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FISHER GIRLS, PART 3: BACK
Dreamed 1996/7/15 by Wayan

(Back to part 1, HOME, or part 2, VOYAGE)

PART 3: BACK

Our ritual in the Great Hall. We sit on the red round rug and show our finds: lost city, blue genes, alien cress, contraceptive bug. Three judges in the foreground glare and confer. The audience behind us is already arguing.

Half the village crowds into Great Hall to see our discoveries. Or maybe just us. Girls too stingy and ugly to die! Atoll overhears two girls behind her whisper 'Why'd she get involved with THEM?'

We sit on the Red Round Rug, and show our finds: lost city, blue genes, alien cress, contraceptive bug. I purr with pride as we present the Elders with the ritual samples of THREE new species. Just finding the legendary ruins is a huge coup, but those three species... it's lemon on our oysters! Sweet vindication, after they swore we'd sink an hour from shore.

Atoll and I overhear two fans of her music whispering "Why'd she get involved with THEM?" I feel a sudden surprise, realizing that all along, she may have played down her popularity, for our sake: but the truth is, she, like me, could've dumped her friends and had another life.

The judges glare skeptically, as I present our finds. When I explain that the blue bowl, with, apparently, plain brackish water in it, is a sample of a contraceptive bug that we can breed and give to all, they order the ritual halted!

This is unprecedented. The ritual is our time, not theirs to interrupt!

But they do it. The three confer, in low growls and mutters, for a long time...

Behind me, I can hear the debate-storm rising, already...

A teen perched on the windowsill of the Great Hall tells her mom she's choosing the Bug. Her mom says 'You're too young to decide; what if you stay barren?'
A daughter begs her conservative dad for permission to use the contraceptive bug. Girls whisper to their friends "do you want this contraceptive bug?"

"Will they punish us for it?"

"Can we hide it?"

But as family groups start taking side, the argument is cut off.

The oldest of the Three Judges stands and howls for silence. Slowly, the arguments subside as he glares at us all. Only when the silence is absolute does he declare the Elders' Decision.

"These three, who have made themselves barren, and would spread their illness among us, are soiled, diseased, neuter, not real women, unfit for any mate...

"Therefore, we, the elders, cast them out.

"They are banished forever."

I wish I'd run off with the dragon in his shining clam. I'd be a savage out there, maybe just a pet--but I'd have learned a lot, and maybe, eventually, won their respect. At least their minds were open. Instead, I'm stuck here, cheated by the Elders.

Shall I sail meekly off into exile? No.

This isn't for me alone. Other girls need this. I'll tell them all! Even the ones who make my bristles rise? The rotten mango girls? Yes, even them.

I'm fighting back--and I won't be alone.
Leaf's dad always backs her up. He leans and watches calmly, despite the elders' outrage. I begin my mission; let pups and teens lick me and nurse from me, to get the contraceptive bug.

We stay that night in Leaf's house, for her father welcomes her back (her mom is dead). He's always supported her; I've always envied her a bit, having been raised by Aunt Ragged and her mate, who hardly seem to know my name. Leaf's dad cheerfully defies the ban, saying half the village disagrees with it, and it'll take time for the pot to boil over. He suggests we move into the old stilthouse just around the point--technically outside the village, but within an easy paddle.

Compared to the real issues, I suppose it's just a waterbug by a barge, but I have to admit I look forward to having all our village beauties coming to me in their moonday best--feather crests and fringed sashes and shell bracelets I made but couldn't afford to keep--all coming to US, who they ignored--to pet me and lick me all over and nurse at my breast and sleep in my arms--to catch my shame, my unfemininity.

And maybe more than that is catching.

Is pleasing yourself a disease?

Oh, I'll have fun. Maybe not as much fun as sailing the stars with a crazy dragon in a silver clam, but here in exile, I'll make what fun I can.

It'll be civil war, I expect. The women and the men, or more likely the young and old. But the elders chose this. They could have just accepted us.

They bred us to obey. That's why I came back, you know--I was a good little fisher girl. I brought back my catch to share.

Now they'll have to learn to live with it.

And me.

Our new lodge, where girls come bearing gifts, to make love with us and catch the contraceptive bug.


