THAT DAY

I'm reading Pegasus by Robin McKinley. The hero, Sylvi, feels wing envy--longs to fly like her pegasus friends. Yet they long for strong human hands. The book sensitizes me to my own gender- and species-dysphoria, though I don't long to be a pegasus as intensely as Sylvi--I've accepted that this body is as good an instrument as any other, and that it's what I do with it that matters. But I do long for a pegasus girlfriend! Humans sense I'm not one of them. And vice versa: I've only known two hardcore furry girls, with severe species dysphoria like mine, and their auras really weren't human. They felt like big cats to me. And that felt right. Love at first sight.

I close the book and sigh. And sculpt my third Barbie centaur. Got a bag o' Barbies at a yard sale and I'm sawing and gluing and silicone-gooing them into shaggy, long-tailed, four-legged Barbies. Not pegasi, but close enough for my furry mood.

THAT EVENING

Bike to the open mic at the Bazaar Cafe. Except there IS no mic, you sing unamplified... and you sing originals or they throw you out. It's packed. Take notes on some performances... and finally get up myself.

The Family Crest: a quintet with cello, violin. A mix of rock and 1930ish "jazz hot" a la Django Reinhardt.

Romeo. Nice chord shifts--musically powerful even though the instruments mostly drown the lyrics.

Chris McVittie: big craggy guy.

1: Radio. How he got his single on the radio when they told him no way. So don't shortchange your dreams! Not just a good story, a fine ballad--feels slow and lazy, but it's really a fast 3/4 with strong backbeat.

2: Green Thumb. Garden imagery. Also pretty good. And give him credit--not one pun on hoes.

Mick Schaeffer. Bluesman with a steel guitar tries something different tonight:

Spook Highway. Atmospheric, superbly played, but the lyrics, after setting an eerie scene, are static--hinted at some revelation about Burning Man or his love life or running on empty or running risks. But it never quite happens.

Alison Craig with Josh Johnson backing--they're calling themselves The Lovely Assistants now.

1: An old song of Alison's telling how her insurance company screwed her. But I wouldn't have known if she hadn't said so first.

2: Rewind, a breakup song in 3/4. I want more bass harmony, but pretty damn good.

Brent

1: Time. Melancholy instrumental with gorgeous guitar work, lamenting years wasted.

2: Photograph. Equally strong musically, but he sings too softly--like the words are an afterthought.

George--new guy with a mohawk from DC.

Telephone. A funny funk song told by a jealous phone that's in love with a girl sex-talking with a guy.

Me singing, with my friend Mike on guitar.

1: Strangers Break In. The first song I ever wrote. Introduce it by telling how I literally sang in the closet--the only mockery-proof place I had.

2: Engendering Dysphoria. A Baroque bel canto piece in which I consider a sex change, as the key drops down & down--from femme to butch.

THAT NIGHT

Dream 1: Unlikely Gay Affair

Find a relief map of the West Coast, two meters wide. A guy shows four National Geographic articles in a row set on the west coast; I trace the routes on the relief map. One article, on the Olympic Peninsula, he photographed himself. He mentions a village--just a motel and store really--where he both faced gaybashers and had a fling with a lonely guy, the Only Gay In Town.

• Love (or at least sex) is findable everywhere? This theme's in every dream tonight but the climactic one, Stuck Snake.

Dream 2: The Flasher Glares

I live in an apartment block right on Ocean Beach near the park. I like it. Friendly, and I hope to find a girlfriend in that big pool of neighbors. But so far, just brief flings.

One day, on the apartment stair, I pass a tall girl in a red shirt or short beach dress. As she climbs and I descend, I look up and find she's naked under it! Her cunt gleams pink and wet--from a swim or from sex? A wave of excitement shocks through me.

She glares at me for looking, and I stick out my tongue at her and wiggle my fingers as if I'm a drooling villain, mocking her for her glare. What's her problem? We've been occasional lovers. I'd lick her right now if she weren't acting so grumpy.

Well, really I know why she's suddenly shy--she's a performer on the rise, and the local paper's entertainment section just ran an exposé on her private life. Their paparazzi shot her naked, first on the beach (no big deal here) and through her window (very big deal anywhere). Not a word on her music--just her body!

So yeah, I get why she's touchy about privacy.

Still, why blame me? I'm not sneering--or going through her trash. She passed me naked and cute on the stair and I admired her, that's all. She's dumping on me for their invasion!

• Cutie, short dress, I'm shy about gawking: at the Bazaar a little blonde in a short dress showed off hot thighs. Two cute friends too. But they all left just before I sang. Disappointing. But I delayed talking to her, wouldn't meet her eyes--that'd be pushy! And they couldn't be here to meet guys. Thanks, Mom.
• ACTION: Sigh. Another ten years of therapy?

Dream 3: Miriel's Leftovers

I'm living temporarily in a long narrow flat--the whole middle floor of a big house I share with my two sisters. Miriel got the back room with a garden view. She often has various lovers over, a guy and several girls. I'm jealous; no girlfriends at all.

