Dr. Seuss and Flit: "Scream!"

When menaced by the big-assed stuff of nightmares...


I'm a bit confused by the insignia on John Cleese's right cuff...is that a naval marking, or is was this just something about pajamas at the time?

The DJ Nightmare Detailed

I have mentioned the "soundboard nightmare" a few times here, and the accompanying "DJ nightmare" as well. For some unknown reason I had it again this morning. It was typical and serves as a description of how they tend to go:

I am auditioning to be the DJ at a huge roller-rink which has been converted to a nightclub. They want me to do a "Retro 80s Goth Night," and I am confident that I can do this, especially because most of the patrons are my friends.

Unfortunately the CD players aren't working so I am forced to use vinyl...this is a slower process and I don't have a lot of vinyl with me. To start off with a bang -- and prove my credibility -- I play an obscure and well-loved song that everybody dances to usually, but instead, the crowd just stares at me and goes back to talking to each other. They are not drunk enough for this particular song. It was a bad choice.

In the booth with me is an acquaintance who is trying to help me, but instead of doing so he is simply a witness to all my mistakes, and a more immediate and professional judge than the invisible bar owner. When I cue up the next song he whispers that it's actually being auditioned on the program channel, and he shows me how to cue the record properly, even though it's something I should have known long ago.

Scrambling to unpack my records, the only other vinyl I have on hand so far is Belinda Carlisle, and I am forced to play her...it's either that or dead air while I find something else. A few people dance sarcastically, and others begin to request songs.

I try to listen to their requests while unpacking the records, mindful that the Belinda Carlisle song is coming to an end, but all the records I'm pulling out are the "long-shot" ones that I shouldn't even bother carrying around: totally obscure choices that nobody ever wants to hear. They're on the top of the pile, apparently. Meanwhile a girl is trying to describe a song she wants to hear, but she doesn't know the name or artist so instead she's talking about the artist's lifestyle. I know that she's describing a newer song -- not one from the '80s -- but I have to let her finish before I can tell her I can't play it.

Just before the Belinda Carlisle song ends I find The Cure's "The Walk" single, and frantically get it set up and played...but it's a B-side flamenco guitar version. Some diehard Cure fans dance, but they don't really want to be doing so.

I believe I have the perfect follow-up, which will also serve as my redemption: the live version of Depeche Mode's "Everything Counts." But I can't find the album. I keep finding OTHER editions of their live album, but never the one with "Everything Counts" on it. Finally the previous song ends and there is a moment of dead air as I slap a different Depeche Mode album down and play something randomly...and it's an "unplugged" version with extended acoustic guitar solos.

A drunken friend jumps onto the dancefloor and starts acting obnoxious, dancing ridiculously and invading everybody's personal spaces. The few people who WERE dancing have left because of him. Meanwhile, up in the booth, I've managed to play ANOTHER incorrect version of a song, and this one is only seventy-one seconds long...even though I now have everything unpacked I'm unable to find a follow-up song which matches it. I'm fumbling with records, all of which have unwieldy gatefold covers and oddly-shaped record sleeves which cannot be swapped between them.

I keep on thinking that I will do better soon -- finally get organized and "in the groove" -- but it just never happens...I have ruined the night for everybody.

Set

On the final day of shooting, the director notices me and he has a revelation: my eyes are perfect, he says, and so is my bearing, as one who has served proudly and remained below the status she has deserved. I will be elevated, he tells me. I will play the part.

A headdress is prepared. Against my wishes I am placed before a mirror to practice my lines. My own replacement, a new servant, whispers to me what I already know: this is blasphemous, it is against the rules and the customs. I must not do this thing, even in jest. I must not appear without makeup. I must not speak in my own voice.

The director is busy with his other duties. During rehearsals the actors look at me with a mixture of hostility and pity. They know I can't be allowed to do this. So do I.

