THAT DAY

I'm cartooning a furry time-travel dream, The Hedgehog Dispensary. Just noticed it kind of echoes another dream-comic, Bleeding Heart--both dreams have attacks by a male bully insisting it's punishment, though I can't see any crime. Both dreams hint this inner bully triggers illness (the biggest problem in my life right now).

Evening: I read Bruce Coville's Juliet Dove, Goddess of Love, then Monica Furlong's Wise Child. Her witch-trial brings up flashbacks to how I was bashed in school and the staff didn't lift a finger. It's no surprise I have dreams of bullies; but why such a specific type, who isn't a bit like the kids who spat on me or broke my rib?

THAT NIGHT

I'm biking in a strange city, but have to halt in a sunken tangle of ramps below crossing freeways. They're in a broad trench--not just soundwalls but canalish banks. To go on, I need to get up to a higher level. There's an elevator, but it's in use; I'll have to wait, or else bike up a car-ramp. Maybe illegal, certainly dangerous--cars fresh off the freeway zoom up the narrow ramps. Still, I try to climb one, half-heartedly. "Can't," I conclude halfway up, when I AM strong enough--just don't want to. Fear the traffic--just not safe for pedestrians or bikers. For us, the safe route's the elevator.

While waiting for it to return, though, I try another ramp. Nearly get hit! No, I really gotta wait...

At last the door opens. A rather flaming gay man hurries up, pulling a wheeled cart, as if this is room service in some huge hotel, and drags it in by me. On his cart is a tray, but that's no hotel guest's dinner... I hope. A penis sits on the tray! Not bleeding, just... autonomous. Or has it been sucked blood-dry?

The guy says "You should know that's not mine. I still have mine. I got it off a guy who gave it up voluntarily." Whatever that means! Amateur surgery? Budding, cloning? Or was the guy an octopus (detachable sperm-packets. Octopi are weird). Every possibility repels me--it's too much like that Internet cannibalism case where a guy cut off & ate his own... ewww.

He starts rubbing my thigh and says "You might enjoy it..." What, having it stuck in me, cooking it for lunch, chopping off mine to add to the tray?

"Sorry, I'm not interested. At ALL." I'm not really scared, he doesn't give off a violent vibe--really does want a willing recruit for... whatever. I just grit my teeth and wait for the doors to open.

They do, and our cannibal-waiter-souschef-surgeon-or-whatever wheels his spare penis out. At least out of my life.

I wander through a street fair. Colorful but I'm absent-minded, still mulling over that bizarre little scene. I need to. Reliving it, I realize he didn't expect sex. He was fishing for outrage, and was disappointed that I was just repelled and uninterested. Poooooor guy!

But I'm still paying a price: not really present at the fair. I may not be pushing a cart like him, but I brought that severed penis along... in my head.

NOTES NEXT MORNING

• Need rise to higher level = Wise Child's initiatory vision--she rose through the roof and flew off.
• Elevator = Wise Child's witchcraft/druidic mentors, ceremony, drugs. As opposed to the do-it-yourself initiative I have to take in dreamwork without a mentor.
• Elevator versus ramps = I recently went to Home Depot with my friend Danita; she had a sore foot and wouldn't use stairs or ramps. The elevator took forever.
• Do I delay committing to work, love, or career because I want to feel mentored and cared for, like Wise Child? Or do I just feel safer when there's an explicit traditional path? If the latter... is this true? AM I safer? No cars hit me on the ramps, but this guy in the supposedly safe elevator does hit (on) me.
• Run from sexual proposal = in Juliet Dove, she got a love-charm and suddenly guys swarmed around her. Knocked her off balance.
• Guy = my sickener? Recurs in my dreams! I blame the victim (my fragile health) and ignore such figures:
  1. In the Hedgehog Dispensary an alpha-male jackalope a bit like George Bush sickens a rabbit-girl to punish her for... nothing much.
  2. In Bleeding Heart a swordsman stabs a green woman (who may be me) for flirting with his girlfriend. A little extreme!
  3. In Thief of Dreams, the Patriarch gropes women, harasses gays, steals and censors art. Into art-theft not violence, but still an over-entitled bully.
• This dream offered a milder version of this figure, who didn't threaten to make me sick... but I still just run. Damn! Could have questioned him.
• Spare penis from someone else = Some of my sexuality isn't MINE? Introjection, possession, what?
• Bloodless erection: never occurred to me til now, years later, that it might just be a realistic dildo. If so, the scene suddenly looks more comic than creepy.
• Distracted at the fair = at least I didn't get sick, as I did after those other dream-bullies. Merely freaking out? That's progress!
• ACTION: look hard at my long chain of dream-bullies. Whatever they mean (men's sense of overprivilege? memories of being bullied? sexual frustration? Yet none of these fit the mood of the dreams) it impacts my health and needs to be dealt with.

NOTE 14 YEARS LATER

Those recurring, pushy dream-guys had diverse agendas. But they consistently threatened my health! So I focused on that physical threat. I spent serious time and money, mostly trying things myself--I got no useful diagnoses or treatment from doctors. My health gains were gradual, almost imperceptible, but cumulatively huge.

Both Carl Jung and Calvin Hall emphasized that long-term patterns can matter more than vivid, one-night drama. The recurring bullies, not (Freudian and striking as it is) the penis on the tray.

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