Love, Sex, Home.
last night, I turned out a text message from James from 1993. Talking about how bad he needed sex. The message reached me in 2026 where I could imagine this desire. I wanted it too. I wandered back to the old neighborhood and ride up to the family house. I’ve done this before in dreams quite a few times. There’s always a lot of people around, but this time there was also a lot of James friends and it was a party house. When he approached me, I was horrified by his haircut. It looks like a punishment haircut. If you didn’t work with black kids before you don’t know what this is, but this is when the buzzer makes you look bad. The clippers just haphazard lead cuts off chunks and leaves a crazy hairline. He still had the chunks of hair all over him. So what the fuck happened to your hair? He shrugged. Later on, I noticed that he was wearing ripped up jeans on top of black lace tights. I said, you know you’re not the only black kid who likes heavy metal. We went up to his bed, past all the friends, and maybe a girlfriend or two, and I was trying to get right to it. But the bed was like these slippery stack of mattresses in a roommate popped out from under them. Like an old white guy in his 40s. It wasn’t time for bed yet they said, but I told him you need to go right back under there. I told people to stop coming in. He tasted me and considered like, not bad! I could smell it too, a little metallic. I gave him a passionate kiss, but he backed off. He gave me a medicinal lip ointment, telling me this will heal your cold sores. He asked me, did you tell anyone else? I was embarrassed of the cold sores, but also like, fine. We don’t need to kiss. We are in the bed and he asked me, can you take it from the back? I said I really don’t know, laughing. It’s been a minute. We didn’t fully get to it only for like 30 seconds, which is probably how long it actually lasted when we were 14. It didn’t hurt. But it was interrupted, and I had to move on. I got mad about that and all the friends and girlfriends being around bc they wouldn’t leave us alone. I wondered, what if what he really wants is for me to hang out with his friends? I didn’t want to. I left. I thought about how different I was since I left with so much confidence 100% sure it could be anything I was planning to be like famous rockstar, poet, person who starts a school, teach teaching sounded easy. 30 years later, I could admit that it beat me. I sent him an angry text saying, I thought you wanted the sex!
So I was gonna walk home because I only lived two blocks away. But the scene changed into New York. Someone called, Steph! Steph! And it was Jason. He was riding like a full body board because he was a fully dead looking human. Like a prone wheel wheelchair/skateboard. He barely stopped to talk and I didn’t want him to. Dark bruises over a skeletal frame. From a few yards back, I thought oh my God that’s Jason and I was excited, but by the time he rolled by, I didn’t try to stop him. He had these bandages all around his waist, and I could see the wound weeping through it. On his body board, he was rolling under cars and everything like through the traffic.
The rest of the dreams I spent trying to get home. The landscape varied between Minneapolis and New York. I seem to be getting farther and farther from the city center whereas I thought my home was only a couple blocks away. Home receded from me and the landscape grew. I asked people I came across, bro do you know where there’s even a subway station? Do you know how to get to Brooklyn? I even heard these two girls talking about Bedford Stevenson and I was like yeah yeah so do you know how to get back there? But they were just posers and tourists and they had no idea. I was so tired and at some point realized I didn’t even have a phone. Didn’t see any cabs passing by. Really in the middle of nowhere. Then I wandered up into these apartments. There’s a lot of people living there and they all had big bedrooms, but the building was old and unlevered and had strange features like a ring of three bricks running around the perimeter of each room and apartment. I got into the school elevator that was like carved out with copper and not in any decidable cubicle shape. It was like a wonky pentagram shape with uneven line segments, and kind of rounded out. It glowed it was beautiful. I wanted to take a picture. I pass through libraries and ceremonies and I kept asking everyone how to get back to the street and how to get back home.
Then I had two repeat her dreams, although the whole thing is sort of a repeat with development. I had the missing suitcase dream where I’ve lost luggage on my travels and I go back to the station and I’m asking about it but this time I looked up and I saw my big old black suitcase in the storage and I was begging this lady to let me get it down, but she wouldn’t help me.
Then I had the dream where I missed my flight or bus because it doesn’t wait for me except this time I made it by running as fast as I can the minute they say run, it’s here, (even though a bunch of other people are doing the same thing and forming a messy line, and abandoning all my luggage. What the fuck I’m gonna wear when I get there? at least I didn’t lose money on the ticket this time.