The next morning I lie in bed, listening. The headdress has been quietly removed from my room. Somebody else is saying my lines in the courtyard.

Fighting the Sound Board

It's been a year since I last had the Sound Board Nightmare, but it returned last night.

In the Sound Board Nightmare I am in charge of engineering a live radio show. Things go well at first, but halfway through the currently-playing song I am unable to find a follow-up promo. I look everywhere. Nobody will help me. The final seconds of the song tick away and I quickly hit "Play" to play the next song as a substitute...but instead the song plays again, a second time.

Everybody stares at me. Something breaks down. I can't find the sheets that tell me when to play commercials. I panic, surrounded by staring eyes and dead air.

I stopped having these dreams when I stopped DJ'ing, both live shows and at CKMS. Since the demise of CKMS I have had little urge to get involved with radio again, especially not at a station that is hanging by such a tiny thread.

But there's ANOTHER community station in town, and it just so happens that a friend of mine his resigning his position, and he was looking for a replacement...

...so now I'm the Technical Director of "Monday Night with the Arts" on CKWR. I have a ton of sound mixing experience, but this is stretching my skill set a bit: a heavily scripted program, several guests on three different microphones, phone-in interviews...it's a real step up. Once I get the hang of the equipment -- and figure out how the darn Cue works -- I'm sure it will become second nature, but for now I'll suffer the Sound Board Nightmares.

Tonight was my first night, and coupled with a crippling insulin reaction I was a bit of a wreck. Fortunately the outgoing Technical Director was there to guide me, and the show didn't turn out too badly.

Besides keeping my skills polished and having something interesting to do on Monday nights, this is also an opportunity to keep up with the local Arts community...and it IS nice to be part of a radio station again...especially one so TIDY!

Teasing Dreams

I sometimes think that the only reason we dream is to trick us into getting out of bed.

When I wake up and am still in confused semi-awareness, I remember my dreams as reality and I think that the world's a really interesting place.

"Gotta get up! They're making a movie in Antarctica with a commissary that serves deep-fried cheese fingers, and every town has a house where the gay kids think up fabulous disguises, and a rotten banana is chasing the boyscout. What an incredible world we live in!"

Then I turn on the light and realize that I WON'T be going to Antarctica today...instead I'll just be going to breakfast, which is nice but not NEARLY so exciting.

Maybe if we didn't dream we'd never turn on the light?

Nightmares About The Old Homestead

Whenever the holidays creep up on me I am besieged by nightmares about living "at home."

In these dreams I am back in my old bedroom -- though it's somehow mixed with my current bedroom -- with all the old (long-dead) pets and problems. I am always an adult, but all my family members are the same age they were when I left home fifteen years ago.

I wake up wondering if this is some sort of "arrested development" thing, like I'm still the person I was back then, or still clutching the apron strings. This makes me nervous.

But last night I woke up and had a sudden revelation: I don't dream about "the old home" because I somehow wish I were back there...I dream about it because it is still accessible. The lines of influence between me and the family are still there. I'm just a phone call or a car ride away, so even though I'm no longer physically INSIDE the house I am still connected TO it, and these dreams about "the old homestead" are really just dreams about the continuing relationship that I have with my parents...the house itself is merely a convenient setting, the old bedroom a symbol for my own apartment here, the hallways are places where my family and I meet again.

So I'm NOT necessarily regressive or conflicted, I'm just dreaming about meeting my parents again. Whew!

This doesn't, however, explain all those dreams about being naked in highschool.

A Bit More About "Family Feud"

Game shows are a form of drug. They're breezy and slick and fast-paced, with all of their drama resolved in a few minutes...this element appeals to our lazy, spectacle-seeking sides. The winners are genuinely ecstatic and we celebrate with them. The losers are gracious and we admire their good sportsmanship. On top of all that we get to test our OWN knowledge, participating as though we were actually there, albeit without the inevitable pressure of making asses out of ourselves on network television.

