THAT DAY

I read Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence. She thinks you must seek a circle that lets you be with who you love--can't just reject society and live in a world of two. You need friends. And society--even subcultures--need structure. So it must limit who can marry...

Uh... why, Edith? You just showed us the consequences of such limits; they look horrific to me.

THAT NIGHT

I'm walking the streets of Manhattan. Turn onto one with almost no pedestrians. Why? Ahead is a crowd with a lot of plainclothes cops at one end--can tell by the feel that they are.

Someone yells "Look out! This is Bank Alley! Robberies here all the time--one's about to happen!" Ah. The cops must have gotten a tip.

Dark cars come round the corner. I'm carrying a video camera with a dark pistol grip. Worry--could be mistaken for a gun if you're a cop not looking closely. I'm scared of a shoot-out. I run to the glass door of a hotel.

But a mob of film-noir newsmen, with flash cameras and fedora hats, jam the doors. I push & squeeze between, but they won't let me in. Not just the crush; one reporter glares and actively pushes me back out. I don't know why.

Behind me, the shooting starts. Tommy guns blast from several cars. Bullets chip the marble face, but bounce off the glass. No wonder they all wanted in--the hotel got itself bulletproofed!

But it's big inside, there's plenty of room there--why are these guys trying to keep me out? I squeeze through the press...

Deep in the hotel, which we might as well just call The Edith Wharton, I meet a young woman fleeing danger on the other side of the tower--the femme side. "Elegant pretty décor over there," she says--"pastels, frills, wallpaper, flower baskets." No guns, but still deadly--gossip, pills and poison are the girls' weapons of choice. Meanwhile, my side gets the mob, hardboiled reporters and the NYPD, all dour gray and butch. And out to get me.

Neither side's really livable. Sick of both, we decide the only way to escape is... rise above. Up the antique elevator to the penthouse suite.

Here we meet the owner of Wharton Tower. A rich young man. Opaque behind that suit. Smart or stupid? A passive heir, a cunning businessman? I just can't tell.

We report the ground-floor situation. He's looks amused, but condescends to intervene... crudely. He jerks the whole structure around! Shakes it back and forth, and it picks up his rhythm, swings wider and wider. We hang on, as terraces, gardens, planters all swing across, over to butch, back into femme...

At last he makes it swing butch & femme at once! How's that even possible?

Weird. The only part of the tower staying solid enough to hang onto is the part common to both extremes, both butch & femme worlds. This common zone is a Transamerica Pyramid shape--most of the base stays solid and real, but higher up, where it rocks more, solidity narrows to a swaying splinter...

At last he rocks the tower so far that NONE of the rocking top floor stays stable... and we fall into the gap between butch and femme.

Later. Still in New York. I'm younger--that rich young man? I slip through the gate of a clifftop estate, some rich guy's private empire. Mine? I'm not sure who I am.

I sit out atop the Palisades, right on the edge. Can see half New York downriver. Towers like toys...

Then a sharky shadow shape slips over the house, the pool, the terrace, to the cliff-brink. The Goodyear Blimp!

My girlfriend comes out and asks "why it's hovering here?" I know why. Because the bank robbers are still hunting for me.

A woman sneaks up behind me and yells "SURPRISE!" I jump in shock... right off the edge of the Palisades.

She laughs at my scream as I go over the brink.

I only drop a few meters. Thump! Find myself sprawled on an invisible surface, over the abyss. She calls "You idiot, there's a glass safety ledge!"

Of course it's only a glass floor if you're sitting on top. From below, it's... the Glass Ceiling.

WHAT'S IT ALL MEAN?

• New York, Edith Wharton: society's just as restrictive now as in Wharton's age.
• Men keep me in the fire zone: society actively endangers me, and the dream shows how: normal people try to push me into butch/male environments they find business-as-usual, but which can kill me.
• Cops & robbers: recently a cop stopped me and aggressively asked "What's your business in Palo Alto?" I live and work here! But I'm autistic. I don't have the right body language. So I must be crazy. A public danger to be driven out. It's happened before; it'll happen again. Cops see my very existence as Suspicious Behavior. LUA: living under autism.
• Two sides of hotel: gender! Normal people are obsessed with forcing us to act butch or femme. Yet the only areas that actually support us are common to both.
• Rich guy rocks the structure: the rich really do destabilize society (especially economics and politics) for fun and profit--though it endangers all the rest of us. Wharton's wrong, at least for our age; indiscriminate sex and marriage don't make a society unlivable, concentrated power does.
• Goodyear blimp, New York City:
  1. In Winsor McCay's classic dream-comic Little Nemo, Nemo toured New York in a dirigible, letting McCay draw skyscrapers and the Palisades...
  2. Wharton's title: Age of Innocence. Era of Bliss. Season of Fun. Or a... Good Year!
• Mansions on the Palisades: the ruling class! Though I end the dream suspended between levels--between classes.
• Glass floor, not glass ceiling: I face bias at work and on the street for my autism, but it could be worse. It takes a full minute for normals to realize my body language is wrong and I'm not one of their tribe. I'm in the Uncanny Valley: I creep them out because I almost pass. But I'm still above the Glass Ceiling: a light-skinned male. If you're dark or female the exclusion's instant.
• ACTION: save every penny and invest--get out of wage work soon as I can! Out of normal people's control and judgment. Even independent poverty is better than this.

FIVE YEARS LATER

I saved up, invested, quit my job and left suburbia for San Francisco (where they don't harass you for being a weirdo, since we all are) to be a dream artist--not rich (low income) nor poor (high assets) nor middle class (no dayjob). Suspended between classes.

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