Sunday, November 11, 2007

This Morning's Dream: Scorning My Annoying Handler

I've been invited to do a drag show for a book club at a university. They've assigned a handler to me who follows me everywhere I go, and she is always looking over my shoulder and gently pushing me from behind.

After the show, this handler leads me through the campus toward my (nebulous) transportation home. We keep seeing groups of people dressed up in elaborate butchy outfits, studded with high-tech odds-and-ends. A woman in a lab coat tells us that it's an annual convention where law students dress up like futuristic police officers. She says that their mandate is to be rude, but not TOO rude.

The handler keeps nudging me throughout this meeting. When we finally leave the convention and walk away, the handler tells me that it would have been nice for me to "put on a little show" for them. She points to a well-lit chair in the corner that might have made a good stage.

I instantly feel -- in the dream -- that this would have been appropriate, but I start inventing ridiculous reasons for why I chose not to do it. The big reason I come up with is that I don't want people to think that I'm "performing" all the time. The handler looks sceptically at me. I don't believe what I'm saying either.

While having this argument we are walking down a steep hallway full of scaffolding. The handler is picking her way through it, but I see a faster -- though more dangerous -- way through. In seconds the whole scaffold is collapsing and we're running to get away, and my cat is yelling at me that breakfast time should have happened LONG ago.

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