BREAK THE SCRIPT
Dreamed 1993/6/19-20 by Chris Wayan
THAT DAY
I use a graphics program called Deluxepaint. I LOVE it. Simpler and way faster than Photoshop! Rather than constantly planning and hunting for commands, I'm just slingin' color...
Then my friend Fred from dance class calls. We start talking about dating, and he says "Just because there's no word for your sexual difference from other men, you think it's in your head, and if you just learned some little social skill you'd be ordinary. You won't. You're psychologically and sexually different, and I bet you were from childhood. Accept it. You have no choice."
THAT NIGHT
I walk up the hill to the top... a conveyer belt carries students on from here toward City College. I let it carry me up across a terrace with a low wall where people stare out at the view. Nice, but not stunning--we can see southern San Francisco, from City College to the Blue Tower in McLaren Park.
Behind us is a small rocky cone, the hill's summit: Mt. Everest! Usually it's snowcapped, but the heat wave melted it. I feel let down. This is the tallest peak on Earth, so this is the most spectacular view, as high as it gets. It's okay, but...
Giselle from dance class (who I have a crush on) spots me and strolls alongside the belt. She asks "How are you--still hiding from people?"
"Yes." I say, sadly and uncomfortably. And let the belt carry me on away from her... away from here. The hurt grows inside as I realize how true my answer was. I can't seem to change...
NOTES NEXT MORNING
NEXT NIGHT
Dusk. A warm night. We're riding through junkyards on a railroad flatcar: me, two strange women, and my friend Mark. San Francisco is lit up weirdly: sulfury yellow glows around Civic Center, the Haight, one other district. A big carnival... Between the lit-up districts, a huge building stands... wrapped in gold paper! Notice how much fine architecture there is in the SF skyline. And how just a few big cheap boxes can spoil it! If they were lower than the elevated freeway so they didn't block the view, even they'd be tolerable. They're scattered through the city, not in one place. I wonder now if this IS the City; it's not on the Bay, but straddling a big river in a wide valley. Could this really be Portland?
Mark retreats into the dusk at the far end of the car--he wants to sit alone with the view. It's just me and the two women. They're both sexy, intelligent, and hot. The wild-haired blonde in beat-up cut-off jeans is definitely the leader, does most of the talking. Says "We're androids!" Prove it too. The black-haired one won't talk much but she effortlessly lifts me like a doll, though I'm bigger than she is.
The main difference I see between them and organic women is their matter-of-fact attitude--HUMOR about being robotic. Humans are so squeamish about platformism! I ask the blonde "how come you're leaning out so far off the flatcar?" I couldn't even do it, I'd fall off. She teases "Lookin' ahead for a place to throw you off." Doesn't mean it. But she could! That strong.
The train goes south to... my parents' house? Unsure. We have a script and it says we soon must part: our mad affair was doomed to be brief. I meet the blonde, kiss her one last time... and we can't stop, our attraction's too strong, despite the script. I pet her and she me, already I'm hard again, as we rub legs, entwined... and we fuck again, standing up. Nibble on her. Mmmmm, just can't quit. Screw the script!
Her last words of advice to me before I wake are particularly heartening. I try to write and cartoon the dreams, but find red cloth not white paper under my pencil. Look for a pen or marker bold enough to show on the deep red, but only find pale green and yellow--and they're washable. I need indelible, for (as she warned me) "As you wake, the cloth will go through the Brain Wash, so the traces'll fade... unless you use indelible black!"
MORNING NOTES
Most of my early digital art was done with Deluxepaint. Now I sketch in pencil a lot, letting the grain show, then up the contrast and tint it in GIMP, a crude Open Source program I've made cruder by using a lot of wobbly, clunky custom-built brushes. Anything to avoid that slick Photoshop look! Digital artists: DON'T just master Photoshop, or your stuff will look like... everyone else's. Art software makes some things easy, some hard; it shapes your art more than you know.
To break the script, you first have to notice it.
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