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FRANCHISE

Dreamed 1995/10/12 by Chris Wayan
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The Ivory Tower in my dream, where the High Commissioner of Baseball bestows franchises. Dream sketch by Wayan.

I dream I'm the first woman ever chosen as High Commissioner of Baseball. I live atop the Ivory Tower, carved of one vast horn, spiral and seamless. No one can figure out what creature it was--whose bones I live in.

My job is simple--to judge the caravans of supplicants who cross the wastes, to beg me for a franchise.

One morning, while I'm still in my bathrobe, a team shows up led by a lanky ponytailed girl. I've heard of her, of course. Her stats are spectacular, but no existing team will hire a woman. Baseball diamonds aren't a girl's best friend. So... she assembled her own team!

They're... unnerving. A home plate with eyes, walking around on legs like a diamond lozenge; a sort of octopus outfielder with five arms; a batman, and I don't mean a Caped Crusader; a fat man made of baseballs, each muscle-bulge with that distinctive seam; a catcher with no legs, indeed no body, just the gear, animated by some spook peering out the mask; and creepiest of all, her Uncle Bee, a dwarf with one arm missing and the other a thalidomide stump at the elbow; he has one huge Cyclops eye and sharp cannibal teeth. He extends his flipper and says "Hey, yow ya doin', Commish'? Wunnaful t'meetcha, wunnaful!" I think "What sharp little teeth he has! I wonder how he catches the ball?" then realize I've answered my own question.

I collapse into my official Baseball Commissioner seat, a rolling chair stuffed to look like a giant mitt.

Uncle Bee hops on my leg like a manic toddler, and gives me the pitch. "We're ready to play ball RIGHT NOW! We want Poughkeepsie! We'll call ourselves the Mutants!"

I said "Mmmm" And tug my robe shut nervously, thinking "His eye is so creepy. Why am I prejudiced?" But am I? Why's he sitting on my leg? If an ordinary guy did that, I'd slap him off...

A team of mutants demand a baseball franchise. Dream sketch by Wayan.
Uncle Bee says "Betcha wonder how I got my name, right? I'll show ya." He shrinks into a tarantula-sized bee, with a stinger the size of a bear-claw, but still with that Uncle-Bee leer from his one central eye. I resent him crawling up my thigh. But I hide it--afraid he'll sting.

"Poughkeepsie?" says the baseball girl. "Wait a minute... we agreed on Honolulu!"

"Bullshit" yells home plate. "Pocatello!"

"And I say," as the living bat advances on Uncle Bee with a flyswatter, "we're the Gimps."

"Any fool can see we're the Des Moines Deformed!" snaps the ghost in catcher's armor.

The octopus roars "The Corpus Christi Crips!" and starts choking the bat.

"That's 'Crippish-American', buddy!" growls the base, as it grabs one of Uncle Bee's antennae. Bee's got Baseball Girl down on the floor, as she hisses "Uncle Bee, you sting me and I'll rip your THING off!"

Meanwhile the bat-man's whacking the ball-man around the room as they yell over and over

"THE FRESNO FUCKUPS!"

"THE JERSEY JERKS!"

Mutants rioting in the Commissioner of Baseball's office. Dream sketch by Wayan.

I finally lose my temper and yell louder than any of them. "HEY! Hey! All RIGHT! Enough! I've decided on your franchise petition. Now SIDDOWN!"

They pause, at least, in heaps on the floor, and sit. Mostly on each other, but they sit.

I raise my finger and scold them like children. "You can't play ball till you quit fighting!"

Uncle Bee, hovering near my knees, trying to peer up my bathrobe, says "Aw, you're just prejudiced against mutants like ALL you normal people!"

"Uncle BEE!" gasps the baseball girl. She's a sweet kid, I'm sorry to have to defer her dream like this. But my gaze comes back to Uncle Bee, still ogling my thighs. I growl "NORMAL, is it?"

I stand up, all the way up. I'm a tall woman, and taller when I'm mad. My hair crackles with energy and nearly brushes the ivory ceiling, as I spread my robe like wings and flash the little bastard. He pings in surprise back from a bee to a man, well, a monster at least. He's got a hard-on anyway and his flipper is flapping and his little shark teeth are snapping like he wants to bite a piece outa luscious me. Dream on!

"Get an eyeful, Cyclops!" I yell. "I'm the FIRST woman commissioner of baseball...tonight! Tomorrow, I'll probably wake up as a MAN! I don't even stay the same fucking SEX! I'm an anorexic with an IQ of 200, I'm allergic to every food humans EAT on this stupid planet, and my sexual orientation is to UNICORNS! Now... tell ME about... 'normal.'"

The High Commissioner of Baseball flashes Uncle Bee, the Cyclops. Dream sketch by Wayan.
I wrap my robe around me and feel the lightning subside a bit and think, "God, what'd I just do?" Aloud I add icily "When you can show me some FEEBLE semblance of teamwork, THEN you can play ball. Good-bye."

That did it. They meekly troop down the spiral stair. The last to go, of course, are Uncle Bee and his niece. His needle grin's already back. He says "We'll be..." but his niece interrupts "I'm so sorry! I thought ALL teams fought like--" Uncle Bee turns away but reaches back to part the hair on the back of his head to reveal a second huge eye, and he guffaws "... seein' MORE of each other!"

Down the stair I hear her protest "Uncle Bee..." but we both recognize an irresistable force. I just hope she's one too.

The worst part is, all that stuff I blurted out was TRUE.

Only... I lied to you, I didn't really flash the little monster. I had the urge, but I didn't quite dare to go that far in telling him off! Scared he might really try to stick that sharp little thing in me... or bite. But after he flashed his BACK eye at me, I wished I had blown up at him personally, not just drawn the line about teamwork. So I added my wish... hoping it'll affect me the next time we meet. Oh, there'll be a next time--that's the one line of his I believe.

But even more than I wish I'd squashed him a little harder, I wish... I wish I knew who I'll become, when they DO all learn to cooperate! Nightmare: Uncle Bee, a dwarf with a cyclopean eye and thalidomide-flipper arms, flashes his 2nd eye--in the back of his head.

MORNING NOTES

Pretty clear! My inner selves still routinely fight, and don't take it too seriously, because they have no experience with cooperation. Long as it's not civil war, why worry? So now that they keep the mayhem limited, they think they're a team. But I can't play pro ball (function as a true adult) till they learn to work together. And they barely know what that means. As High Commissioner, I have to spell it out--and enforce it. Even if it means I don't get to play as soon as I'd like.

2000 NOTE

Years before Ellen De Generes ignited a fundamentalist firestorm, Babylon-5 showed this lesbian couple routinely, with no public outrage...

MORAL: fundies don't watch science fiction, so go ahead and say what you like--no one will notice.

We'll see if it's true of shamanic websites, too.



LISTS AND LINKS: home - towers - I'm Just Not Myself Today! - gender-bent dreams - Silky - dream beings - mutants & monsters - heads - a way bigger Cyclops - shapeshifters - bees - sports - tricksters & humor - exhibitionism - teamwork - top- & underdogs - personality integration - comix - a dream-sequel on the first woman in the major leagues: Fracture Speeds Marriage

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