1: IN THE BATHROOM

I wake up to find...

I've been napping on my side on a pad on the floor of a tiny bathroom in my family's old Eichler home.

Only... while I slept, my parents remodeled! And not wisely. Now it's the least private bathroom in the world. A huge floor-to-roof arched window looks east into the side yard.

It's changed too. It seems to be a campus plaza now! Students sit on the edges of cement planterboxes, eating lunch.

Two girls get up, see me and start to walk over, curious. They're both hot--a freckled snubnosed frizzy redhead and a wide-eyed willowy Asian-American girl.

Instantly I feel turned on--no, more. Insanely horny. I start rocking my hips uncontrollably, rubbing my erection against the soft pad.

But they can see! I'm embarrassed (and bare assed) but I just can't stop.

At least there's a wall of glass between us.

Too bad there's a wall of glass between us.

Damn. There's a wall of glass between us!

2: THE TRISKELION

Then I wake up to find...

I'm not alone on this floor-pad! THREE girls are snuggled up with me, naked--two pale blondes, twentyish, maybe sisters; and one tiny brunette, under five feet tall. Is she underage? Afraid to ask.

They all seem as excited as I am.

Our excitement may be dangerous. They're not human, but Fables, living characters from our folktales, and as such, full of magic... magic prone to bursting out uncontrollably when they get all hot. And we all are. We have no choice: it's this place!

You see, our coverlet has a triskelion design woven into it--a three-armed spiral. This triskelion shape maps a three-armed energy spiral spreading from the centerpoint. The golden-green is normal space, where your sexual desire's your own. But in the purple zone, spacetime itself makes you so indiscriminately horny you make reckless choices! (Or is it horniness? Maybe it's romanticism. But I dare not stick my head (or anything else) into that purple space to find out from inside...)

It's even worse for Fables, since they have such magical power--in a sex-fever they could cause havoc. If any of us shifts just an inch or two, from Love to Lust (or is it Lust to Romanticism?)

I'm strangely comfortable with these Fables, despite the danger. I worry more that the leaders of the Fables, Snow White and Big Bad Wolf, will show up and treat me as a simple human to be silenced before I spill the secret of their existence to mundane humanity.

But I can't be merely human; the romance-buzz of the coverlet turns me on, but I can still think and act on my own--and it's meant to be overwhelming, even without actually touching the purple. Partial immunity! What kind of creature am I, then? An archetypal storymaker, a Literal as the Fables call them? Or some mongrel spirit, part created and part creator?

3: ROSE RED

Then I wake up to find...

My dream was half-right. I really am in bed--well, a sleeping pad on the floor, with a triskelion coverlet. And I'm still lying next to a Fable girl. But not three now, just one: Rose Red, the less-famous (and insecure) sister of Snow White.

I recall Boy Blue's last words to her: "You're a drama junkie, Red. You're broken and I can't fix you." But it looks like I'm about to try--using the triskelion. If she deliberately shuttles enough times between horny imbecility (or over-romanticizing) and sober clarity, will she catch on to her drama addiction?

Dangerous--I'm indulging my own default game, my drama: playing rescuer! But then, sometimes rescuers can rescue--with the right tools. I've never had access to such powerful magic before.

It's risky. A drama queen with Fable powers could do so much damage! But leading her through the Triskelion field may be worth it. I might just end up with a smart, gorgeous, sane girlfriend.

I explain the Triskelion's power to Rose. She reaches out--here we go... And for the three-and-a-halfth time I wake.

NOTES IN THE MORNING

1: BATHROOM

• No sexual privacy: I just read Ed Gorman's Stranglehold, a book set in a political campaign. The staff constantly gossiped about their love lives. But I envied that openness. I'm shy and private, except here on the Web.
• ACTION: be open about sex, dating, and who I seek--like those campaign workers. Secrecy, like jealousy, is adolescent. Adults own their desires, pool their knowledge, and help their friends.

2: TRISKELION

• Sexual recklessness: in Stranglehold, a beautician stays with an abusive guy, and Natalie the Negative attracts men who hate her, and a crazy secretary kills someone who rejected her. Still, Dev and Jane, both divorced burned and cautious, end up dating happily; and fragile Gwen talks her loser husband into doing the right thing. Heartening! We may be sexual idiots, but we can learn! I am. Still attracted to complex brilliant strange girls; but I've been picking kinder, saner ones.
• Fables: from Fables, the long-running series of comics by Bill Willingham. I just read v.15, Rose Red; it shows.
• A magic-field provokes passion: in Fables, a demon heightens passion for miles around (but he provokes rage not desire).
• In bed with three magical volatile girls: in Jack of Fables, Jack the trickster seduces three sisters in a row, then learns he's their half-brother. Big fuss--but in the end, no harm done--all four are cynics treating sex more as a sport than love. So...
• Green versus purple may mean jealous/possessive romanticism versus sex as casual play. Consciously, I think of sex as love, because sex opens me up and shares energy so intimately that I get sick with anyone incompatible; I treasure anyone right for me. Yet the dream hints that more sex as play could be healthy, even if I call it shallow--to temper the jealous, insecure moralizing that romanticism can foster. Besides, I'm so strange, how can I criticize other people's sexual attitudes?
• ACTION: I still get stuck in extremes: romantic idiocy or wary sobriety. Each is just a half-truth. So shuttle between them!
• Triskelion design with a dangerous color:
  1. The Gamesters Of Triskelion was an early Star Trek show. Big bored bodiless brains kidnapped star travelers and made them fight as gladiators. Their arena's floor was inlaid with a triskelion, and the combat rules restricted you to your own color. Step off, and you lose instantly.
  2. Science News just reported the discovery of a new stretch of galactic arm. Turns out our Milky Way is very symmetrical--two tight-coiled arms trail from a short bar around the central singularity. (A biskelion? No, that sounds like a fierce Hungarian breadstick.) So we really live in a spiral rather like what I saw on the coverlet, making us sex-goofy. Is it just this material universe?

3: ROSE RED

• Rose Red, rescue fantasy: reading Rose Red, I had rescue fantasies when I saw Red's haunted by prophetic dreams that no one else believes. Oh, Boy Blue is right, she is a drama junkie--but she also wrestles with one of my issues--dream ESP creating stresses and responsibilities others don't share or even see.
• Use the field to heal: encouraging. At least my dream doesn't see lust as inherently crazy or negative. Yes, I do still tend to rescue... but maybe I'm starting to be truly helpful. That triskelion's powerful.

4: CONCLUSIONS?

• These three dreamlets summarize my last decade!:
  1. I'm naked, girls can see me, glass between us: early in the decade, I put my most personal dreams on the Net. Shocked some; turned on others. But I was still too shy to connect with anyone. A wall of glass between us! "Look but don't touch"? And then...
  2. In bed with girls, jarringly different moods affect us: me in mid-decade! Got more open, fell in love with a couple of gifted, strange women... but I seesawed between recklessness and wariness. And then...
  3. Blending extremes may heal a girl sharing my issues: at last my lust and romanticism feel balanced. I'm single now, so I hope this scene is in my future...
• ACTION 1: Quit holding out for perfect love! Sure, watch out for deep incompatibilities, but over-romantic perfectionism is as false as blind lust or repression.
• ACTION 2: I don't have to date weirdos, but I can. I've faced my own weirdness; now I can handle it in others.

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