A couple of her girlfriends are always teasing me. A lot. Maybe they're serious; one plump girl with a cute face falls on my bed, flashes her cunt. I hesitate to start nibbling on my sister's girl, that's pretty slutty. But then this girl's aura is slutty. Maybe she likes that. Do I need slutty for a while? Mixed feelings. Her big sleepy eyes tempt me, yeah, but... is she worth fighting my sister over?

No privacy to fuck in, anyway. I haven't even properly moved in. Stuff in boxes. Bare room, just a bed, one chair... Tiny room too. A huge closet--in fact, maybe I should use IT as my room and fill the bedroom with boxes. Since what I'm calling a room is just a widening of the main hall. No privacy at all!

My non-room's a mixed curse--another of Miriel's girlfriends walks by and flirts with me. Blatantly. If I just want sex not love, it's easy to find. If I don't mind poaching my sister's girls. Or is it poaching if they want to be poached? Miriel's sleeping around, so why do I feel like she owns her lovers? Don't they have a say? Don't I?

And on the subject of equity... How come my room's smaller? Windowless too. Is that even legal? Well, it's a shotgun flat; maybe Althea has the same? I set out to explore the whole flat--I never did before. I find Althea's room, off the main hall. Bigger, quieter, and lighter than mine. A huge window. I have the worst room--small, dark, and the least private. Well, no room, really. This isn't fair!

I'm suddenly tired of living on leftovers. Sexual or otherwise.

• Miriel's girls: literal? Has she found a girl I'd want? She's always been sexually bolder than me.
• flirt: a girl I talked with briefly after show at Bazaar Cafe. I felt mildly attracted but unsure how she felt. Dream suggests she liked me and made it no secret; I was half-blind and ambivalent.
• No privacy, closet: I sang Strangers Break In, a song I literally composed in a closet.
• unfair division among siblings:
  1. I helped finance my sister Althea's dream house. Who's helping with my dreams?
  2. The others in our band, The Krelkins , have been slow to learn my songs, find them too hard. For a long time, I was equally slow learning theirs, but I've worked hard this year to catch up musically. But... do they share that dedication? Lately, they've postponed a lot of rehearsals.
• This dream's a reminder that my mom's not the only source of my shyness. I felt a strong incest tension with my sister Miriel for years; it made me habitually mistrust and suppress all desire, see all sex as taboo. Still traces.
• ACTION: If I want sex, go for it! My upbringing makes me underestimate my attractiveness.
• ACTION: If I want to play with other musicians...

I've been staying at our old family home in the suburbs. I go next door with a girl I like. There we meet a strange snake-woman with a human head and torso, functional but disproportionately small arms, and a long snake tail instead of legs.

To understand her life-challenges, I try slithering too. My body turns snaky to match. I cross a busy street with a bag of my gear before me. Being a snake's not bad--seems like my strong tail works just as well as legs. Biggest gripe: my dwarfed arms are frustrating! Gotta push my bag ahead of me, using my arms just to stabilize it. Too weak to carry it human-style, or even drag it behind me. And pushing it before me limits my view. I could get run over! Not because they don't see me--an expected consequence of my ophidian slither--but because I don't see them. And not from weak snake-eyes--my eyes are fine. A by-product of weak hands!

Unexpected consequences...

Oh well, that's why we shamans do dreamworld testing.

Next I try to ring the bell of my/her therapist or healer. But to reach it, I have to squeeze into a tight S-shaped passage around half-grilles under an outer door. At least my snake body is good for this. But I wait and wait... no answer. Will she ever come to her door, is she even there? And it's so tight in here! How do humans get in at all?

Is this woman trying to lose clients?

Even with my snake body, I'm wedged in too tight to back up--if she doesn't come soon, I'll have to shout for help. Will the Jaws of Life team have to pry me out? How humiliating. I can hear the jokes already.

Stuck snake!

NEXT MORNING

• Snake-woman, my transformation: I have been turning Barbies into centaurs, so I can't complain.
• Armless is worse than legless: In Pegasus, Sylvi feels ugly and earthbound, longs to be a pegasus. Yet the pegasi have only fragile handlets at the wing-joint; they envy human hands and strength. Mutual envy! Just as I feel ugly being male--blind to strengths others may see, even envy.
• Frustration, trapped: I woke to find I was shivering and sweating. Another attack of this fever! Damn. It's really getting tedious. I do feel stuck.
• "Stuck snake!": line from an old, comic nightmare I had, Rattler Banquet, warning my mom's antimale sexism still poisons me. This old wound seems active again...
• ACTION 1: My mom's ghost blinds me to my own sexiness and power. Take it seriously!
• ACTION 2: Turn Rattler Banquet into a song? I sing Saboteur, on my dad's need to stay poor; why not sing about my man-hating mom? All's fair in love & song.
• ACTION 3: Tell this dream in therapy. If I don't get stuck on the way there! I better bike, so I can snake through the gridlock.

LATER

My therapist's building has a front gate with a number pad. The code was the same for years, but a few sessions after the dream, it got compromised and had to be changed. My therapist called and told me, but when I biked over I forgot the new code and was stuck out front until someone heard me knocking and came down. I felt like an idiot stuck on the doorstep. Call it ESP, call it chance--I don't know.

But later, I did call it funny.

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