I'm in my late teens, white, female, queer, living in San Francisco. It's a rare hot day here, so I'm out in Golden Gate Park. I'm watching some friends play softball on a field nestled between huge mounds of dirt and slash and wood chips (the park's being renovated). Trees border and half-hide the mounds.

Some cute women on one team! I'm not playing--I'm not into playing ball, just balling players. I plan to do some serious flirting with them after the game. I wore a really short dress to show off my legs (my breasts aren't much). Stretch out and enjoy the sun--the morning fog faded to just a few wisps. Nice.

Everyone plays funny--with one eye to the cameras broadcasting it all, not on the ball.

A guy protests some aspect of the game, politicizes it. But he doesn't really care about the issue--he was hired to do this, and only wants money and exposure. He's directed to run across the field, disrupting the game. I chase him, trying to sabotage the saboteurs' script! But it turns out they planned his escape too... he runs to the mound and just vanishes!

I find a big pipe or narrow tunnel leading into the mound of woodchips and dirt. Peer in. He's silhouetted against daylight--the tunnel goes straight through. Dark, a bit scary, but no real danger. I crawl in after the guy.

But the saboteurs distract me with some loud drama off in a side tunnel. Makes me too nervous to go deeper, outnumbered. I don't want to get jumped, especially with no witnesses.

So I back out and walk around the mound instead--easy enough, there's a perfectly good path... but once I calm down I wonder why they went to such trouble to detour me.

Was something important in that main tunnel--the straight tunnel?

NOTES

• Ball game = flirting, dating, sex (a recurring symbol in my dreams)
• Players keep one eye on the camera = Hm, do I do this? Less focused on finding sex or love than on dramas I can turn into stories? Maybe the writer in me sabotages the lover. Readers find disasters more entertaining than dull happiness!
• Tunnel = vagina? But it wasn't very vaginal--a round rigid pipe-mouth, tunnel too long and narrow, cool not hot inside, and open at both ends--indeed, so straight I could see light at the far end. Dark, maybe a bit scary, but with a visible guarantee you can go right through without getting lost. Besides, the fear of getting swallowed by a big bad vagina sounds more like a straight guy's nightmare--the Vagina Dentata that'll bite the penetrating dick. But I was a sensible clit-o-centric dyke. That pipe was distinctly clitless. Still...
• STRAIGHT tunnel = heterosexuality? Then...
• the curving side tunnel = being bent! But not out?
• Walking around the hill = outing myself? But I already was...
• The tunnel echoes my recent dream Man With The Guitar, where a researcher hides in a cave on the flank of a live volcano and CREATES eruptions to study! In that dream, eruptions meant attacks of this recurring illness I have. That dream warned they were self-induced!
• So does the dream say my illness is linked to heterosexuality? Do I get sick to go on some kinda sexual strike? If so, am I protesting homosexual or heterosexual feelings? Confusing. And no real proof it's about sex at all.

NEXT DAY

My friend Xanthe calls to tell me a weird dream she had the same night! The final scene:

"I led my mother into a cave. We could see daylight through the other end. I felt ready to enter, but my mom was afraid..."

Though... the straight tunnel may have a third, simpler meaning, one the dream shows me physically, by contrasting it with twisty side tunnels and detours and media-driven ulterior motives...being straight as in direct. Blunt. Honest.

I think the dream says I have to come out of the closet on ESP. Not easy or comfortable in this rationalist age. But necessary, for honesty. And to force me to make the analogy, the dream put me in the body of a San Francisco sports dyke--so I'd have to think of a more familiar kind of coming out, one any San Franciscan would recognize.

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