윤

I had finished up a tour with the new company—new-ish because I seemed already to be familiar with the place and know many of the people there, maybe they were a local customer—and got to join former colleague Steven Xie as he was preparing for his entry exam. The administer was a gruff American who wasn’t capable of accommodating his applicant’s language and personality nor cared to, and told him he’d dock his score if he wouldn’t “shut the fuck up” and said a single thing while taking it. After hearing Steven repeat that abrasive instruction without the least bit of sarcasm, I stayed to help him refrain from outburst while he retrieved five small fish out of a tank with his choice of available tools, a shovel with a flexible scoop. His future department teammates gathered afterward to congratulate him, going so far as to wear T-shirts with Chinese characters on them, which I am sure made him feel as welcome as one might surrounded by smiling people adorned with halves of words. (One had five on his and claimed it spelled his name.) All employees were rounded up for a slideshow presentation and I took the opportunity to bring it up with the mostly-Asian Accounting girls, who nodded in embarrassment. The projector looked 8mm and the initial picture was tiny, then spread across a messy wall; my test was to save the movie to digital and insert some captions. After the screening, I was handed what appeared to be a VHS cassette and was confident in my ability to accomplish the task, even if I was no professional like in that recent Netflix casualty; would my old rig with a USB dongle and Microsoft Photos be enough?

Had started collecting my thoughts and supporting links for a post on the fall of this minor celebrity from the misbegotten 90’s (which turns out wasn’t too far) and maybe those like her, but keeping it as a draft all this time seemed only to discourage me from writing entirely. Not that imagining the circumstances capable of bringing about change of such extraordinary magnitude, perceived or otherwise, was in any way affecting my own disposition, but rather I find myself just not giving a fuck. Like I’ve become indifferent to differences that would’ve once had me curious how they could come about and might even affect me, my relationships, society at large, or at the very least give us something to talk about on our interminably long phone calls back then.

[I’m reserving this space in the hopes of segueing to a more interesting dream, because I’ve been sleeping an awful lot lately.]

Well, it wasn’t Tralfamadore with Jenna Coleman, but I dreamed I preposterously claimed to be the actor “behind” Will Arnett, I’m not sure why, but it was a small enough lie not to be disputed by my listeners. There must’ve been some credulity threshold that wasn’t exceeded by the benefit from maintaining the pretense.

John Lai and his friends had started a new business selling “cars”, little remote-controlled metal boxes with caster-like wheels, and I bought one myself, though I began questioning whether you could even call them that, being useless as transportation, other than it costing two or eight thousand dollars. I helped with the design of a new sleeker model by attaching a thinner wooden panel, painted black, onto the body, holding it in place above and aligning its pegs above their matching holes. It must’ve been Houston, and I was visiting, still half-asleep with my comforter, because Rajeev Gantela showed up to discuss selling his parents’ home to Susan, who had a map of their subdivision.

Physical infirmity nowadays punishes my every exertion, but occasionally I overcome my self-debasement in my dreams and get to be a badass. The other morning I was a leader among an army of monstrous criminals and degenerates living in a post-apocalyptic underground bunker. (Think Mad Max or 北斗の拳, though I described it upon waking as being dressed like a cowboy.) There was a slit of light on a ledge twice my height but I easily leapt onto it from the sandy floor and passed through to the bright outdoors, which I learned was on a rocky moving island. Exploring further, I encountered a settlement of young, mostly naked Asians, who took little notice of me as I swam by and saw a montage of their cultural history, including a teaching moment with Chinese characters 安娜 being placed on a 바둑 board that made me realize I belonged. When I looked back, however, I noticed that a group of my former brethren had breached their confinement, so I intercepted and easily overpowered them. My new friends confined the motley creatures to shelves and put them on trial, while I kept order by spearing anyone who got rowdy with a red ballpoint.

This familiar setting always takes me back to the titular movie, which Chris reminds me our mother actually took us to see at a theater, maybe because she was in her thirties and the target audience of Richard Harris pushing 50, but it left such an impression I’m still dreaming about being as lucky with the tawny-haired ladies as he was at the same age. In another couple of years we would’ve been truly scared shitless by these guys instead of those homeless unhoused-looking derelicts that prove their outlook on the future back then wasn’t too far off.

I had two or three large pillows in my arms and didn’t want to be seen carrying them by the fancy restaurant clientele so I made for the nearest exit out of the marble-floored building. Across the street was a plaza with a well-known comicbook store adorned with its brands in a plain large typeset, which I recognized as New York City, again. There must be a way to confirm my location before contacting nearby relatives, even in this dream, maybe if I looked it up online, somehow completely forgetting that phones have had GPS for years. (It embarrasses me further that Google has record I performed such search.) I sat down on a bench between two attractive women, one younger and friendlier, the other in a flowing long white coat and couldn’t be bothered on her call. She didn’t seem to care and walked off when a brown dog approached and tugged on my eyeball socket while a voice, presumably a speaker it was carrying asked me how I was doing. They’ll be putting Alexa on collars, mark my word.

Work took me to a sparse apartment in one of New York City’s most dangerous neighborhoods, as evidenced by a crime scene right outside, but I felt fairly safe by staying inside with the door locked and lights on. When morning came I was joined by my team, a rag-tag group of folks, young and old, and one of them, a tall Kramer-type with a curly blonde afro, came out of the bathroom allowing me to go in next to shower and change for a final visit to the client today before returning home. I removed my pants, my only pair for the trip, and set them down but noticed there was water, no, urine pooled on the tile, and appalled as I was by the behavior of our resident hipster dufus, I had to prioritize drying them off in what little time I had. Dabbing it with a towel wasn’t likely to be effective, as wet as the jeans became like they had been submerged.

Googled the title in the hopes of finding a sufficiently tantalizing image to draw the reader’s attention to this otherwise personal subject of insecurity but instead learned that social media influencers took torn jeans up down yet another notch.

Somehow it was this incomplete response to an interview about Larry David that ingratiated myself as a cast member on his show and score a scene at the end of the episode where everyone looks to me for a line I can’t remember. Being part of the entourage meant hanging out in a mansion full of assistants and extras, and one of the Korean-speaking kids came to ask me if I knew Japanese and could translate for a new arrival, a colorfully-clad pretty young woman. Our awkward conversation went nowhere and next thing I knew I was escorting a Black guest celebrity back home; his flaky girlfriend was ahead on the street and expected us to wait on her, though I turned to him and said we didn’t even have a car to pick her up, what was she thinking, and he understood. When I did obtain one it was a fast and sporty but I took a turn onto long stretch of road without an off-ramp to come back for my passengers. They became a White couple upon reuniting with them and were interested in a thrill-ride where a giant tree trunk laid above a thousand-foot chasm and another was attached to it perpendicularly, released when a hammer struck the top like a nail and let swing in an 90° arc below.

Honestly superhero-saturation has gotten to me, too, but I’ll always appreciate any irreverence it explores, not unlike Lynchian disruption, which face it, has always come from the DC side, unconvincing pastiches aside. Why after all, wouldn’t gods be free to say “fuck” or vaunt their sexual prowess?

Speaking of DC characters with potty mouths (but at least don’t all sound the same as James Gunn), I had a dream I was seated next to Dianne Guerrero—I am unable to do more than that nowadays—whose hair was cut short, pixie-style. Our folding chairs were in a line and on my other side of me was a third wheel.