1. Finding a Seat 2. Poetry Feedback

1. Trying to find a seat in the recital hall is proving difficult. I know that I am supposed to sit in the back, because I'm white, and there is a sort of reversal of privilege project going on at this particular event, so white folks are supposed to be exposed to the sort of treatment that was bestowed upon blacks during segregation. I'm walking through the seats reserved for black people in the front in order to get to my seat. A black man angrily starts pointing at me and telling me what I already know: to move to the back. I keep walking, furious and confused. 

2. I'm in the laundry room with professor M. Her minimalist home has so much grace paired with its utilitarianism. She has handed me a stack of loose poems held together with orange rubber bands. She's kind of leaning on her elbows on her ironing board, which stands between us, and we're poised to go over the texts. She sees that I'm caught up already on the poems that are marked, however, and she carries on with chores she is doing in the laundry room. 

I'm living here as a sort of artist-in-residence at the house of these two (wedded?) professors over the summer. It's a grey, humid day, too hot for closed doors and windows but too cool to warrant a beach trip. 

I read E's remark on my poems, hungrily. He's marked passages that he finds particularly striking and in large, loop-heavy cursive, he's written a message that is even more personal. At once about the poem, and about what happened between us and another student before I left, his message references a copious reserve of desire. He writes something about "what would have happened in the grass."

I become aware that perhaps M has read the comment. I'm nervous that I am disturbing whatever is between E and M, but there's no tension showing in how M treats me. She appears to simply be waiting for me to be ready to receive her feedback, patiently going about her other work while my stomach does summersaults.

1. Topless Gin Rummy. 2a. Plane movie with Bill Murray before and after he died 2b. my girlfriend

1. On a train, I am trying to figure out how to use the headphone jack. I'm on my way to Canada. I'm seated next to a tall, pale Norweigan man with dark features. I look uncomfortable. I'm fidgeting and my eyes are darting all over the place. My seatmate says "Do you want to play cards?" as his long limb extends to dexterously apprehend a deck. I say "sure." "What game?" says he. "Gin Rummy. But you'll have to remind me of the rules," I say, mentally recalling that I will soon receive ten cards and make groupings of three if I can. I am topless and he is aware. I can tell by his breathing. But he isn't openly staring at me. He starts to deal, focusing on the cards, a slow smile creeping across his face.

2a. On set with an alternate Bill Murray filming a movie with an inauthentic set dressing. Wide wooden waiting-room chairs upholstered with a coarsely woven mustard fabric are lined in rows and curved plexiglass walls with small windows where the bright set lights beam in are replicating a 767 aircraft. We are never acting, but the director calls "Cut."

2b. At home with my girlfriend, we are processing how upsetting it was that our longtime colleague, the alternate Bill Murray, had died, and how painful it was that he had taken his own life. We are all in the green room, which is our house. We've been watching a montage of his outtake clips from the film project with some other people from the cast. We fall asleep, and when we wake up, he's in the room with us and his new (ghost) wife. He jokes around with us and says "What, you think I was seriously going to stick around for when everything felt finished? Where's the fun in that?" He leaves, and the rest of the cast leaves and it's just me and my girlfriend. We're newly dating. I kiss her, suddenly inspired by the thought of how little time we have to get in as much as we can. I seek comfort in her mouth. She picks up a magazine and I lower my face to between her thighs and start to elicit moans of pleasure from her. I take the tall chapstick that was on the couch and start to slide its smooth plastic vertically between her lips but she just says "no." I set the chapstick down and carry on with my previous tactic. I ask her if she likes it. She laughs and says "I want to pleasure you while you pleasure me." I laugh and say "This can actually happen. It's an actual thing that is actually possible."

1. Meeting my boyfriend's date 2. Flying to my date

1. It's a beautiful, sunny day. Boyfriend and I have decided to spend the next few days apart. This beautiful someone he's  met through online common interests has a delicate frame. She has a calm femininity that I don't have. She's wearing black and maroon. He's into her. We've talked about it before; it's supposed to be fine for him to date. I purposefully sit far on one side of the couch; she sits on another couch and he sits somehow behind and above her, such that he can kiss her forehead. I'm a little distracted because I feel like I need to go to my own date. But I'm mesmerized by watching what he'd do with another person. I have a slow simmer of jealousy and I know that I need to get out of there. I go to the kitchen and her mother is there, stocking the whole house with food that has already been sorted onto labeled shelves.