All drugs take their toll, though, and after a weekend of "Celebrity Family Feud" I feel slightly nauseous. I never want to hear that theme song again. I have a headache from the endlessly-repeated "Survey SAYS!" At night I dream about the members of "Eight is Enough" and "Love Boat" moving into my house and snorting coke off the back of my cat. Don't tell ME that I've never suffered.

I do have to temper somewhat my negative impression of Richard Dawson. I still think he's a pig, but it appears that 95% of the women were either indifferent to or flattered by his attentions; when I wrote my last screed I had only watched about six episodes, in all of which he was particularly drunk. Dawson was an aggressive man-handler of both women AND men, and I realize that this was considered an attractive part of his "schtick."

Dawson may have been an effective woman-killer, but the children sure hated him. It's painful to watch him try to "draw out" precocious Hollywood preteens who can barely disguise their disdain for him; Dawson acts like the slightly perverted, faux-hip grandfather that you dread visiting on Christmas. As messed up as MY grandfather was, though, at least he never launched into pointless impersonations of W.C. Fields. Nope, my grandfather just peed.

Picture this: the show's producers have already made the dubious decision to pair pre-adolescent Ricky Schroder with reigning "Playmate of the Year" Shannon Tweed. With the two of them at the podium, Dawson initiates this classy bit of comedy:

DAWSON: She's pretty, isn't she.

SCHRODER: (Shyly) Yeah.

DAWSON: There's a whole book about her. (Gasps of surprise from everybody on stage).

SCHRODER: Yeah?

DAWSON: How old are you?

SCHRODER: Twelve and a half.

DAWSON: When you're eighteen I'll show it to you. (More gasps and nervous laughter. Dawson points at his belly-button) She's got a staple right here.


Richard Dawson has a quick wit, don't get me wrong; he can banter with the best of him and he can come up with some amazing thing. But put him next to a kid and he veers completely off the rails, and then continues to veer until he has crushed everything and everybody in sight. What a weirdo.

As "risque" as the '80s were in many ways, these shows have given me an eyeful of "conventional network sexuality," which might explain why titillation is often so boring to watch.

So yeah, enough is enough. Somebody has to invent a sort of "colonic purge" for the gameshow-addled brain.

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.

Early Morning Observations

For your edification:

• My cat's stomach does NOT run on daylight savings time.
• It is very easy to take off false eyelashes...they just pull off. But last night BOTH of them were firmly and impossibly stuck to my real eyelashes, and it took ten painful minutes with tweezers to pull them off. I have no idea how this happened.
  
• If I don't manage 365 blog entries this year I will consider myself an outright failure.
• My one superpower is the ability to postpone illness until after an event has finished. For two weeks an autumn cold has been lurking in the darkest recesses of my body, asking repeatedly "can I come out and play?" and jacking up my blood sugar. This afternoon, after birthday and Hallowe'en and Kink show and breakfast, I will lay spread-eagled on my living room floor and scream "TAKE ME!" And it will.
  
• I dreamed that I was walking to work in the rain, and my cat was following me, and we accidentally stumbled over the hidden entrance to Reverend Phelp's basement. I woke up before I learned anything juicy, but I DID see that they keep all of their paperwork in cheap cardboard filing cabinets.

Ahh, the sunrise, I confront ye!

Toronto Pride Impressions

On Seeking Attention: A few years back, Annie, Victoria and I would dress up in showy outfits during Toronto Pride and march up and down Church Street on Saturday night, which was an ego stroke. Hundreds of people would take our pictures, they'd stand around and point, and guys with video cameras would stand there tell us to shout things like "Happy Pride, Puerto Rico!"

But while part of me loves to wallow in attention like a dog loves rolling in roadkill, the other part believes that this craving for attention -- and achieving it in such an easy way -- is pandering to a part of my nature that should be controlled, not encouraged. It like eating too many sweets on Hallowe'en night. It seems cheap and desperate and fleeting. So I stopped going.

