THAT DAY

Off to see Grandma! My sister Miriel's a no-show, so my parents focus their fussing on me. "Shave, comb your hair, change your shoes, those pants are unacceptable..." on and on, as if I'm a kid.

Grandma's new suite is high in an Oakland tower, with spectacular views she never sees: bright light triggers her allergies, so she draws the blinds. She can't socialize much, either. Allergies still rule her life at over 90! Great. I have this to look forward to.

Dinner. Out of 300 residents, only 100 or less are here on Christmas; the rest are out with families. Just four are under thirty; only one attracts me, a blonde with a sexy little pouting bad-girl face. I plan to talk to her... till she comes to see the Xmas tree by us and I'm startled to find she's about 13. Her miniskirt and body language--raising her arms and sensuously stretching, catlike--as sexually frustrated as I am--fooled me into thinking she was much older.

Grandma shows family photo albums and looks at prints of my paintings. Her cough promptly vanishes! The illness doesn't object to dream-art or the past. Just the world.

I never heard of half these cousins! The women seem attractive and approachable because they're family; we can be introduced. As if I'm living in the 18th Century and dare not talk to strangers.

My mother as a child, as a teen. I had no idea she was a great beauty.

Grandma in her Stanford days, even MORE beautiful. Remarkably like Silky my dream-guide.

Several cousins and great-aunts too--startling beauties, and not a type of beauty particularly popular at the time.

My own face peering out of the ancient photographs. Eerie. One of my great-uncles. A fox-face, a narrow wary wedge... the fey streak didn't start with me. A long line of feral, skittish elves.

WHY MIRIEL DIDN'T SHOW

My sister calls. Her boyfriend Gray dumped her! Grief, rage, suicidal thoughts. I blurt "So that's why I've been so..." Feel a weight lift, or shift at least, from worry about me to worry about her.

Her friend Eve hypnotized her. In trance, Miriel met three guardian angels: Briar, a bearded, crude, cheery harper; Felice, warm sexy earthy tough woman with a pet lion; and Krytha, delicate spirit girl, intuitive and mental. But they can't fix this.

For no logical reason I tell her "move your bed to the middle of your room, flip the mattress over, and put plants in a square around you."

She does... and feels better immediately. Turning over a new bed-leaf, eh? On the advice of... I don't know. Not me. The air?

Weird? Welcome to my family.

THAT NIGHT

1) Half-Free a Buried Man

I talk a walk. A grumpy walk. Others follow me, talk talk talk. Mostly men but at least one woman. They sorta dance, sorta mime, playful with a strange edge... Are they truly trying to communicate, or just MOCKING me? Annoying. I walk stonily on.

Finally I turn a corner and enter deep woods, on a rough path under gum trees, up by a creek. Old rusty cars, a cave-mouth, then a steep crumbly bank I climb.

At the top, spot a man below me, stuck. A small slide caught him. He's buried, face out but a big mass right above, ready to fall...

I tear chunks of dry clay loose and clear his face and torso fully. One arm's still buried deep and I don't want to spend all day at this, hurting my hands--no tools to dig with. So I leave him there, with legs free and one arm free, to dig his own remaining arm out.

2) Cheerleaders are Time-Twins

Walk out onto a highschool playing field. Avoid football practice at far end but don't notice till too late that cheerleaders are tossing great energy-arcs, like lightning-rainbows, toward this end of the field, and I go right under the arches. At the near end of each arc, a girl appears with a burst of light, who could be a twin of the cheerleader at the far end... only younger. May BE the same girl--I'm wandering through a time-displacement game! Hard to be sure, as they're many yards away and moving fast and separately, but they seem like... time-twins.

Two of these girls start teasing me. One, Silky, is tall and slender; she flirts openly with me. But the shorter one sprays water all over us. I stick a Frisbee on my head as a rainhat, but still get wet. So I open my umbrella. But the ribs are all broken! I know Silky did it, and complain "Look. I'm not mad because you're teasing me. I'm ATTRACTED to you, OK? But you DID break my umbrella and I want you to fix it or get me a new one."

They shrug. "Shit happens, and we're playful and sexy. Don't be boring. Come on, PLAY!"

I fall for it, think I'm dull, why can't I be GENEROUS about it? But they've trashed my defense against chills and damp. I'm thin and prone to colds--I need that umbrella! And it needs ribs. They're using their (very real) charm to distract me.

So I look Silky in the eye and say "You broke it, you fix it. FIX MY RIBS!"

And I wake.

NOTES NEXT MORNING

• Half-free the buried man =
  1. My ancestors, strange like me. Do we tend to get buried? By earth. The past? By our family streak of ESP?
  2. The business about ribs suggests Adam. Masculinity buried? I half-free him, but it's a slow business...
• Football field, avoid game = I avoided boys' competitive games--brutal, rewardless. But I was still vulnerable to girls' teasing.
• Cheerleaders: at least three generations of women in my family who use sex and beauty to get attention.
• Time-twins = the photos. I've felt guitly for being attracted to my sister. But it's not just her; my mother and grandma and cousins when young had the same strange beauty.
• I resent play, sex, flirting: because it distracts me from fixing injury. Or maybe I'm sulking; want apologies from the world, before I'll play.
• Ribs =
  1. Bashing! In middle school, as I read in the library, four bigger kids attacked me for fun; dislocated or broke one of my ribs.
  2. Eve was made from Adam's rib. Miriel's hypnotist friend is called Eve...
• Breaking my umbrella so I get soaked = tears, even suicidal thoughts rain down on me from my sister! Our telepathic bond is too close--I need an umbrella! The image makes me rethink how much of my incestuous obsession is me. She rains this stuff on me.
• WARNING! When I protect myself, inner girls (like my sister?) mock "You're just being whiny." Wrong! Abuse rained down on me till my bones broke. I'm stoic, not whiny. I have a right to better protection. And I won't play till I get it.

I'm in the City, at dusk, on the edge of a downtown plaza, with my girlfriend, a thin smart brown woman in a tight minidress. She's flirtatious tonight.

I grab her and pull her dress up. She's naked beneath. I take this as consent to do anything, despite our being in public. My fears and worries, usually so loud, are silent.

I raise her by the hips, as effortlessly as if we're on the moon. Hold her to my face and lick her clit. She arches her back as my tongue goes in her. I feel so turned on as she shivers in pleasure... as people gather round us and watch, in a silent, envious ring.

"So," I think, "that's how to deal with ribbing."

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