counting backwards

Rhinoplasty

A few nights ago, I had a dream that I’d gotten someone pregnant. I didn’t remember who, only that the pregnancy was unplanned. One night we were drunk and the condom broke.

The baby was delivered without complication. I only saw the mother on a video screen; we chatted via some sort of video interface. She changed appearance a few times, but she always had beautiful eyes. She blew me a kiss, and I went to go see my daughter. My mom would be excited to become a grandmother, I thought.

The newborn was clothed in a dress, and had thick black hair—uncharacteristically thick, I thought, for a baby. She was seated in the center of a large bed and smiled when she saw me. I sat down for a closer look: She had my eyebrows, I noticed, and I was thankful she had her mother’s eyes. She also had my nose, which I suppose is kind of large. On her tiny face, it looked out of place.

I wanted her to grow up to be pretty like her mother, so I lightly flicked the tip of her nose, and it fell off. Her nose now fit her face, but seemed artificially tiny—almost Michael Jackson-like. I was worried I’d made a mistake. There was no going back now. But I convinced myself, “She’s young. It will fill out as she gets older.”

Rivalry

I couldn’t sleep last night. When I finally nodded off, I had a dream that seemed innocuous at the time, but kind of fucked my whole day. I received numerous, “Are you alright”s, which is a big pet peeve of mine. I didn’t realize I sounded so down. Maybe I was, or maybe it was the lack of sleep.

I was in my grandmother’s den, a tiny room where the men in the family would fall into a meatball-and-pasta food coma while watching football. My grandma passed away last year, and the house, which has been in the family for years, was recently sold.

Inside the den was a large conference table, at which was seated a few men—a football coaching staff—and a couple of players. I entered the room to announce that I was going to take their offer and try out for the position of third-string running back. One of the players I would be backing  up was Ki-Jana Carter, a great running back at Penn State who had a middling career as a pro, was seated at the table.

I cracked a few jokes at my own expense as I announced my candidacy for backup RB. The jokes only received a few chuckles from the coaches, but Carter thought they were hilarious. I shook Carter’s hand and told him that I’m glad he could appreciate my sense of humor. I finished by saying that I’d been doing well at the gym and was looking forward to helping out the team. From somewhere outside the room, I heard my cousin A. laugh at me and make a discouraging comment about my decision to try out.

In another room, The Ohio State University was playing Michigan on television. I had a difficult time to decide who I was rooting for, because I don’t like either of the two teams. My default favorite has always been Penn State.

—-

I hit the gym after work. Monday’s outing didn’t go too well—too much partying this weekend maybe. Today was a little better, but I still finished .17 miles off the best pace I set last week on the elliptical. It was frustrating. It made me think of how it’s been searching for a job over the past year and a half and how it seems like I’ve been working so hard without making any real headway: 2.53 miles in half-an-hour. That just won’t do.

Chimera

Last night, I dreamt that I was swimming in the ocean, just above the surface. I was surrounded by a large group of different water birds—penguins and others I couldn’t identify. We were swimming toward the shore.

When we got there, there were all kinds of birds—cranes and cardinals too—that had flocked to the beach. I was amazed to be around so many birds (I had become their size at that point), but I was worried that all those birds meant I should watch my step so that I didn’t step in bird shit.

As it turned out, they had gathered on the beach to lay eggs. I then vomited up a cluster of fish roe that one of the mother birds ate. Further down the beach, I noticed that there were also chimpanzees on the beach. I watched as one of them birthed a stillborn baby in a nest of sand. I moved around for a better look. The mother chimp fell, visibly sad, on her lifeless spawn and cradled it in her arms. I thought the scene looked very dramatic, almost cinematic. As the mother chimp laid down, I saw that her scalp was missing and that her brain was exposed.

I awoke to my mother’s excited voice ringing through the house. She had just gotten off the phone with her doctor and found out that she was cancer free.

Kickball Diaries 2

Maybe it’s the late nights and early mornings, maybe it’s because I run around outside all day, but I haven’t had a dream in weeks.

Last night it started on a kickball field. There were two teams, all adults, and only one person I recognized—my friend M., a drinking buddy. The field was a blacktop school yard: an amalgam of my first elementary and the school at which I work.

The game must have caught the attention of a YouTube vlogger, who ended up hanging out with our group. Afterward, she came back to my house and slept downstairs on the couch. She was there the next morning, and I thought how nice it was to make a random connection with someone over the Internet. I left the living room to get dressed, but when I returned, she was gone, though she didn’t turn off the television. I looked around the house, and then outside, but she’d left.

