A friend's outlined a classic European novel for me, in numbered, handwritten notes several pages long. The plot: a rather meek middle-aged guy courts a younger girl, a great beauty he worships. Maybe that's appropriate; it turns out she's a goddess of sorts. A minor one--a forest spirit.

But it's quite a while till he learns why he's obsessed with her. She's his Creator! He's an experiment in love with his own goddess.

Really, it explains a lot. Most human beings are creations of that irritable, bearded ape-god, the monotheistic one. But this guy's different. He's no naked ape. He's a deer. Just passing as human.

Even his Creator only turns human now and then to check up on him, see how he behaves! Then she steps back into her forest, and drops her human body like a robe, to resume her natural, comfortable form: a white deer. Well, faint dapples of cream and tan on flanks and back--only her belly, throat and tail pure white.

And he's created in Her image. Able to pass, but a deer among apes--herbivorous, horny and shy.

At last she tries a new phase of her experiment; wakens his latent deer-shape. Can he adapt, live as a deer? I observe quietly through the brush, in deer form myself; she knows I'm here, of course, but doesn't seem to mind as long as I don't meddle.

Her creation tries to court her... without hands. He nibbles and licks her belly, thighs and cunt. She wriggles in pleasure, welcoming more... but he's so timid! Because he's a deer? Because she's a goddess? Maybe neither. He's used to human senses, human hands; finds nuzzling a deer's fur strange and overwhelming with suddenly amplified scents--too intimate too soon!

Later, alone with her in a little glade, I quietly propose "Why not ease the transition? Give him small hands, start him off as a sort of deer-taur. After all, your experiment isn't to see if he really live as an ordinary deer, but if he can adapt at all, court you in his true form. A little compromise, even if temporary, toward the only body he's even known seems only fair."

Oops! Now I'm him. And made human again. But she's not--stayed a white deer. She puts me on a conveyor belt in her forest laboratory, an empty echoing two-room concrete warehouse with skylights and this belt connecting the rooms through an internal window. I roll slowly along toward room two, as she studies me. I lie meek and passive, hypnotized under her great dark eyes... as she examines me in her white lab coat, a Dr. Frankendeer...

She talks a little about my experiment's purpose to greater-me, me-the-dreamer, though consciously I stay her creation. But I'm dimly aware I'm more, enough so that I don't wonder who she's explaining to. She says...

"I created him limited, unquestioning, deer-timid. He loves well-made things and people--really did admire my human beauty, and even me now as a white deer, for example--but I made him with no other values. Blind to content, seeing only internal harmony. Perfect editor, hopeless artist! My experiment was: would he grow his own values, acquire morals, politics, goals? I just don't know..."

And the sad thing is, I don't either. Have I? But then, do we easily spot our own values? Water to a fish! Maybe I have more than I know.

Suddenly my goddess places me back in human form. I'm in the Sunset District, in a Cantonese restaurant. She's treating me to a seafood dinner. It's well made, yum! Though kind of strange. A test, again? I ordered clams; I consider them moral to eat for a deer, since they lack brains. But what comes are strange chitin-shelled things full of orange meat and greenish eggs, or is that a filling, is the green minced scallions? I keep eating slowly, trying to figure out WHAT I'm eating and how I came to be eating it... It's a busy noisy place--when I said clam did the waiter hear crab? Was this an error, or my goddess's next test? The shell-shape and feel suggest it's a chiton not a crab OR a clam.

Do chitons have brains, or am I breaking my ethical rules a bit? Though I shouldn't waste it once it's ordered; my vegetarianism is to minimize suffering--and eating a mistaken order seems more like eating roadkill; neutral.

But this abstract thinking only starts as I begin climbing out of REM; while fully in the scene, purely a timid deer in human disguise, I'm almost overwhelmed by the strange taste and texture, lost in "What am I eating?" and felt the ethical issue "Should I eat it?" only as a vague, tentative guilt. Feel like that's my creator's point. Real humans, with that other, bigger, fiercer, male Creator, don't get so lost in their senses they forget their morals... do they?

Yet... how can I address the moral question until I know what I'm eating? The apes of God fight over morals before they learn the facts!

Maybe we timid deer--fawns of a lesser god--are better.

NOTES IN THE MORNING

• Classic European novel: just saw a BBC mystery set in the Caribbean but hinging on The Count of Monte Cristo.
• Older shapeshifter courts younger girl: also saw a bad Sherlock Holmes show. A girl rejects an older professor, so he tries ape-gland extracts. He doesn't rejuvenate--just becomes a ridiculous apeman!
• Pheromones confuse the man: on Sherlock Holmes, Watson scents a smell he can't name near a shop. Turns out apes caged in the cellar are milked for glandular extracts.
• Meek human: on Holmes, the professor's young fiancee was too shy to say she wanted out--as he got more & more alarming.
• An experiment created by a lesser god, more deer than ape? Me. A shy herbivorous Asperger guy. Fawn of a lesser god! But contrasting with the myth of Eden, my creator encourages me to grow my own moral sense! My commandments are the senses--sniffing out the facts.
• Deer-taur, furry sex: my friend Nic dropped by, saw the gracile deerlike Cendancers I've been sculpting.
• Magical white doe: a form often taken by my dream-wife Silky, echoing Thurber's fairytale The White Deer and Peter Beagle's tribute to it, The Last Unicorn.
• Conveyer belt, lab: unsure. The grim cellar under the pet shop, on Sherlock Holmes? Not a close match.
• Restaurant scene: echoes the earlier sex scene when scents overwhelm the buck who was a man.
• Strange taste: tried Indian paprika; it made me sick. One more human food I can't have...
• Chinese restaurant in the Sunset: Eight Immortals, the favorite restaurant of the lawyer helping my friend Alder with a pension dispute. Meaning? Beats me.
• Vegetarianism with exceptions: literal. I don't eat critters with brains. So I HAVE formed ethics and values--just quirky ones. But to apply them I must know the facts! There's a reason I often freeze like a deer and consult my senses
• ACTION: Give that Indian paprika away to a human.
• ACTION: Date deer. I may be timid with them, but dating apes will really confuse me--and them. Remember I'm not a defective human but a gifted deer. Nothing wrong with that--as I now know straight from my creator.
• ACTION: learn the facts before deciding! And I just can't get my answers from human logic and advice--I rely on subtle animal senses. Don't put myself down for it! We deer do that.

NOTE A MONTH LATER

A friend of mine unexpectedly chooses Eight Immortals Restaurant for his birthday dinner. We all go. Someone orders clams in wine, a dish I've never had. They come stuffed with mysterious green, brown and black things. We puzzle over the recipe--clams, scallions, wine, hot green peppers and black beans? It looks suspiciously like the mystery dish in my dream. I taste it... yep. Yummy, peculiar, definitely not just clams and wine... it's the mystery flavor!

So how did my dream know a month ahead? Deer senses, I guess. Sure not human ones. Nor common sense. Kiss that one goodbye, too. I was created otherwise. The White Deer's experiment.

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