24 Dec 2024
Dream
There was an attic where a Spanish-speaking man was staying. My mom and sister Ruby were at times up in the attic too, trying to read and make copies of a memoir by a black woman. This author diagrammed having been a product of African wisdom and European economy. The diagram looked like a line graph, with two colors like dark skin and very light skin. She wrote that she knew how to dance and create because she was black. Reading her book felt like being inside of it.
Back in the attic, the man was settling in for bed. There were posters around the room of another young man he’d known since he was young. Some of the posters were of this second man as a child, and he had boyish brown hair and green eyes. This second man appeared in the first man’s bed. They were both Spanish-speaking and though the first man was really attracted to the second man, he resisted this arrangement where they’d sleep together. They ended up making out and having sex. In the morning the first man needed to leave quickly for work, so he got up and began getting dressed. He left something in the bed as he got up, a small black square device with white and multicolor buttons. The second man got up and felt up the first man, not letting him leave without cuddling a bit.
Later I was in a large conference room at a table with strangers. We were all studying literature. They were friendly but bad listeners. All of them had never studied anything besides literature and I found them a bit underdeveloped as people because of that. I had to speak really loudly for them to hear me, and I said quite loudly that I’d been a musician for ten years before I became a writer. They were impressed and interested but didn’t ask further questions. I just wanted them to hear me and understand my earlier life, but telling them wasn’t particularly relieving. I still felt a distance from them. They were all sitting on one side of the long table or at the corners while I was the only person on the other side. I was wearing my black winter coat.
Then I was in another huge room with lots of groups of people from my past. At one table my former professor of Chinese was helping lots of students practice their Chinese. Right next to her was a combination of my friend Remy and a girl I knew from middle school named Uyanga. I also saw a guy I’d studied abroad in China with, his Chinese was smoother and more competent than mine, but I had a better accent and didn’t mind. From where I was sitting I kept looking at the group and wanting to join. I eventually got my professor’s attention and she was walking on stilts or something, she was super tall at first and smiling down at me, but then as we began walking around the room to catch up, she was suddenly super short and wearing a black coat. She looked very humble and confused then, and was walking around eating and barely speaking to me. I told her about getting my master’s and maybe a PhD eventually but she seemed stressed about other more basic things (like finding food) so she wasn’t impressed with me. Uyanga eventually made her way over and she looked different too but we were happy to see each other.