But taking part in Pride to promote Pridetoberfest? That's a different story!

On New Shoes: Since I'd be wearing my "sexy dirndle" outfit, I decided -- on a whim -- to try on the only pair of shoes I owned that would match it. Both shoes fell to pieces as soon as I put them on, they were ancient and the plastic was dried and cracked. They were like mummy-shoes.

I raced out to buy replacements. I wore the new shoes around the house on Friday night, trying to break them in. Making dinner in heels, doing the laundry in heels, cleaning the catbox in heels. They didn't hurt at all! They felt great!

Walking and standing on pavement is very different.

A Resolution: We arrived in Toronto at 9am and I decided to follow through with another of my recent resolutions: to not meticulously plan EVERYTHING. The thing I didn't plan this time was to double-check Jason & Craig's address. With only two hours to get ready, I wandered in the general vicinity of their apartment without actually finding it, maybe because I was on the wrong street. Payphones are a dying breed, they now cost fifty cents a call, and they don't give you any change back. My call to Jason gave me the right address and it only cost me a dollar.

On Human Relations: Flyers, flyers, flyers. It was very sunny and we were handing out flyers. Most people were very friendly and were happy to receive the flyers. Many were genuinely interested in the event. Other people smiled and shook their heads, which was okay; I think that when somebody smiles at you, you should at least smile back, and if you don't you're a jerk.

I got an inkling of how panhandlers feel, even when they're not asking for money. Some people, as soon as they saw my flyers, looked at me in a strange way that seemed almost animalistic; they turned their heads at an angle, squinted slightly, and stared at me aggressively from the corners of their eyes when they passed. This meant "don't you DARE waste my time with another stupid flyer." It was like getting a dart from hell right into your forehead.

I also didn't want to discriminate, but with so many people approaching I needed to quickly decide who was most likely to be interested and approachable. I didn't want to assume that twinky boys would be better targets than -- for instance -- a guy who looked homeless. People in wheelchairs? Sweet old Oriental couples? The older lesbian and gay couples? Kids who appeared to be underage? Naked men? The Village People? The Human Pony?

Would a homeless man be offended if I gave him a pamphlet, or would it give him a feeling of integration, or would he just be indifferent? I decided to exclude those who were obviously homeless, on the grounds that it would be like giving tap shoes to a person with no legs. After doing this for a few hours, a homeless man walked right up to me and held out his hand. So heck, I gave him a flyer.

On Picture-Taking Tourists: Many of the Japanese girls are giving "peace" signs when they take pictures this year.

On Daytime Drag: My face fell apart at 3pm on Saturday, due to a number of factors that were all my fault. On Sunday, Jason introduced me to the joy of Ben Nye Fixing Spray, which was a huge revelation.

Still, there's simply no way to do totally convincing drag in direct sunlight. Sun dries out foundation and makes it curdle. It's difficult to strike a balance between "understated" and "overdone." Anybody who gets within three feet of you will have their illusions shattered.

Context: I have recurring anxiety nightmares about failing exams and screwing up a DJ set, but the most common -- and nightmarish -- of them all are my dreams about Being Only Half In Drag. Like, being out in public and realizing that I'm wearing men's shoes (or even just shoes that clash), or getting out on stage to perform and realizing I'm not wearing any makeup, or -- the most nightmarish of all -- being out in a sunny event with tens of thousands of people, and realizing that my face looks sort of like a wooly cottage cheese.

On Sunburn: I had a vivid and sort of pretty negative version of a dirndle halter top on my skin. No wonder I'd been getting woozy; I always feel that way when I've been out in the sun too long. I hadn't put any lotion on my shoulders, back, or chest, which was only slightly less stupid than the time I didn't put any on my feet, and had to crawl to the telephone the next day to tell my supervisor that I wouldn't be in to work, because my ankles were so swollen they could no longer flex.

