I'm on a stage in a vast vaudeville hall, doing Charlie Chaplin routines and magic tricks.

Then someone hands me a ring of invisibility. Not stage magic. REAL magic.

I improvise a number of spectacular tricks disappearing things. For my last trick, I disappear myself.

Backstage, ring off, I meet my dorm-mates Brian and Terri. They're deep in love. On a sudden impulse, I offer them the Ring as a wedding-gift. They each try it on, but no magic--they don't disappear! Immune to its power.

With a fine steel needle they engrave on the ring: "We will always love Charlie Chaplin." With sad faces bursting now and then into bittersweet laughter, they formally give the newly engraved Ring back to me.

Am I Charlie Chaplin, then? I feel sad. They have each other; the leftover love they offer me isn't enough.

It's not enough being Chaplin.

I need someone to love me too.

NOTE THAT MORNING

• The Ring = from Tolkien's LORD OF THE RINGS. Frodo, the Ring's guardian, impulsively hands it to Tom Bombadil, expecting him to (1) go invisible and (2) want to keep the Ring, like everyone else. Tom admires it, hands it back. He has no concept of ownership, and the Ring can't lure him into the spirit world; he lives in both at once. A sort of earth-elemental, he loves Goldberry, a water-elemental. The lovers in my dream parallel his actions; except they CHANGE the ring.
• "We will always love Chaplin." Do they mean Chaplin the role, the lonely little tramp, or Chapline the actor--the clown--or me the human being?
• I do disappear with the Ring on, so I'm vulnerable to its lure. Can I love?

• Chaplin routines = I do play the clown. I'm always on stage. Like Chaplin, I'm lonely, absurd, gifted, vain, and deeply out of step with my society.
• The Ring = the male gift I lack, that testosterone "gift of grab"? Or is it the gift and curse of magic?
• A second friend named Terri had just married a guy she barely knew. I had a major crush on her, but was so shy I never even made a move.
• Engrave the ring: Sauron did this! But his inscription sought domination:

  "One ring to rule them all, one ring to find them,
  One ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them."

  And my friends' message is different. Their message is... love.

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