2. I make sure I have my phone and that it's charged. If it is charged, I can use my googlemaps app, and as long as that little dot is in motion on the screen, I am able to fly. I was going to meet a friend in Seattle. A friend who, yes, I'm attracted to, but not in a developing kind of way. He is former military and so I ask him if I should stop anywhere specific over the base in Lakewood. I feel like I have a secret, in that I am flying there to see him. With my arms. Over the sunny, green grass. Like a goose. Like a witch. More like a goose.

I wake up certain that I should try flying today.

1. South Africa Corpse Bog 2. Chicago 3. Avacado

1. I am taking a tour or giving a tour. I'm in a thick, opaque bog up to my shoulders. As I look out to the liquid, I see it as more of a light green primordial ooze. I'm grasping onto things to get through the bog, and then realize that what I'm grasping are dead fish, and even corpses. The narration (I am giving? someone else is giving?) tells me about South African history.

I get out of the bog and into a car and find myself driving through the suburbs of Johannesburg. I'm surprised by how American it all looks- except for the iron bars on all the windows, and the gates, of course. Then I start to get to an area with primary-colored stucco and realize that I must turn around or else I will be hijacked.

2. Some sort of Chicago noir scene with boyfriend.

3. In my kitchen, wondering what to make to serve with my perfectly ripe avacado.

1. Remote Bicycle Escape 2. His computer docs

1. I need to leave the house. For good. I leave on my bicycle, and then realize that they are following me. So I leave the bike and duck into a bodgega. In the basement of the bodega, I meet Samuel L. Jackson, who congratulates me on arriving safely. I'm worried about my bike, but sit at a console where I can remotely ride the bike to the basement. I set it in motion, and then walk outside to check if it's really moving. It's really moving, but then I feel like I shouldn't have left. I am in grave danger!

2. On his computer, I see some documents of his. A word doc that lists his "regular appointments" and then several astrological matches. including one with "Laura". He has a word doc called "probablynotatalldefinitelyaboutkate.doc"

1. Five bedrooms 2. "People never actually talk" 3. Premonition

1. I move into a house with five bedrooms.

2. I followed him into his room or kitchen. We were playfully fighting/teasing each other about how he couldn’t cook. There was some short montage of ‘goofy moments’ we had had together, set to music. Cut back to the kitchen: he said things had changed, he was better at cooking now. I believed him, his whole life seemed different. Then I realized that I had overstepped a boundary while looking over his shoulder while he chopped green peppers. We started to talk about what had happened between us just then with that boundary, but then what had happened between us for that whole year and a half. I spoke lucidly and vulnerably from the heart, and, to my surprise, he was not looking away, but looking into my eyes. We were both weeping but not sobbing, and he spoke lucidly and vulnerably as well. We felt mutually understood. We actually talked, like he said people never do. (Dream on, Ariel, dream on.)

3. The director asks me to choreograph. 

Heath Ledger's Harem Compound

I arrive a little groggy from my flight to California/Australia and a nice Swiss girl welcomes me into the compound. She is smiley in the foyer, but as soon as we're in the hallway, she drops the ruse and I feel that there is something unusual going on here in Heath Ledger's harem-compound. She takes my bags and tells me about where everything is located. We walk to the pool house and she says that one of the girls is only getting paid minimum wage and that Heath is "pretty kooky." There are parrots and monkeys chattering. On our first date, Heath hands me an envelope. I set it next to the ice/wine in the kitchen. I see a bulletin board where there are pictures of girls I've seen walking around the compound. I see a different board with my picture on it. I'm not in the same "league" as the swiss girl, definitely, but that's ok. Heath is kooky. He's 45 now. He's tan. His hair is uncombed. His passions are...unbridled. I start to feel tender about Heath. He seems to feel tender about me. I'm getting paid...much more than minimum wage. I leave for the night feeling alright about it all.