papers into drawers, and look through folders to make sure that all the pages of the manuscript are there. But I run into a problem: some of the xeroxes aren't very good, some will have to be redrawn, and some weren't drawn in the first place. I seem to have three choices: to use them as they are, which seems less than attractive; to draw them myself, which I know I don't have the skill to do (though the idea appeals to me); or to hire an artist to draw them. But for that I'd need the approval of my boss, so I go toward her huge office to find someone already talking with her (she seems to be a combination of Betsy Feist and Polly Brown) and ANOTHER woman comes in and seems to have priority by force of pushing, and I don't feel like saying that I have only a brief question, so I wait around a bit and then leave. Back at my desk, I'm surprised that the area to the right seems to have cleared up a lot, even looking out toward another area, but as I move toward it sitting in my chair, it turns out to be a mirror, tilted upward so that I can't see myself in it, that reflects blue sky from somewhere. (There's another fragment here of something adventurous happening outside, but that's all I recall of it.) So that area has improved a bit, anyway, and the desk now seems clearer, and it seems easier for me to wait for my boss's time, since I'd decided it wouldn't be good to call her, since she has to SEE what form the manuscript is in. Surely connected with my debating and talking with Leonard last night about the manuscript for HIM, and probably bouncing off my idea that I have to make SOME kind of money, but didn't have the courage to ask LEONARD about it up front last night.