THAT DAY

Morning: my friend Alder's worried about one of her students, a brilliant but asocial kid. So I start compiling a booklist on geniuses and the severely gifted for the kid's parents.

Noon: a therapy session. My worst fear right now seems to be imposing on others. If I picture it daily, can I get comfortable enough to try it deliberately in small ways? I find it so hard. We should slip through life without bothering anyone... Yeah, right!

Afternoon: the poet Patagia drops by. She's cheerful if cynical--sings me a new song on the recession and money. Scathing, fun.

Evening: I work on Planetocopia. Add photos, text and a sketchmap to my sea-floor utopia, Siphonia.

Just before bed: read Janet McNaughton's An Earthly Knight. Historical satire set in 1161 and based on two ancient ballads. Two sisters embarrass their aristocratic family--one drowns a serial killer who boasts he's drowned "six little maidens" for their finery. How unladylike to defend onself! The other has Tam Lin's baby and wins him from the Fairy Queen--scandalizing her family. Why can't these girls be good little victims?

THAT NIGHT...

Victorian England. Two or three men of the Royal Society on an overseas expedition make a find that rocks the nation. Was the ship named for a dog? Pecu- liar! Pigeon-swift, news of the coup flies ahead to London. In elation, their funders weave a celebration. On the Dover train, the men meet three wolf-girls. High-browed, amber-eyed, furred but upright, digitigrade, shaggy-tailed canines. Sisters by their look. They ask of the fabulous find, and flirt excitedly, hero-struck. Adoration of the wildest kind turns tactile fast. They'd love to...		Their offer shocks the good men frozen. Biblically literate, they're quite sure wolves lack souls. They are not pure enough to mate with Yahweh's Chosen. For Man is Man alone, himself above an unbridgeable gulf to Wolf. And quite aside from Sin, they see a tawdrier possibility: these girls (expensive furs!) are whores, discreetly bought by their own sponsórs, to reward our men for their showy finds! They're sure these hounds are hired behinds. Wellmeaning backers, but business-crass, procuring such wild exotic ass! To me it seems more plausible wolf-girls like heroes, love Nobel
types. Science groupies! And what harm? But these men can't imagine more than hired acquiescence. Sex-charm is only for bitches in heat--and whores. Now I cradle a great leather library tome (half my weight!) that tells the story of their (r)evolutionary Beagle voyage. The flyleaf unfolds to a doublepage lovely drawing: three wolves in a row. Over her shoulder each girl peers, soulfully hoping. One lifts her tail to show coral lips shining. The vision sears! For a library book it's shockingly hot. But fur-lined girls are legally not nude. And wolves turn off most apes--old fear? Not me. Such free desire! Though they're		in Darwin's time--they drooled for heroes then. Yet live wolves posed for that illustration-- the art's too clear for sheer imagination. Three modern models lope the world of men. I may just attain what I prowl the earth for: For suddenly I'm in a brown corridor in a school, by a friend of mine who teaches. She introduces me to the cutest of bitches! Intelligent, sensitive, warm, more so than any mere human I currently know. My soul flares up in answering flutter. Who'd have expected a brainy setter? Oh, I long to comb and pet her. Oh, I long to cover and bed her. Heart pounds. One deep breath I take, reach out to stroke her cheek... and wake.

• Pigeon, coup/coo/coop: this is pretty restrained for my dreams--they like bad puns.
• Wild sisters scandalize proper British gents: echoes the sisters in An Earthly Knight shocking their family by fighting for love.
• Animal people: an email from a penpal said she has an animal dream-guide, as I do. Cheered me to hear of furry kin.
• Darwin, canines: well, he sailed on the Beagle!
• Train: training, of course! Pavlovian training. The canines lubricate at the sight of Darwin's giant, um, brain, while despite his intellectual leap he can't see them as peers; snubs them due to Victorian conditioning. Of course the whole dream's about training--our training to be good doggies, and how to retrain yourself back to wolfdom.
• Wolf: in film noir, slang for a man hungry for sex; always derogatory or cautionary in the movies, but my dream turns it female and positive.
• Digitigrade: walking on their toes, as wolves and cats do--as opposed to plantigrade: walking flat-footed, as humans and elephants do. A digitigrade gait is graceful and fast; a plantigrade gait handles heavier loads.
• Hired acquiescence: the Victorians claimed normal women felt no sexual desire; they only fucked for England. Or, if whores, for a living.
• Did he who made the Lamb make thee?: from Blake's The Tyger
• Meet dog-girl in a brown corridor: 1: Echoes the hideout of D'Joan, the dog-saint, in Cordwainer Smith's classic sf tale The Dead Lady of Clown Town. 2: Once in a brown college hallway I tried shiatsu on a dog I met. Put us both in a trance for over an hour! Not sexual, but equally intimate.
• Furry lover: the dream answers my fleeting wish (just before sleep) to have a furry mate. I get two opportunities. First I shift it to a book, passively looking at the wolves. But in the schoolhall with the doggirl (no pun here on doggerel, no no!) I act on my wish. Progress...
• Abrupt ending when I assert: makes sense if you assume my dream's goal wasn't wish-fulfilment but Pavlovian assertiveness training.
• Action: Speak up. Impose on others. No matter how wolfish it seems.

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