HYDRATE.

It was gray* and there were hills and I was thirsty. I drank glasses and glasses and glasses of water incessantly.

* FUN FACT: GRAY VS. GRAY
Gray: adjective
Grey: verb

NOSE HAIR.

All I remember is: they kept on growing and I kept on trimming away.

HIGH SCHOOL, DEATH BY DROPPING, CHINESE RESTAURANT

I'm in high school again. It's raining and gray. I think I was circling around our library to find parking but there was a school function like a play or a P.T.A. meeting or something. In my dream, space was unnaturally crowded. Then, my mother and brother were hanging precariously onto the edge of a balcony at the school's entrance. I couldn't hold onto them any longer. After a bit of thought and my mother's persistence I decided to fling my body as well into the pit they had fallen into.

I flopped onto a giant egg carton the size of an olympic pool, making a sinister sound like: blop! crunch! My brother had died from the fall. He'd broken his clavicle and bled to death.

Then we went to get some dim sum at a restaurant that once was lacquered red with flowing red curtains. It was softly lit by halogen lamps.

CYCLERY

All I've been doing in my dreams for the past couple of nights is building and repairing bicycles.

PIZZA, COLLEGE TOWN.

I also explained to M. and R. from the Midnight Ridazz Aids Life Cycle team reasons why I moved to the United States. I was very eloquent and I knew it so I thought it. It was the end of a hot summer day.

NAIL POLISH.

This is all I can remember:

I was shopping at a department store like Wal-mart or Target or something, and it felt the way it does when you're shopping late at night at a chain department store. I felt uneasy; I think it is because I was worried the store might close before I could gather all the items on my list. I browsed through rows of nail polish. I couldn't find the proper color of electric-y/royal purple. Ryan suggested a pearly one with an anemic tinge of purple that almost neared white. I immediately disliked it. Nonetheless, to demonstrate pale colors plus my skin tone equals horse shit, I still applied some on the index and pinky fingernails of my left hand . I said, "See Ryan, this looks like horsehit." He agreed. I used a little acetone to remove the polish but it was stubborn. I must have finished the rest of my shopping excursion with two fingernails still stained pearly like the white, the whites of your e-e-e-eyes.

SEX AND THE BEACH.

Floating in the ocean at night with a lifesaver, like in Titanic.
Then I'm at a beach resort strung with paper lanterns and I'm wearing a very low cut, one-piece swimsuit, with the v-opening slit all the way down to my belly. It is white with puffy meringues and my nipples keep slipping out.

My friend B. begins making passes at me. I find myself kissing her underneath my parent's bed. Since I'm not enjoying this, really, but slightly curious of what it's like to have sex with another girl, I don't find myself plagued with guilt. She gave me short unsatisfying kisses. I only become regretful when I see she has a long flagellating sea weed for a clitoris that slightly resembles some amputated chopstick.

CHLORINE, SWAMP, HOMICIDAL HUSBAND, ENDLESS DOORS TO LOCK

I'm a swim instructor.
Or I'm swimming laps. There are two other girls with black cut-off shirts effortlessly swimming laps as well. We may have exchanged stroking techniques but I may be making this up.

Then I'm home, and I'm married, and I have two children. A teenage boy and a girl who is younger than the boy. It is the end of the day; they are sprawled on our bed in our green room watching end of the day television programs. Have you seen Great Expectations, you know, that film with Gwyneth Paltrow in it, in which the old lady's home is very Victorian Floridian and the color scheme is this deep dusty emerald green a little bloody (metaphorically speaking) but also lush-y on the green spectrum? Well, this is the sort of desolated/isolated swampy setting to which my dream is taking place, with my two-storied home circled by creaky verandas set within a scarlet orange sunset as though the sky were milk stained by very ripened melons.

There was some sort of disagreement with my husband. I know he is demented, so when he flashed an ominous grin, I knew it was best to calmly walk away, panic concealed. I climb a flight of stairs through the back and begin locking our doors. Each door has a small delicate latchkey made of ivory and curved like an abstract question mark or human ear. I can hear his rabietic pants as he tries to beat me to each door. I become more scared as the rattlings become more urgent but the children seem nonchalant their mother is escaping their father like some pathetic prey and continue watching television unaffected.

RYAN, CAFETERIA

Theres a cafeteria in an art school, I'm at a table with a few others. The students work is on the wall; When I focus on a painting and without leaving my seat I get a close up view of the work. The next day when I sit down at the table. The anorexic blond who was at my right the previous day was gone. I had taken the seat she occupied, to the others it meant she wouldn't be back. They were excited over her replacement "she was had a bad attitude". At tables around ours people turned in there chairs to comment.
I was turned in my seat listening when I noticed an a man in his thirties an cholo type. The Cholo walked up to the front of the room just ahead of our table. His presence there gained everyones attention, When He spoke it was to invite us to call nondescript objects in a shelving unit by nick names he had chosen for them.

INVENTORY #3

Downtown Charlottesville, VA with J.W.
In my office. Job applications. Electronically. Ryan too.
According to my co-workers, three things describe Johanna as an employer:

1. Talks too much.
2. Chatty.
3. Talks back.

Naturally, I wasn't hired.