윤

Ramaswamy and Haley, right, both despicable Republican contenders on the same stage tonight noticeably of Indian origin, am I just lumping them together unfairly with twats like Bobby Jindal and Dinesh D’Souza? 한국 여자 Michelle Steel, Young Kim and 진라 don’t get a free pass, either, but I got to thinking about my Indian friends and acquaintances in high school, most of whom came from strict upbringings and showed it, such as one dude who cosplayed Alex P. Keaton everyday, briefcase and all, and the other guy who killed a salesman for a Camry.

I do keep an eye out for dogs, and this morning as I was making a right onto 166th stopped because there was one halfway into the crosswalk, no owner in sight, no collar visible. A larger one of the same breed and color, maybe its parent, stayed close to the curb next to the car and seemed to be motioning for it to return, which it finally did after the truck behind me honked. We don’t get many strays in these parts, much less partners of them (I suppose they may have been freed upon the death of their elderly master), so I wonder where they got to.

One of my favorite Korean words, with the more nuanced “what the fuck” meaning than is often translated. It’s what I look for, at least when really warranted in the dialogue, from creators whose ideas may not come from the same old places (like the Doom Patrol going outside the box instead of relying on Morrison—whose own early influence I miss), and for most K-content nowadays that’s the webtoon. Not that 지리산 was ever going to be Twin Peaks, and while Hellbound and Dr. Brain aren’t high art, either, they’ve got Netflix and Apple money to go crazy with. One of them just might veer off into The Wailing.

Meanwhile the WTF that Kara Wai‘s family went through in Tracey does seem to have had some effect, or I’m grasping for the kind of correlation that’ll lead me to nightcapping with hardcore gay porn, spurring a dream I was taking a sex ed class led by an Emma Stone-looking goddess who put me on the spot by getting in my face, revealing a bikini under her regalia and asking where I’d make my mounting deposit. Her left eye opened beyond its lid as if to invite the option. Below, I still told her. Fellow student Charlie Hunnam from Queer as Folk passed by afterward, removed his shirt and revealed that his went into a condom, tactic of choice by strip club goers of old. I wondered if our instructor had office hours.

My habit of reaching for the phone upon waking and checking my latest messages, even with nothing more to them than the daily spam that’s swiped to the trash, seems to be affecting my recall of any richer narrative from the streaming service of my subconscious, but because there must be something to the lingering remnants, please indulge me tracking them here:

…And no, it wasn’t another new Netflix series. After my first two hours I woke and remembered seeing George Costanza as the host of his own radio show, since that was before streaming, talking about sports in an admirably competent manner, before he and Jerry conspired to remove precious photos others had taken from them and contributed to a display: his was proof, he angrily directed at his absent parents, of his “social interaction” and Jerry’s a shot from a talk show appearance. They had been printed onto rectangular blocks and when they tried moving them, became loose and jumbled like puzzle pieces.
Nasty stuff happened in the morning stretch, when I’d find under the covers a willing lass of unremarkable topography. In spite of my ability to satisfy her no more than a surfer asleep on his board, she agreed to accompany me to another destination, with an older consort in tow; the latter seemed unvexed by my hanky-panky and when we got so far into the parking lot, still in my red plaid pajamas, to realize that I had left the car keys inside, knew it was pointless to expect me to make the return trip for them and called a rideshare for us instead.

Seems everything (in dreams) was about sex to Freud, and while I haven’t any argument against that interpretation, I’m more inclined toward the modern one about stairs representing the journey of growth or progress and the emotional challenges accompanying it. In my case those almost exclusively embody crippling fear, and you’d think that after all this time together, my subconscious could communicate directly without the need for any symbolism!

It was so typical of my former employers to find laughably cheap solutions for us. These stairs to the second floor were hardly a body wide, covered in the kind of vinyl used for gym mattresses and looked flimsy leaned against the side of the wall. I wasn’t about to walk up them, and instead leaned back on the steps and inched my way from one to the next while holding the sides. A conveyor belt-like mechanism seemed to assist me to the top, and when I reached it, by design, the lower half of the staircase lifted to keep us balanced. A metal railing lowered and would have caught my hands if I hadn’t moved them, another sign that this was a death trap. There were others at the bottom waiting their turn, but fuck them.

I was with a group of young Koreans, might as well have been a boy band, but as soon as we got off the elevator, we were beset by equally attractive K-pop starlets who split up my entourage, taking each member behind a different door—except for myself, of course. If you’re wondering when I’ll stop fitting into these exciting scenarios, I think the plummeting testosterone has long since had that effect even on my subconscious… what good will San Junipero be to the impotent? So it was up to me to retrieve everyone from these sinister sirens: I intruded upon the first of them about to consummate the seduction, and her beautiful face became an animal’s, grotesque elephantine features under the same hair. Back together, we sought an exit through the single Black-walled room that wasn’t equipped with only a White mattress like all the others and instead had several exits. Unlike my usual predicaments, however, this time I wasn’t alone with no recourse but to be frustrated by one path nowhere after another, and could direct my team to try them simultaneously, Alice in Borderland-style.

Cooped up at home over the long weekend, praying that the old A/C doesn’t implode under the record heat, I woke late this morning to hear the others watching what must have been more Disney drivel and despite recognizing the musical flourishes and voiceovers from a latter part of the ride, lay back down to relieve the unsatisfactory emergence. There was some bickering about the playback skipping, so I found myself lifting the appliance-like disc player from the rear and looking for the right connections underneath for a two-pronged grounding cable (possibly a callback to checking the condensation pump or frayed toilet tank flapper these past few days). Results notwithstanding, my immediate attention was to prepare for a visit from John Chen on the 22nd, whose inclusion is definitely the product of our recent support of his Twitch alter-ego and went to see whether we had the arrangements to host him.

An extra room at the end of the hall, open with a bar-high counter for a wall and furnished with two twin beds in the light ash-veneer color popular in newer Taiwanese homes/Muji stores, was a giveaway that this was a dream, and I remarked as much as I walked back. A pretty young woman with short red hair, resembling Buffy-era Alyson Hannigan passed with a smile and consented to allow me to follow her to the addition to the house and make the most of it. Our interaction on the far bed was surprisingly detailed, as often they are not and merely presumed as through some disappointing narrative device: I could see the side of her face when it was pressed against mine and the shape of her body as she removed the remainder of her clothing. She told me her name was Christina (taken, perhaps, from the Lovecraft Country character), but that I called her “Linnie.” I dismounted and turned her over for re-entry, which didn’t come without the sensation of collision but was successful in the end. After returning to a reclined position, I asked her how she came to be here, and she said her roommate Hylie had invited her. It was Nicole Tan, with a curly perm, who entered and sat down next to the other bed, curiously taken up by the wife in an agreeable state. Linnie welcomed her from her knees, then closed her mouth and proceeded to call forth one last, powerful rush on my exit—but again, the feeling wasn’t all too fleeting and gave me quite a running start in the real world!