Red Bull-Free for 68 Days

After seeing two owls, a capybara, and a rat in our apartment, I go to complain to our landlord. On my way out, I notice that something has mauled our groceries and stolen my case of Red Bull. My landlord is not home, but his son is; he asks me to "define 'capybara' politely" and offers me a Red Bull from a garbage bag.

The Actor

The actor is proud of his evacuation plan. So proud, in fact, he spends the majority of the party jumping out of windows and scaling the walls of his stucco garden home. My mom's friends find this charming, sexy, and in keeping with his quirky stage persona; he is from another era and therefore only famous to me for jumping out of windows.

I Was Drinking a Gin Rummy

I tell a guy in a bar he has a nose like a cratered mine shaft. In reality, his nose is quite normal, even nice, but I am angry because I believe he had sex with my stepsister when she was 15. I come to this conclusion because he has a scrunchy around his wrist, a dead giveaway.

Foot Worship, Mysterious Guests

1. You are lacing and unlacing my patent leather boots while I sit in a red velvet wing-back chair and read The New Yorker. Your lacings and unlacings become more and more complicated, more and more time consuming, more and more fun for you. You end with a grand finale you call "Jumpstart," an intricate and beautiful pattern of knots that circle my foot entirely.

2. A group of people come to my apartment when I am in the shower and, obviously, not expecting them. I yell for them to make themselves comfortable while I quickly finish washing my hair. I whip up a batch of fruit smoothies at the sink in my bathroom but when I go out to greet my guests, they have already left, or they were never really there at all.

Unprepared

An old classic: I am unprepared for an open book test in Brenda Wineapple's Gertrude Stein seminar. I have not brought the correct books to assist me, so I pull out my copy of Hairstyles for Men and read that instead. My plan was to read for the first hour and answer questions for the second hour, but I when I get home I realize the blank test is in my backpack and I have accidentally turned in my magazine.

Maps, Teaching

1. Montana has switched places with Oregon on the map and no one told me. I am upset and then excited because this means I can finally visit Charlie (in Montana) and Al (in L.A.) on the same day. I decide it would be best if they both fly to NYC first and we leave for our journey from my house.

2. I am teaching a creative writing workshop at a fitness club. I give an assignment at the beginning of a thirty-minute cardio session (that someone else teaches) and then I pick up the work at the end (one guy leaves and does the assignment in his car). It's a great, high-paying job, but I find out that I am forbidden to wear shorts or roller blades, even when off-duty, for the rest of my life.

Dinner, Dessert

1. I am with a group of friends and family in a fancy all-you-can-eat restaurant in London. We are the only people in the place, so the manager has allowed us to lay down in the booths and nap between trips to the buffet. We soon realize this particular restaurant charges patrons by the minute, so we are shocked to receive an $8,000 bill.

2. This is a lucid dream where I can fly and slap people and make out with people and generally do what I want. I kind of do all of that but I am listless and going through the motions and I realize what I really want is a flourless chocolate cake. I command a chef to make me one and he looks confused; I try opening my mouth and willing cake to be there, but no dice.

Kidnapped

In exchange for taking me off a desert island full of obnoxious Columbia students, I tell a scary man in an Oldsmobile he can do anything he wants to me, that "even a painless death may be negotiable." On the drive to his house he shows me an index finger in the place where his penis should be and indicates that this is why he has become a scary kidnapper. When we get to his house, he takes a nap and I prepare myself mentally for torture or worse by washing his dirty dishes, most of which are candlestick holders and muffin tins.

An Apartment Apart

In addition to our apartment in Williamsburg, we find out we have another, not-as-nice apartment in Bushwick that we will move into in two years when our lease is up. When I go to check out the other apartment I am amazed by 1) how big it is and 2) how many junkies are squatting in it. I hang out with three of them in what will one day be my kid's nursery; we talk about the Ramones and I lie and say I am 24.

Secret Story, Day Care

1. In my copy of Deb Olin Unferth's collection, Minor Robberies, I find a code sheet for a secret, hidden story that contains important information about the universe called "We're Fucked." "We're Fucked" works by taking certain words from all of the other stories in the collection and arranging them according to a detailed cross-section of a boot. Something isn't working properly and I realize that it helps to have an actual boot in your mouth when completing the puzzle; Ronnie refuses to let me do this for hygiene reasons and we get into a really big fight in a taxi cab.

