At my gym in central San Francisco, the hot tub is outdoors in an old parking lot--a pocket wilderness of cracked asphalt, fennel seven feet high, and pigeons. One day, I'm sitting in the tub with my sister Miriel and a skinny boy with a twisted body and a bad leg. A thin birdlike girl with long black hair climbs in with us. She's cute. We get to talking. Her name's Yuki. At last, she and I get out, wrap ourselves in towels, and walk east together along a narrow, chainlink-fenced lane to a courtyard with a security gate. President Clinton walks out and smiles at me in passing. It's the Presidential Complex!

Now I recall that I've been going to UC Berkeley not Stanford, and recently I ran for city council. I lost to a football-playing frat boy! I couldn't believe that Berkeleyans would choose him over me. I wonder if my dad's sex scandals dragged me down. Negative coattails! I intend to try again. And again. Till I get it right. I AM a Clinton. We don't give up and roll over!

I talk with someone who tells me "the girl washing bottles has the best intuition." As a political kid, I know the bottles refer to that incident years ago when Beijing students threw little bottles out their dorm windows to show what they thought should be done to leader Deng Xiaoping (xiao ping can be misconstrued to mean "little bottle.") The bottle washer's in the yard here in the presidential compound yard, at a big concrete sink, up to her elbows in suds, washing out the bottles. Of what? For what? She says it involves long reels of tape--erasing Nixon tapes? Who knows? I tell my friend "That bottle business reminds me of the early Nazis, when they were recruiting via the Hitler Youth. Looks as innocent as Boy Scouts, but look where it led."

I "wake" and want to draw the hot tub scene, but changed, jammed with ALL the cute women in the dream, including that nice gate-guard, and of course me as Chelsea, and of course the mysterious Bottle-Washer.

But without realizing it, I try to insert this illustration into the wrong dream! Right in the middle of a dream I've already both written and drawn, called Bonk Veronica--and to make room for the hot tub picture, I'll have to remove the scenes set in Anorexic Boot Camp! The core of the dream!

I'm casually planning to eviscerate my own story. Sexy or not, compelling or not, this dream-image doesn't belong in that dream. I could ruin it. What am I doing?

Then I wake again. My dream was warning me I may misuse the dream if I draw it!

So I only write it...

...and stare at it, confused.

Bottles? Hot tubs? Negative coattails? Now what?

NOTES

• Maybe it's literal? Go to my gym and get in the hot tub or sauna and see if my soul-mate slips in! But I think some is symbolic:
• The crippled boy = my former chronic illness. Got it down to intermittent now!
• Yuki = from Shizuko's Daughter by Kyoko Mori. Yuki adores another girl, but is too shy to speak to her. Here, I do speak up but don't come on to her--so if Yuki means shyness and staying in the closet, I'm too shy even to embrace my own shyness!
• Bill Clinton = my own dad. Subtly similar men! Working class, gifted, charming, but sexually problematic. Don't know how Chelsea copes, but I ended up with a confusing legacy of strong sexual appetite, AND a determination not to drool like Dad, AND behind this tug-of-war, a calm, canny observer of both.
• Cute Asian guard who certifies identities = Silky, my anima or dream-guide.
• Chelsea = guarded and scarred by her parents' games, yet smart, sexy, resilient. I've grown into someone like Chelsea! And Silky, my official identity checker, confirms it's no illusion.
• Negative coat-tails in Berkeley election = my dad's sexual legacy weakens my dating-competitiveness! I don't just hesitate from shyness--I mistrust my own impulses, since I fear I'm a Clintonian drooler. Or groper.
• Deng Xiao-ping, washing little bottles = brainwashing leaders? Or maybe... cleaning up the sleazy values of the older generation. As needed here as it is in China! Because... when you start to wash up... we have as many fast-talking little devils in our heads as they do. AND nearly as many political skeletons in the closet.

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