The Dreams of Five Men
“I was the polling manager for the Republican senators and they were screaming at me because their data had been so off and their constituents did want them to impeach Trump but they hadn’t and they were getting absolutely pounded on election night and there was this president coming in, none of the current candidates, who would only talk about putting all the powers back in Congress, do what he could to make the Executive branch co-equal again and with serious oversight.”
“I’d gone away somewhere where many people I knew were; the place resembled a high school gym/basketball court? — but people gathered in rooms above/under desks crowded into the space? Not quite clear. Clearer: there was an autobody shop. I had my car in it, for something cheap, like an oil change, but my mom was talking to the guy at the counter — I think my old drummer — and the mechanics start replacing my brakes; and I see the car having all this work done and I wasn’t trying to have any work done to my car so I start searching for someone who had witnessed what I or my mom had told the mechanic.”
“I’d been brought up to ascribe money as the only sense of worth. I saw all the possessions around my house as their equals. I felt the fear of ever losing one of them because that was fear of losing myself. But I knew everything’s supposed to fall apart and therein I believed I’d found the most insidious tentacle of capitalism, that believing deterioration is a kind of self and any shortfall in the monetary value extracted from a situation is a shortfall in self.”
“I was camping but on a ship and a woman I loved was in a tent with another man but in cartoon video game form, and I was in the attic/the hull of the ship and my pal wanted to show me a video of a festival because it was a great year but then I was at a press conference where George Bush announced we were going into Iraq except all these fat men were cheering and I was sarcastically getting in their faces saying, “But YOU aren’t going right? You’re sending someone else,” but it wasn’t really making the atmosphere any less celebratory and then finally I get an interview with Bush, sitting in a chair at his feet (also in a chair) and demanding I-don’t-know-what and Connie Chung is letting him off the hook by interrupting when he can’t answer one of my questions so finally I got mad at Connie Chung — CONNIE!”
“I was at a commuter rail station outside a big city and I had to say a hurried goodbye to someone — someone I am close with but I can’t remember who. I rushed onto the train with bags into the first car and it was cramped in a weird way with people trying to buy tickets — the ticket office was on the second floor of the car and in the back so people were funneled up to it, sorta crawling up a ladder and through some tight railing. I wasn’t sure if this train lets you buy tickets, MBTA does, CalTrain does not, or it didn’t, and a woman in line behind me, I don’t remember who she was, but she was quite pretty. But I bought my ticket and walked towards the back because I wanted to sit towards the back. Wherever I was stopping my exit would be near the back of the train. I passed normal cars and entered a ‘sleeper car’ with older people getting ready for bed, a bunk-room style area rather than an individual car. I walked around changing older people and ducked into a bathroom, a big one like an airport. Here I realized I’d lost my bags so I went back looking but woke up and was thankful I had my laptop.”
