The Sleep of Reason

11-8-2003

(1) I have a job, doing administrative and clerical support for a project where I once had been a researcher. I'm taking care of something in the machine room. I'm naked. It's early in the morning, and only one of the researchers is here. He doesn't seem to notice that I'm naked.

I get an opportunity to go to my office and get dressed. I do so hastily, because I see through the window another of my coworkers coming to work. [The layout of my office happens to be the same as the layout of the room where I stayed in my grandfather's house, with the walkway to the front door going right past my window.]

Dressed and feeling civilized, I emerge and talk about the project with the new arrival. Suddenly I notice that, after I had showered earlier, I hadn't paid attention and shaved. I now have much less of a beard than I had previously. [Perhaps my dreaming mind won't let me off the hook, exchanging one sort of nakedness for another.]

2) I'm talking with porn star Jamie Gillis [whom I know very slightly in waking life, having played cards with him]. He tells me, mockingly, "Sure you could have my job, no problem! It's easy now. With Viagra you never have to worry about getting wood on the set." I can tell from his ironic tone that, even though Viagra has eased one anxiety of working in porn, Gillis still thinks it's a lot tougher than people might think.

(3) I'm sitting in my car. A young woman is sitting next to me. We are talking about religion and spirituality; at the same time, she is leaning close to me, with her arm around me. "I know what you mean," she tells me. "I've read some of the entries on your blog." She moves her hand to the top of my thigh as she talks. I wonder how far she is going to push boundaries. I feel that she's being hypocritical somehow, using a high-toned conversation to conceal her physical approach. But I know what she's doing, and I'm not stopping it.

Her hand brushes my cock as she talks. I lean into her some more and caress her shoulder with my fingertips. She takes the hint, and takes hold of my cock in her hand.

11-9-2003

There is a chain of parties in a V-shaped line of banquet halls. Along one leg of the V are parties for a publishing company; the ones along the other line are being thrown by financiers who have connections to the Russian mafia.

There is some kind of misfeasance being done by some of the editors at the publishing company and it is my job to find out who they are and what precisely they are doing. There seems to be some kind of connection with the Russian mafia people in the other wing.

The people who hired me give me a briefing on one of the high-flying editors. He's young, he's hip, and he's making $143,000 per year. Nice work, if you can get it. As I'm going back to the party, the news breaks that the head Russian in the other wing has just been indicted on fraud and racketeering charges. It's only a matter of time before more indictments and arrests come along, and my high-flying editor is likely to be caught up in them.

I decide to check this out. I walk along the corridor on the floor just above the financiers' party floor, and listen to the sound below me. The party is going strong. Evidently the boss Russian hood hasn't told anyone of his difficulties yet, but I hear a note of desperation in his voice. I peer through a hole in the floor to the room below. Champagne corks are popping. One of them comes up through the hole in the floor and falls down again. Amazingly, it bounces on the floor below and comes up to the hole in my floor once more.

The scandal spreads into the publishing company. Another high-flyer, a woman, loses her high-paying job. She is said to be the lover of my high-flyer. Will he look after her? What will he do?

To guess what's going to happen, I do some research. I ask one of the record keepers how much each of them makes in a year, to try to figure out if my editor can support his lover in the style to which she has become accustomed. The records clerk can find information about her easily enough, but his salary information is obscured, hidden. Then I remember that I've been already been told. $143,000 per year is a lot of money -- but the woman has expensive tastes. And my editor lives large.

I tell the people I'm working with that I could probably maintain the woman in style for $143,000 per year, but I live modestly. My editor target, though, simply could not. Expect a break between the two of them soon.

"I could keep her" I repeat. I am talking to a slender woman with frizzy gray hair that hangs to the level of her shoulders. I think she's quite cute. "With $143,000 I'd keep you without a second's thought."

At this point I notice that I am wearing heavy white gloves on my hands.

11-10-2003

(1) I and some others are getting around in a building that is half hotel and half hospital. We use the stairs to get between floors. While leaving the stairwell at one floor, I have to use a seat suspended from a cable, a kind of pendulum seat, hoisted by a small crane, to get from the stairs to the hallway. I have no control over the motion of the crane, and it moves me quite close to where a middle-aged black man is working with some hospital equipment. He is wearing scrubs. He is balding, has a moustache, and his face is deeply lined.

He complains when I swing near him, and then the pendulum swing moves me even nearer, so he has to duck. I respond that he is being rude, that an employee of the hospital should not act so unkindly to visitors. We get into an argument, and I threaten to report his rudeness to his managers.

As I leave in a huff, I think to myself that this is the second time in one day that I have gotten into a confrontation over rude behavior with a black man. Is it happenstance, or is it something about me and my racism?

(2) I'm working in an office as an administrative assistant or secretary. One of my charges is Terri Windling. I'm updating her calendar, and notice that she is scheduled to go to Tuscon for a week to present a seminar, and then spend the following weekend at the World Fantasy Convention. [In waking life, Terri actually lives in Tucson; and this year's WFC just ended a week before.]

11-11-2003

A scandal has erupted among my graduating high school class. It seems that during our senior year [which in waking life I missed, having left early to go to college] one of the teachers did not properly file his grade reports. As a consequence, some of the students' diplomas are not valid, and they must return to school to clear up this difficulty.

Although only some of us are affected, all of us are there, talking about this. I try to get the attention of one of Lisa Solmssen, one of the affected students, so I can tell her that if the diploma situation doesn't get resolved she and the others would have grounds for legal action against the school. I can't get her attention, though – she's always talking to someone else.

(Later) It's after lights-out, and I'm outside of the dormitory. I need to get back into my room and in bed before I'm caught. It hardly adds anything to my situation that I'm naked, too.

I sneak in through the door into the common-room. There is a person there: a cleaning woman. She sees me ... but she doesn't care.

"Hey, wait a minute," I think. "I'm a grown-up. I don't have to worry about curfews any more...!"