THE ANSWERS

A NOTE ON DREAMS

Dreamworlds are real. I've always dreamed other lives--solid, coherent, clear. The vague choppy experiences you call dreams sound like bad TV reception, or the surf-zone between land and sea. If you just keep going out through the foam and chaos--the roar of static--you reach a vast stable realm dotted with other lands as solid as your own. But most of you turn back, due to your alarm clocks (thank capitalism) or your fear that dreams are spooky and crazy (thank the witch hunts). My spontaneous soul-travel and clear recall may be partly a genetic quirk, like perfect pitch, but partly privilege--my life's safe and quiet, I have the free time to cultivate dreams. But learning to read takes time too--does that make literacy an elitist indulgence? Dreaming's an art worth making time for. When I do get tired and stressed from busyness, I lose touch and get surf-zone dreams like Americans. Lousy reception! That's all your dreamnesia is.
The sea of dreams. From sunning and sketching on the beach of waking, I dive into the surf zone and swim out beyond, where spacetime islands beckon.

A NOTE ON THE STORY

This tale isn't based on a dream--it IS a dream. Oh, I invented a little--filled in details I forgot, made up names. But the plot's straight from my dream journal. I was Gray. I drew her voyage during a long lonely year when I was single and not even dating. I poured all my frustrated sensuality into the art. It helped, too: I'm less apologetic about my need for love, sex, touch, and play. And respect. And freedom. Don't you apologize either--no matter how much our fundamentalist elders hiss!

A NOTE ON THE PICTURES

Most of my art's been comix--crowded little panels. This tale grew from a hunger to try full-page pictures. What elbow room! It's all pencil--the lines mostly 0.5mm mechanical pencil, the gray textures a fat, flat artist's pencil rubbed over the bumpy cover of an old binder. Roughed out each page till it smudged up, then traced the good bits onto clean paper and drew more. Traced them on a plexiglass square over a hole cut in an old card table, with a desk lamp shining up through it.

For this Web edition: I had no scanner, so I photographed them with a friend's borrowed digital camera, corrected any distortion in Photoshop 3, then sharpened, increased their contrast, and tinted them using the airbrush tool set on "color", so it couldn't darken or lighten, only tint things 10% or so. More looked lurid.

A NOTE ON THE AUTHOR

Wayan is the common field name for a shy herbivorous mammal endemic to the warmer hill slopes of the San Francisco Peninsula. This delicate and graceful creature is little seen, though it nests even in cities. Whether it's native or a feral offshoot of the common western shaman is still uncertain. Its song varies greatly, mimicking other species. Treated gently it makes a loyal and intelligent pet, but must be allowed to graze, as it cannot thrive on human food. The species spends two-thirds of its life sleeping, dreaming, and drawing dream-cartoons.

A NOTE OF THANKS

  • Xanthe, a dream-artist I know, urged me to write and draw this dream (and others).
  • Lily (fabric artist), Zooop (web artist) and Dawn Z. (painter, sculptor) all critiqued my layouts. Dawn posed for sketches too--she's basically a lemur.
  • Locales and plants: the rocks, pools, and fern-trees are mostly from Golden Gate Park and the Sutro Ruins in San Francisco.
  • The boat's passage thru the rocks is based on a surrealist painting, "The Boat," by Ithell Colquhoun, though it's less explicitly sexual than the original.
  • Michelangelo deserves a credit. You can see why.
  • So does the anonymous cave painter of Le Sorcier, the oldest known depiction of a shaman.
  • Li Gardiner (builder of Artist Resource, the webguide for artists) lent me Thomas Easley's book The Figure in Motion. Unlike most figure-drawing books, its models are wild nude dancers caught with a flash in mid-air. Drawing them as lemur people was a challenge, but great fun.

    DEDICATION

    To all dreamers and sexually uncertain teens everywhere, straight or gay. To find things out, you have to set sail. Use contraceptives: "enjoy the warmth, but don't get burned."

    And to Easley's models--all anonymous, in this sex-scorning, body-hating age. May the wheel turn!

    Gray, Atoll, and Leaf walk hand in hand down a path into a fern-forest, and are gone.


    LISTS AND LINKS: recurring dreams - other worlds - forests - I'm Just Not Myself Today - cross-gender dreams - cross-species dreams - dream beings - animal people - cats - coyotes - horses - lemurs, other primates - loners - gender - boats & sailing - cleanups - lesbians - out of the closet! - joy - mazes & labyrinths - plants - taste and smell - dragons - fear - aliens - flying saucers - gifts - diseases - light - outcasts! - sex dreams - lesbian sex - love - sexy creatures - hunks - babes - goals & values - social change - community - healing from abuse - politics - power - top- & underdogs - quests - life-paths - comix - pencil - another dreamer saw the Fishergirls before I did: Trespassers in Malanchai - a 2nd dream inspired by Shirley Rousseau Murphy's "Nightpool": Fox Boy

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