From Pathetic Life #4
Thursday, September 1, 1994
Colors ooze warping like a rainbow with no horizontal hold. Stale yellow light sputters from the lamp by my bed. The walls are florescent purple, for now but not for long, and already they’re turning blue. It’s 1:37 in the morning.
From above I’m watching younger me romping with April, my girlfriend from fifteen years ago. We didn’t have much in common, but Lord, she had a great body, and I had access to it. I still dream about April once in a while, which is great, but not when it's like this.The colors absorb her, then me, and we’re gone. Margaret calls collect, though there’s no phone and no sound, and she asks why I’m boinking April, not her. Good question. It is peculiar.
The red numbers on my digital clock are glowing blue. The lamp flickers again. Is the building burning down, and the flames are affecting the electricity? Is that the way it works when there’s a fire? Is there a fire?
Maybe, maybe not. It doesn’t matter, and my mind wanders. The blue numbers on the clock are green, but time stands still.
Like a watched pot simmering, I slowly, slowly become aware that I'm stuck somewhere between sleep and purgatory. I want to slap myself awake but my arm weighs about 600 pounds. Half an hour later I’ve lifted it, but it's sooo heavy, and I’m too exhausted to do anything with it, and it crashes down on my face.
Ouch. That hurts, but not enough to wake me up. My arm has lost some weight, and I lift it and drop it on my head again. Still all the colors in the room are inconsistent, and the lamp is flickering Neapolitan. The clock, now yellow, says just one damn minute has gone by.
Trying to open my eyelids is like picking up a piano, but pianos can be lifted, and eventually eyes open. The lamp flickers once last time, whitely, weakly, with a sizzling short-circuit sound. A horn honks on the street below, and I’m awake.
The lamp doesn’t need repairs. It wasn’t even switched on. The clock’s numbers are red like they’re supposed to be, and it’s 1:39. All the above took two minutes but felt like the whole night.
There's no way I'm getting back to sleep, and anyway, I'd be afraid of another dream like that one. I grab a piece of paper and a pen, and race to write all of it before the memory can disappear. Then I read what I’ve written, but writing it is a clearer memory than living it. Typing it a few minutes later, it’s not even a memory, just words.
Dreams are some crazy shit, man. That wasn’t strange enough to be acid flashback, but it was strange enough, and drugs weren’t even involved.
You ever have dreams like that, where you’re locked between worlds, paralyzed, nothing makes sense, and you’re flying through memories and colorscapes and fog and light and fire?
I’ve had dreams like that 5 or 7 times in my life, and always it terrifies me. Maybe it's a medical condition, or mental. Reality is preferred. Or I'd at least like to finish what I was doing with April.
♦ ♦ ♦
It’s an hour later, and I don’t remember the dream at all. Dreams fade, but I remember waking up scared out of my friggin’ gourd. I’m still afraid to sleep, and I don’t trust the lamp, and I've hardly slept, and I have to be at work in an hour. Today is gonna suck.
♦ ♦ ♦
Today sucked.
♦ ♦ ♦
I haven’t brushed my teeth in a few days. Keep your distance. Usually I’ll Pepsodent once or twice daily, before work and maybe after lunch. Monday through Friday anyway, thought I never much bother with it on the weekends.
My mouth is full of canker sores, though, and brushing seems to aggravate the situation, so I’ll be Mr Bad Breath until the cankers subside. Right now I'm doing that thing where you hold your hand over your face and breath your breathe? It's not a pretty smell.
This
is an entry retyped from an on-paper zine I wrote many years ago,
called Pathetic Life. The opinions stated were my opinions then, but
might not be my opinions now. Also, I said and did some disgusting
things, so parental guidance is advised.
I have dreams like that if I eat pizza too close to bedtime.
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