THAT DAY

I'm trying a San Francisco tradition: Open Studio. On the weekend designated for our hill, I hang out a banner in our front yard, and over a hundred people drop in to look at my art, more than half of them total strangers.

My friend Cory drops by. "So do you have a girlfriend yet?" She says her housemate LaVerne thought I was sexy but never got the nerve to call me up. I was attracted to LaVerne, but I never knew...

Oops! Now a whole class of foreign students from the SF Art Academy arrive with their teacher, who's pretty cute... I show them how to paint on the computer (till it crashes, of course). They seem so impressed by even the simplest doodles, and act as if it's a big favor I'm granting, by talking to them at all! The teacher suggests I apply to teach computer art there, part-time. They need people. Hmm...

My mother shows up on the way to visit Grandma. She buys a print of Fly Dancer Blue, a dream where I was a ballerina learning I could fly alone--class was holding me down! Print out a new one for display on the spot. Pleased by this, but I feel uneasy around my mom: sneak over and hide China Beach because it mentions the incest feelings I had for my sister. My mom may have already read it. Uh-oh.

I set myself up for this by sending her an invitation without thinking it through. Art like Anorexia Nirvana only affects me and them, but talking about incest issues... I should have warned my sister at least. My mom does pick up on the anorexia theme: she says "It didn't start in school. You always forgot food, sleep, rest... so intense once you got into something, even when you were really small."

All in all, an educational day. Bared my soul to strangers and they liked it. Me.

Though I'd be happier with less art sales and more dates.

THAT NIGHT...

My sister Miriel's daughter, 12 at most and probably younger, comes over to my Open Studio, wearing only a very short dress--really just a big shirt. She looks beautiful. I try not to gawk at her. She looks at all my art, then comes over and says "Your dreams are sexy!" She wraps her arms and long bare legs around me and won't let go. When no one else is looking, she starts rubbing up against me seductively, squirming and giggling.

I start to get flashbacks to Miriel's flirtation when we were teens, but this is far more blatant. I feel uneasy, but can't help getting turned on; I try to hide that she's giving me an erection, but it's obvious. Finally she looks hurt and says "What do I have to do, pull my skirt up?" and actually does slide her loose shirt up to show me naked thighs, bare slippery pussy... I can't hold back any more. I pull her over to the sofa and lie down beside her, hold her, kiss her, stroke her...

And as I touch her, she says mildly "What are you doing? Why are you touching me? Are you a pervert?" in an utterly calm, innocent, little-girl voice!

"Here we go again" I think, feeling wrong in my stomach and knowing the stress of this is going to mean pain and illness later. "I should have known. Miriel's daughter. Sex kitten games, the denial... incest. It's in our genes, isn't it."

And then, suddenly, she turns into a kitten! Now I wish she were still a human sex kitten--I'm even more allergic to cats than to incestuous teasing. But I have to take care of her, for her owner is away for the day, and wouldn't take no from me. I'm stuck with her.

And I have to leave for an important dance class at ten, in which we're learning how to use WATER-BALLOONS in ballet! It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to learn this rare skill. And right after, I need to go to my meeting of anorexics to learn how not to starve. Another rare skill...

But now I'll never make either class--I have to babysit this sex-kitten who makes me sick at a touch... I'm not mad at her, but at the grownups who dumped her on me. Not Miriel--in her cat form, Sex Kitten is someone else's pet. So how'd I end up responsible for her?

WHEN I WAKE...

Miriel HAS no child. Lynn the sexy photographer down the block is a bit like Miriel, and her daughter Sandra did resemble the sex-kitten and did flirt a bit. But she didn't play denial games and wasn't in a shirt/dress, nor was there any cat connection... I'm stumped.

WHEN I GET UP...

My housemate Lily says "When you were out for a minute, Sandra brought a kitten over here, but I asked her to take it back home because you're so allergic." Oh. Sex kitten indeed! Well at least I know now the dream was telling me I was attracted to Sandra--and that I shouldn't act on that attraction.

Off to ballet. A good class. Work in a trio with Karen the antelope girl, and Heidi, a tall blonde I haven't seen in class much. I'm attracted to her.

After class, I'm talking with my friend Giselle, who I'm giving a ride home. We pass Heidi who's waiting for a self-defense class. Stop and start talking. Heidi invites me to go with her to see Giselle dance in the December performance! Tentative, but she definitely asks me out, and I say yes, delighted. I was too shy, but she broke the ice, and Giselle encouraged us both.

I was a little, afraid, after my dreams, that someone'd throw a waterballoon at me. Wrong!

Home tired. So many people the last few days. And more to come! After dinner, four artist friends of mine convene at my house for our weekly success team.

Then it gets strange. My friend Zooop (yeah, three Os not two), inspired by my dreams, has started writing down HERS. She shows me an example. Here it is.

ZOOOP'S DREAM

Zooop's in bed with her lover, coming and coming and coming--as a hole drilled in her thigh leaves bloody print-marks, painting the sheets! And... leaking out the wound with her blood is another substance: all Zooop's childhood training to be a good girl and obey the rules! All draining away, staining the sheets, turning the bed into gory abstract Jackson Pollock art...

The scene shifts. A beautiful young girl walks around naked except for a shirt, to drive her family crazy. At last, she leaves home, packing all her stuff into a big Oblen-in-a-Box Boolage (Zooop's name for her weird little 3D collages: mini-sculptures of lace and broken glass and flowers and cut-out girlfaces, in clear plastic cassette or CD cases). She finds a place of her own, but the girl's father comes and drags her home!

Now Zooop's in a big warehouse-workplace, in a fascist state; Zooop and a girl (probably Shirt Girl again) lead a rebellion. The cops come to break it up. But the cops are little kids! They use squirt guns and throw water-balloons. Balloon fight! Only one little cop-girl is packing a REAL gun. Horrified, Zooop and Shirt Girl jump her and confiscate it. She pouts like they've taken her favorite doll...

After the fight, Zooop and Shirt Girl flee to the woods to start a new life together, eating nuts and berries, and sleeping together in a cardboard box...

The end.

• Sex causes rules and taboos to leak away.
• A girl goes naked except for a shirt, upsetting her blood relatives. And worst of all:
• Gratuitous and inappropriate water-balloons!

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