On Cel Phones: During dinner, the woman at the table next to me was on her cel phone from the moment she sat down to the moment I left, which was halfway through her meal. Her five-year-old son played a game with his auntie (or nanny). The game was called "I'm Going Away Now." I can't help thinking his mom plays this game an awful lot with him, for real.

On Repetative Vision: When I shut my eyes to sleep I saw people walking towards me...face after face after face, not realistic but sort of like a crowd you'd see in a comic book. They were all walking towards me and I could see my hand and I was giving them flyers. I never saw the way the faces reacted, I just saw them aproaching, and they shifted and wobbled like a film about LSD.

A Dream: The Usual Chase and The Ropy Arms

I am an intern at a scientific institute during the 1950s. I am up late studying in one of the rooms when "Kathleen," a senior researcher, enters with her bewildered assistant. Kathleen explains to the assistant that she's developed a formula which gives a person enormous strength. She says that it turns a person's grip into unbreakable iron, but the side-effect is that you become a murderous, sociopathic thrill-seeker.

Kathleen is aware that I'm hiding in the room behind one of the partitions so she grabs her assistant and they stumble around looking for me. Since she can't catch me without letting go of her prey -- and she prefers to be watched -- she drinks the formula and then chokes the assistant to death. I only see Kathleen's silhouette except for her arm, which is thick and pale, marbled with veins. It looks like a ropy albino tree.

Escaping the institute I'm sniffed out and followed by "'Ymann," the head scientist, who has also drunk the potion. 'Ymann says it will be fun to hunt OUTSIDE the building for a change. We go on a slow "hide and seek" around the neighbourhood and eventually I wind up meeting "Rutherford," a high school friend, and begging him to take me away in his enormous 1950s car. We temporarily escape, but eventually 'Ymann kills Rutherford with his ropy, pale arm. I'm ashamed for leaving Rutherford behind but I remember hearing that the grip was unbreakable, like a pit-bull's hold. I tell myself that I couldn't have helped Rutherford.

The chase ends in a convention center. 'Ymann has become abnormally tall and he's very fast, but I'm able to get onto a lower part of the main floor, and I know that he can't jump down to my level without being crushed under his weight. As I'm escaping through the foyer, running past reclining businessmen who are reading the morning newspaper, 'Ymann speaks through a public address system that he's hijacked from a switchboard operator. He says that the scientific institute will no longer hold conferences at the convention center due to the center's tolerance and promotion of "alternative lifestyles." This is meant to be a revenge against me, which seems foolish and impotent.

I see a newspaper report about 'Ymann's eventual death; he suffered from "rickets" due to his ever-increasing height and he died in a hospital.

The Symbolic Housewarming

I had a terrible dream that I'd held a housewarming. Two types of people showed up. Some of them were stoic, relaxed, worldly men and women in their late '20s and early '30s: social workers, philosopher-waitresses. The others were very rambunctious, hyperactive, early '20s gay men with a tendency to primadonna-ness.

The dream skipped over the happy part of the evening and started instead at 7am, twelve hours after the party had started. A subsection of the primadonnas were out of control and were doing crystal meth. They were refusing to leave. One of them had spread layers of chocolate on my bedroom carpet. The other primadonnas had taken on a babysitting role for their out-of-control peers, but they were too distracted to keep them from being destructive.

I was terrified of the trouble I was causing my neighbours.

Meanwhile, the stoic, worldly crowd was in my kitchen, sitting around and eating the last of the food and acting totally unconcerned. I shared my anxieties -- I was tired and a subset of primadonnas were trashing my house -- and they looked at me as though I were overreacting, or as though I should have expected it. One of them -- my Guardian Angel -- recommended I tell everybody to leave.

"OKAY!" I shouted, "Everybody has to leave in...fifteen minutes!"

The primadonnas looked at me disdainfully.

