A dream

It has taken me an hour to recover from the dream I had last night. It is now 5:30 in the morning and I am sitting at the computer in my white briefs, as usual, typing as I have been for the last hour. But I have barely shaken the dream. I was attending a screening of a film made by Sharon, a black woman who used to be the secretary where I once worked, but she was stealing from various vendors in the mall complex where the screening was to take place. She was stuffing audio books into the coats and packages of her friends, convincing them that it was OK. When I realized I had been party to this, I tried to get away, terrified one of us would end up in prison. Walking from one side of the mall to the other, I nearly fell over a waterfall and held on to a ledge by by hands, while people nearby looked on in concern and alarm and I was embarrassed. Sharon was still trying to convince me that her actions were acceptable practice. Lee and Lyn came to the screening of the film. I was asked what I thought after the film aired and I said there was commercial potential for this minor, independent film. But my attempts at careful praise were met with more than scorn, they were met with vindictiveness, the mob turned against me, Lyn stole my car and drove with Lee inside, recklessly away, no one would even have coffee with me, Nate Kohn was there, shaking his head, no one would help me, I proceeded to walk away, to try to get back to a home I was convinced was probably no longer even there, and it seemed Sharon and her friends and their film were going to be a success, that my comments were of no use, they had denigrated a film effort that was obviously more informed and better made than my old school way of looking at things could ever understand. Barefoot, friendless, I began the long walk back, away, perhaps to homelessness, alone, the world disgusted by my insistence that stealing was wrong. Everyone else was drinking expensive coffee drinks and wearing the clothes of aesthetes and artists. I was shoeless. I didn't even know where my car was. I was out of place. No matter where I went or tried to go, I was out of place.

I know this has something to do with my upcoming IRS audit. How can the poorest man be audited TWICE by the IRS -- and it costs to be audited, in time and bank records, it costs me money I don't have, sending me deeper into debt -- and how can the victim not become paranoid that there is a plot behind this? The last time I was audited, I had to give up freelance writing as a primary means of income, because I did not understand the vagaries of bookkeeping. I tried getting a job. That didn't work out so well either. This time, even with an accountant and every attempt to be scrupulous in our complicated and unorthodox businesses of survival (for Pete's sake, I am a genital display model for university medical students, among everything else I do, and I haven't had a day off of work for NINE MONTHS, working seven days a week, not a single day), I'm still being audited or, as some would say, persecuted.

There is joy in this, real joy.

Only the dream disturbed me. I think I'm over it now. I have coffee. If I mention "Rantoul and Die," someone will read this.