Well, we’ve been away but now we’re back— just in time for the end of the party. The temptation is strong at this time to compose lists: best records, films, etc.
Who cares? As Scrawl sings, “Was it a good year do I really need to know ‘cause now it’s behind me forever/It was a good year because it was such a bad year that this year could only be better.”
In this spirit, we at WHEN AARONS ATTACK! bring you
THE YEAR IN DREAMS
(Please note that initials are not consistent from dream to dream. One A is not necessarily the same as
another.)
Saturday, January 27
I had just moved into a large house. It wasn’t in England but P.’s roommates T. and E. and also K from Canada, lived there, along with some others. My room was little more than a crawlspace. On my first night in the house there was a large party, with Innerpink scheduled to play. Apparently tour place was at the top of some large resort-like house on the side of a hill (I think the whole thing took place in Maine), and as one ascended the hill, each part of the building had its own entrance. We were hanging out in some bar somewhere near the house before the show eating buffalo wings. There was a gorgeous girl with jet-black hair, who apparently I was hanging out with.
I offered her the last wing, and then was so drunk I had to take a lurchy walk around the building. I found a funeral party on the lower floors, and I didn’t want to get in trouble, so I disguised myself by wearing all black, including sunglasses and a balaclava. I guess I passed out because the next thing I knew it was morning and I hadn’t heard any of the band. And because it was my first morning living there and I was hung over, I couldn’t find anything, including my way back.
Wednesday, February 14
I was driving M. to some mountain where he was due to meet his friend’s family for hiking and camping. He was worrying that a rash on his hand might be a symptom of diarrhea. I asked him if his stools were messy and he said no, they were big and firm. Told him it couldn’t possibly be diarrhea. Then we were at the base of the mountain and he was worrying about not being able to drive the family’s car, an old Ford. I told him not to worry, that old Fords were like (something very clever that didn’t stay with me upon waking). Suddenly the scene changed and we were in a bed on a stage, about to perform in some play called “Romeo and Juliet” (not the Shakespeare one). He was all the way at one end and I at the other and he made a farting noise. I couldn’t tell if it was real or not, but a customer who had just bought his ticket saw us lying there and heard the noise and tried to return his ticket on moral grounds. I said “Oh, fuck you” and he got very agitated and despite my groveling apologies informed the manager. A small riot began to form and the manager, who apparently was also the director, pulled me down off the stage and started waxing pompous about my horrible deed and preparing to fire me. But a horrible noise sounded outside my window and I woke up before he could!
Tuesday, March 13
Parents & I were visiting my brother’s family, who were in China doing missionary work. We all ate in a Chinese restaurant with very good noodles, as well as pornographic videos at each table, and I tried to explain to the waiter the phenomenon of “pan-Asian”
noodle shops. Then we went outside and started climbing the hill next to the parking lot, except that there were bears, so we turned back. Except Dad, who didn’t see the bear, which pushed him off the cliff.
The rest of us ran: my brother and his wife off somewhere, and Mom and I to the Volvo, though we were unsure if that was the proper way to handle bear attack.
Thursday, April 12
I moved into a new house, and one of the roommates was a girl who started hitting on me immediately. It went so far as for us to get naked and for me to go down on her, an unusually vivid sensation: I had to be certain to go slowly because she had been somehow burned during the waxing process. Then things turned into some kind of John Irving story: by moving in, I had entered a family of sorts, and all of us were high-school age or younger, looking out for each other… strange and complex and very nice and close-knit. It also rained a lot.
Wednesday, May 23
At boarding school somewhere rural, when the U.S.
imposes martial law. Students resist in various ways, overt & covert, and resistance is dealt with summarily. Film student at crafts fair tries to get me a copy of his documentary about the takeover, is caught and removed, I end up in a play by a revolutionary classmate, but nothing seems to come of it.
Thursday, June 7
My bootlaces turned into a king cobra. The snake not the 40.
Monday, July 23
I was at DB’s house – he had moved to Somerville – and he was cooking dinner. He asked me to deliver a coffin to Out of the Blue for a group exhibition. But when I got there I realize I had lost it (it was about the size of a violin case). Couldn’t find it anywhere.
Went to the Sligo and checked the bathroom, where I met the producer Scott Litt. He couldn’t help me but was very amusing.
Tuesday, August 7
Childhood sandwiches personified as living cartoons.
Mr. Peanut Butter was changing his name to Mr. Peanut Butter and Jelly because he had “an infection.” And Ms. Marshmallow Fluff was nothing but a two-bit whore.
Monday, September 24
A. & I were driving in her vehicle along the coast. My arm on the back of her seat. The road was flush with the beach. We came upon a section that was clothing-optional. People were in various states of being garbed. We parked and watched the ocean. I said, “I wish I had my bathing suit” and she dove straight out the door into the water. Her clothes had suddenly been replaced by a black bikini. I followed her, naked, and we swam a bit before I woke up.
Thursday, October 18
I fell in love. There was a girl and we’d had one date. I’d liked her but never heard back, so I wrote her off. When the dream started I was floating on a not-to-be-used-as-a-lifesaving-device air mattress in a pond. I saw her and some of her friends on the far shore, and they yelled and waved me over. But I was embarrassed to meet them with my shirt off, so I returned to my own. They found me anyway, and she said, “Didn’t want to be seen with us, eh?” in a half-joking way. I tried to explain that actually I quite liked her, but was too awkward and embarrassed to say so, but before I could she took off her belt and started playfully spanking me. I “pretended” to enjoy it. Then we were sitting on a couch, also at the beach, under a blanket. I was rubbing the sole of her bare foot. She kept kissing my cheek, and so I turned my head, and she kissed my mouth, and we both said, “This is cool.” Then we were walking in a stiff wind up College Ave. in Davis Square toward Tufts. I put my arm around her and at first she resisted, but then yielded, saying she had to “remind” herself that it was “for real.” I asked when she knew it was for real, and she said, “I got off four times while you rubbing my feet.” I decided that I loved her.
Tuesday, November 28
Singing. Turned into screaming. Woke myself up doing this.
Saturday, December 1
I went to hike Monadnock, and on the way down I saw two speakers and a receiver that I had left there five years before. Somebody said to me “They want to hang you for littering,” and I laughed but in the lodge LF stepped out from behind a pillar and warned me not to try and run because the guards – a pair of camels – would get me.
So apparently I was to be tried for littering. Various members of the community, including G., had prepared speeches against me. The community contained people I knew from college as well as UFE. The trial began with people reading long, rambling, not-strictly-relevant speeches about me. We mostly sat on the floor of a coffee shop. Nobody seemed to be on my side, though K.
continued to be as friendly as he could. And there were a few speeches that were neither pro- nor anti- me.
Finally it was lunch break. I wandered around campus trying to marshal my thoughts. At one point I saw a bear, and went down a path to the Music Festival to ask if anyone knew whether or not to run from bears. A nice hippie woman said “not anymore” and a guy said, “you’re supposed to display rage.” Then the bear pulled its head off to reveal that it was really some dude in a costume. I felt silly, but as it was a very good costume nobody seemed to care, and I patted the hippie woman’s thigh and moved on.
After lunch things were a bit more organized. My professor, B., was due to speak, though whether for or against I don’t know, and I told him I had recently read two books that he’d bee interested in. He guessed that one was Giles Goat-boy, and when I told him the other was Freddy’s Book he laughed. Then he gave a long speech, concluding with the perhaps-facetious proposal that my littering was actually a form of site-specific art.
I kept trying to figure out how best to express my outrage without actually using the words “kangaroo court,” but woke up before I was given the chance.
***
Happy New Year!
Correspondent Aaron T.