"I mean, FIVE minutes!" They started picking up their stuff, turning off their music, snorting the last of their drugs, saying their goodbyes, gradually making for the door. Some of them seemed to like me and some of them of them obviously didn't. One came to say that he'd spent the whole night lying on my lawn hallucinating at the stars, and he spoke as though I were to be thanked for this, even though I didn't even know who he was.

The police arrived. There'd been an emergency at the psychiatric ward, and they were bringing distraut patients to be looked after by one of my stoic, worldly, social worker guests. One of the police officers explained to me that a particular patient was bleeding from his ears, because he had tumours in them...a new nurse had pulled them and tried to cut them out, which had caused a hemmorage. The nurse had been fired and the patient was stumbling into my house, ears bleeding.

My Guardian Angel -- calm acceptance, cool-headedness -- revealed that we needed to go to Guelph. I drove there on a rubber bicycle with a fake steering wheel, with her sitting behind me. It was a beautiful, clear, brisk spring morning.

In Guelph, I went to see Old Friend, who was living in a condominium. When I entered her apartment building I realized that I was being followed by many of the guests from my housewarming, who were following me in a sort of celebratory train. Some of them seemed to be celebrating for me, while others didn't even know who I was and were just celebrating because they wanted something to celebrate. A few of them were there to slyly tell unflattering stories about my conduct the previous evening. Meanwhile my makeup was cracking and running off as I shuffled from hallway to hallway. I'd broken both of my heels on that rubber bicycle.

Finally, in Old Friend's apartment, exhausted and feeling sick. My Guardian Angel and some of the other social workers stood in the hallway, chatting calmly. Old Friend brought me cold pizza for breakfast. I STILL had to get back on that bicycle and go home.

Old Friend, momentarily angry, pointed out that I was eating my pizza upside down and all the toppings were falling on her floor.

A Cat Nap Dream: Two Tall Police Officers

On the afternoon of Christmas Eve, I'm walking past the Bauer Loft construction site. A truck stops and an apparently crazy man wearing wrap-around sunglasses approaches me.

MAN: Hey! Hey, do you know if it's okay if I take bread crumbs from birds? I'm only asking because I'm starving and I need some, I want to make dressing...

ME: Where do you want to get them from?

MAN: From Bird Island. I started taking bread crumbs and people started staring at me, calling the police on their cel phones.

ME: That's a protected area, for birds only...you can't go there. I think it's okay if you take bread crumbs from birds, but there's a more serious problem of you simply GOING to Bird Island...

In typical dream style the man has suddenly become two police officers who are very, very tall...I'm craning my head back just to talk to them.

ME: You two are incredibly tall!

OFFICER 2: You've got to be tall to join the force!

ME: Is it your boots?

As we compare boots, a woman on a bicycle rides slowly past through the snow...I don't see her face, but she has pigtails.

OFFICER 1: Who's that girl over there?

ME: Oh, that's Molly Conchlin! She works at the...ummm...I know her...Hi!

The confusion here is that she's actually a woman named Erina, but I can't remember her name. When she turns to look at me I see that she isn't really Erina after all...she looks at me like I'm a pervert.

ME: No, guys, that's not Molly. Sorry. I'm almost blind, you see, I can't see faces...everything beyond about eight feet away is a blur.

OFFICER 2: {Showing a spiked wrist collar to OFFICER 1} So yeah, I want to get another one like it...

ME: Oh, go to Delirium Clothing! And have you been to Club Abstract?

OFFICER 1: We go there on Thursdays because that's Jenny's day off.

OFFICER 2: Mike has a crush on Jenny, but now she's going out with Joe, and the only day she doesn't hang around with Joe is Thursday...

High blood sugar wakes me up. I realize that I thought about Molly Conchlin because I was listening to "Our Miss Brooks" earlier in the day, and the rest of it is a combination of anxiety about my neighbours and anxiety about social awkwardness and Doing the Wrong Thing.