2. In her haste to get to a meeting, my mother drops me off at a house full of raw foodists. I talk about my recent commitment to drink no more than three drinks in one sitting, which impresses no one. I realize that the only way I will get along with these people is if we talk about video games, so we do.

Entitlement

I am hanging out with a cute, younger blond boy who is somehow related to me. He lives in a gigantic house with other rich relatives of mine, but they treat him as an outsider. We spend the afternoon bonding and catching up; all the while I am plotting to steal a stack of towels from his bathroom because I believe he has more than he can use in this lifetime.

Dr. Boss, Mystery Machine

1. I have been told to file a stack of business cards using any method other than the alphabet. Though all of the cards are white, I organize them by color, using subtleties in paper grade as my guiding principle. When I am finished, I realize that the assignment was meant as a distraction from the pain of my sinus congestion, and I think how smart my doctor is.

2. Chad and I stop at a Mystery Machine, a vending machine with no window display, to get some snacks. We put our money in and select various color/number combinations in hopes of getting Dr. Pepper (him) and cheese balls (me). Chad gets a Mountain Dew and whatever I get is trapped, lodged in the machine just out of my reach.

Babysitting

You are a teenager and I am taking care of you because you are being hunted by some kind of evil cult. We are in the center of a huge vacant house with hundreds of doors and windows that beep when they are opened or closed. The constant beeping drives us out of the house, where we press our backs to a fence and realize we are safer that way.

Temp Job

I am left in charge of a lighthouse. My instruction manual, which is torn and water-stained, primarily concerns itself with the proper procedure for accepting UPS deliveries. I make a few half-hearted attempts at Morse code before giving up to watch ocean liners collide in devastating slow motion.

4'9"

I discover that I am, and have always been, a foot shorter than I thought. I discover this discrepancy on my new universal driver's license. The woman at the DMV assures me that her records are correct and states that, "everyone else found out their true heights at orientation," which I apparently slept through.

The New Bird, Saturday Night Taped

1. I chide a teenage boy for talking during a movie about the cursive alphabet (which is, as it turns out, wholly separate from the Roman alphabet). The boy is embarrassed, but his friends encourage him to tell me off. He mimes injecting heroin into his veins -- some newfangled "fuck you" the kids find hysterical.

2. I have been asked to say the blessing on Saturday Night Live. Wanda Sykes hands me my lines, "Cocaine! Shit!" and tells me to ad-lib the rest. She assures me that the show has never, "in the history of moving images," been filmed live.

Starring Jessica Biel

I am simultaneously watching/controlling actors in a movie with a Nintendo Wii. The movie is like a Sartre-directed version of Scream, i.e. everyone is teen-aged and trapped and everything is meaningless. At some point I realize that I am not controlling anything after all and I find this very comforting.

Fortune

I take our down comforter to a reverse dry cleaning place where strangers soil the items with blood, urine, and/or semen. The size, shape, and location of the stains are said to indicate truths about one's life pursuits. While I wait, I filter my kidneys with a coin-operated, self-service dialysis machine in a neighboring cafe.

Protest

In a twist on the typical naked-in-a-crowded-place dream, I am the only clothed person in a nude protest march. The protest has something to do with Johnny Depp and the Pakistani government; the lack of clothing seems more coincidental than anything. At one point, I take attendance and hand each registered participant a dixie cup of gatorade as they pass.

Old School

I have decided to return to high school (this seems to be more sociology experiment than credit recovery). It becomes increasingly difficult to remain incognito as the number of former classmates who still attend is astoundingly high; Brian What's-His-Name (he was friends with Wes and Chris and lived in our neighborhood) outs me in the middle of English class. While struggling through my classes I come to the realization that the real reason I have come back is because I don't know what to do with my life (apparently my brain has determined I am not an intelligent enough audience to glean the deeper meaning from a dream and has resorted to laying it all out there for me).

Starting Off the New Year With a Dead Body

You and I are entering your parents' backyard when we smell something dead. Against the brick of your parents' house rests a black garbage bag; a man's suit jacket (navy with white piping) is folded neatly across an adjacent electrical meter. We understand that this is a suicide but we stop walking before the victim's identity is revealed.