Dream: The Underwater World Inside The Pop Machine

High school again. Buying something at the pop machine. Jenny Sellers is next to me, and she invites me somewhere, but just where exactly is unclear.

Somehow we go into the slot in the machine (where you get your soda from) and into this other world — an ocean. We’re not swimming, exactly, but floating under water. Carried away without effort by the underwater current.

Tony Miller is also there, under the water.

We are all naked, and I keep kissing Jenny’s legs and thighs.

At some point I’m back in the school — the last day of senior year. But I’ve already graduated from college, and had to come back for some reason.

Apparently there’s one class that I hated or found boring, and stopped going to. Now I find out that if I don’t do such and such — finish this certain paper and that certain project and write this or that — I will fail EVERY class and will not graduate.

I am talking angrily with the secretary at the desk at the entrance to the school — yelling at her: “I’ve already taken 200 credits in college and got straight A’s, and you’re going to flunk me for THIS?”

But for some reason it matters — it’s like I’m in some sore of rehabilitation program, and if I don’t pass, don’t graduate, I’m fucked.

I growl at her through clenched teeth, “If you do not pass me, I will fucking KILL YOU.”

I’m incredibly pissed off, but also very anxious — I have to pass this one stupid fucking class, or I don’t graduate.

Somehow I have gone home, crammed in a bunch of paper writing, etc., and am back at school — turning it in JUST before the school year is out and the bitch secretary has gone home for the summer. (I have no idea whether or not she’ll get it, see it, read it, and pass it on to the teacher, etc., in time to change my grade before the final grades have been issued…..)

Now stuck in the street — no ride, nowhere to go. Somebody is burning meat — but not burning, exactly: they have this special formula, some kind of translucent clear crystalline gel that they have been soaking this meat in, so that it will cure or something…

I’m not sure who it is, but he says: “This takes out all the rot, all the death. Try it!”

And he offer me some meat. But when I stick my hand in, this translucent stuff sticks to my hand and burns me, searing off my skin.

I am walking through the streets — angry enough to kill someone — with huge gaping infected open wounds on my hands and face. I need to get home, but don’t want to call home until I know for sure about whether I graduated or not…. If all else fails, I will stay at Eric’s house, if he still lives here…

I am back at the school again. In the art room (which did not exist), and all the students have made the most disturbing and incredible images I have ever seen in my life — I can’t stop looking at them, even though they make me literally afraid and a little bit sick…

I’m in the weight room, trying to lift weights — but can’t because every time I move blood starts squirting out of my wounds — not only messy but also excruciating.

Art room again (waiting for the secretary to return). Karen Healy has drawn all over everyone’s art — stupid juvenile stuff, mustaches and eyebrows on every face, and sloppy words in speech bubbles. It’s childish graffiti, destroying every piece.

……………….

(But, then, I should really just shut my bloody trap. Shouldn’t I.)