I stayed outside on the front steps and lit a cigarette. In the street was a homeless father and child. It was still dark out and very early in the morning. They were making themselves comfortable on a large piece of cardboard. I thought from how they were dressed that they might have been Hasidic. As I put out my cigarette and opened my front door, a large brown van pulled up. Two figures jumped out and forced the father and son to get inside.

Tony Soprano vs. Kurt Cobain

It started in Naples. Mr. Soprano and I had business there, but I don’t remember what it was. It was my first big trip with the boss, and I didn’t want to act out of line. I asked him about his heritage: I’m mixed by Italian standards. My mother’s side is Sicilian, but my father’s side is Napolitan. I said, “You’re probably just pure Sicilian, right?” He didn’t answer me as he moved into the next room.

Later, I was in a high school gymnasium. Nirvana was playing. They were giving an amazing performance, the kind I’ve only dreamed about seeing, since I never got to see them live. Unfortunately, I got to the show late and had to stand in the back. When they finished their last song, Kurt waved to the crowd and he looked sort of childlike. As the crowd started emptying out, I went to the merch table to pick up an item I was entitled to for attending the performance. It was a laminated ticket signed by Kurt Cobain. I thought to myself, “I’m really lucky to have this, considering he’s dead.”

Punked

Last night, the Guinness added up quicker than it usually does. I wondered if the Irish UN delegate who was hawking over our group had slipped something in my drink. I dropped my phone in the toilet once I got home, which will teach me to never again text while I’m pissing.

I stumbled out of the house, walked though the backyard and stopped behind the neighbor’s house, where I stuck two fingers down my throat. I’ve never tried that before, but it turned out that I didn’t have to vommit. Afterward, I wandered back inside and fell asleep on the couch.

I dreamt that I got hired back by my old boss and that I was given a job at his new Canadian news Web site. The Web site didn’t have a name, and I wasn’t given a title or job description.

The staff was small. One of my coworkers was a pretty young girl—just out of college—who was the nicest person I’d ever met (though she wasn’t any one I know in real life). While she was out to lunch, her aunt came to visit her and told me that she didn’t like the girl’s boyfriend. The aunt told me stories of how he mistreated her and then showed me a picture of the two of them together. She was wearing a modest dress, and looked like the sweet, professional lady I’d come to know in the hour or so we’d worked together. He was unkempt, looked drunk and was making a ridiculous expression toward the camera. I said the boyfriend looked like a douchebag. When I woke up, I realized the man in the photo was Ashton Kutcher.

My hangover didn’t subside until 2:30 p.m.: one Bayer aspirin and three bottles of water.

I Dream of Samosas

A group of friends, including my sister, were gathered at an Indian restaurant in India. We sat at a long table, and the restaurant was sort of family style.

We were having problems overcoming the language barrier, and I was upset with how my friends were treating the wait staff. I felt a terrible anxiety that we were being viewed as stereotypical American tourists by the staff and the others in the restaurant.

One woman in the group had been living in India for a month. I don’t know her in my waking life, but she still seemed familiar. She wore glasses and her long black hair was densely curly. I was going to tell her that I couldn’t believe I hadn’t had a samosa during my trip to India, but I thought the better of it. I thought the statement would make me sound ignorant.

At the end of our dinner, I was left to settle the bill. I was handed a disorderly stack of checks and cash to give the waitress as payment, but the checks were written for odd amounts that were very difficult to add.

Time to Waste

After drinking last night, I crashed out on the couch. I was happy the cookies I ate didn’t quarrel in my tummy with the Jameson and Jagermeister. I normally avoid sweet baked goods when I’m drinking, but it was a birthday party, and they were chocolate chips.

I woke up at 7, fully dressed, in glasses, with the MLB network still on the television—their predictions show that had been running nonstop all night, apparently. I stood awake for four hours.

Upstairs, I laid in bed. It was raining. The light filtering through my bedroom window was dusky gray.

My old bed has seen better days. I’m pretty sure it’s the same one I slept in when I got too old for the crib. The springs in the middle have grown weary of their rigid posture and have begun to slump, leaving a sizeable depression I can just about curl my hindquarters into. This cozy recess often complicates my efforts to get out of bed when my alarm goes off. The weather wasn’t helping.

I couldn’t decide whether to get up and get my day started on just a few hours of drunken Zs or try to get some more sleep. I stayed motionless, drifting in and out of sleep and having brief, hallucinatory dreams: In the downstairs bathroom, I stood at the vanity and watched a series of small moths fly out of a candle placed on a shelf hanging next to the mirror. They moved in a synchronous, geometric pattern toward the door. A group of larger moths followed soon after, flying in unison and just as precisely. As they got closer to the door, I was able to examine them more closely and realized they were actually tiny birds. I looked back at the candle wondering if a large spider would follow next.