I'm high in a monstrous castle, like the Devil's fortress in the old movie Time Bandits--all superhuman scale. My bed has a view out a north-facing window, but the bed's unusable: on the coverlet sprawls a jagged assemblage of levers, the base of a big cranelike arm that leans out the window. I crawl around the bed and examine it--all I figure out is that hitting a button on the wall makes the arm hinge down and out, and once it's started, nothing can stop it till one swing's done. I don't want to hit the button while I'm on the bed next to those levers and spikes. Call out to my friend Liz not to hit the button till I get off the bed. I'm right under some sharp spurs that'll rock forward onto me if it moves. Crawl out and off.

Walking on through the castle, I meet the Tin Woodman from The Wizard of Oz. He tells me this is one of the Oz castles, but I'm not sure if it's the Wizard's or one of the Witches'.

The Woodman leads me to the Wizard--in his true form, behind the curtain. A huge, segmented, flattened, leathery worm, with skin like an alligator. An alien. Of course! That's how he was able to convince all the witches he was a magician.

The human Wizard's form was no puppet or hired actor. It was his human alter ego. He's a were-worm! Can he help us, in his man-shape?

What a complex, fascinating film we're in!

Now a new character leaps in, the Exotic Temptress. She wears the scarlet Bikini of Lust, with bead fringes. She's supposed to be gently wicked. The actress who plays her is here tonight, but to narrate the film not play her character. She sits on a little stool to the right of the screen and talks--in the voice of her character, I notice. She just can't turn it off!

Pretty soon, Temptress is in costume, back in every scene. Some sexy ones, and I get turned on. But then the energy fades and the plot gets scattered and at last the footage itself begins to bleach toward white... Something's going wrong. I look at the Temptress...

Ow. No wonder. Her breasts have gone peculiar, pushed up by her outfit into rigid red ice-cream scoop shapes just stuck on her ribs.

A guy keeps poking me and whispering "Isn't she hot? Look at those tits!"

All I can think is "Ow, ow, ow! That must pinch!"

I feel an urge to snap "Shut up," but he's my best male friend, and I've lost enough of them, so I let him drool and poke. I have other things to worry about.

For example... I'm lying on some pillows on the theater floor, and his chair is resting on top of me!

It doesn't hurt, just feels heavy. But embarrassing, too. Inhibiting. I got all hot and hard in the Temptress's early scenes, hips rocking almost involuntarily--but I suppressed it because he'll feel the motion up there on his chair.

Why's this guy on top of me--don't I deserve my own chair? Maybe I don't merit a Temptress yet, but everyone should have room to fantasize and masturbate, at least!

I guess. Maybe I don't. Mr. Tit Man seems content to sit on me forever... at least until I push him off.

NOTES NEXT MORNING

• Devil's castle from Time Bandits = While house-hunting today, we toured one with huge wormish pipes (heating conduits?) and a store/factory roof and a crablike back stair-tower...
• ACTION: do NOT buy that house o' trouble!
• Sharp levers = financial "leverage"?
• Tin Woodman = my emotional armor?
• Wizard = vigilance? A social mask? Oz always was a masky trickster.
• The worm looked a lot like Jabba the Hutt in Star Wars--a second wheeler-dealer! When I drew him, he came out more like a sandworm from Dune stranded on Luna. Just couldn't draw that castle...
• Temptress's red outfit, nosecone bra: = in Interview magazine, a ballerina danced the Seven Sins--lust was red of course. Also, the Roxie Theater calendar had a girl in a truly scary bra, in their ad for a film on fetishes, dominatrixes and submissive men.
• The Tit Man on top of me = the American straight man I pretend to be on the street, covering my real feelings--whatever they are. That mask stifles my real sexual feelings--in fact it cramps my whole identity. Submissive indeed! If I want to be me, I'll have to drop my were-form--Mister Titman. Mister Normale...
  Not that he's ever been much but a dead weight, anyway.

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