THAT DAY

Off to see Grandma! My sister Miriel didn't come as promised, so I face my parents' fussing alone. "Shave, comb your hair, change your shoes, those pants are unacceptable..." on and on, as if I'm a teen.

Grandma's new apartment is in downtown Oakland. Spectacular view, but she never looks: bright light triggers her allergies, so she draws the blinds. She doesn't socialize much, either. Allergies still rule her life at over 90. Great. I have this to look forward to.

Or do they express her inward turning, her growing dislike of socializing? While she shows photo albums and looks at my paintings, she stops coughing abruptly and totally.

Dinner. Out of 300 residents, only 100 or less are here on Xmas; the rest are out with their families. Only three other young people in the hall, all grandchildren: a black girl in a white family, a small boy with what looks like three generations older than him, and a blonde with sexy little pouting bad-girl face. Just watch her from afar till she comes to view the christmas tree and I'm startled to find she's perhaps 13. Her miniskirt and expression and gestures--raising her arms and sensuously stretching, catlike--as sexually frustrated as I am--fooled me into thinking she was much older. I was going to talk with her before I saw she was so under-age.

Family photo albums. Surprised to find so many distant cousins I never heard of. React strongly to female relatives in these families: "Oh! They're available--I can be introduced to them." As if I'm living in the 18th Century and can't imagine talking to strangers...

My mother as a child, as a teen. I had no idea she was spectacularly beautiful.

More startled that Grandma in her Stanford days is even MORE beautiful. Remarkably like Silky in my dreams...

Several cousins and great-aunts too--startling beauties and not of a type particularly popular at the time.

See my own face peering out of the ancient photographs. Eerie. One of Grampa Musser's half-brothers has even more of a fox-face, a narrow wedge... the fey streak didn't start with me.

I come from a long line of feral, skittish mammals.

WHY MIRIEL DIDN'T SHOW

My sister calls. Her boyfriend Gray dumped her! Grief, rage, suicidal thoughts. I blurt "So that's why I've been having them." Feel a weight lift, or shift at least, from worry about myself to worry about her.

She's been doing hypnotherapy with her friend Eve. In trance, she meets three guardian angels: Briar, a bearded, crude, cheery harper. Felice, warm sexy earthy tough woman with a pet lion. And Krytha, delicate spirit girl, intuitive and mental...

For no logical reason I tell her "move your bed to the middle of your room, flip the mattress over, and put plants in a square around you." She does... and feels better immediately. Turning over a new bed-leaf, eh? On the advice of... I don't know. Not me. The air? I don't know where that suggestion came from.

THAT NIGHT...

1) HALF-FREE A BURIED MAN

I feel frustrated, and take a walk. Others start following me, talking. Mostly men but at least one woman. They sorta dance, sorta mime, half playful half cryptic... I can't tell if they're trying to communicate. If so, a bad job, and they don't explain. Or are they just MOCKING me? I walk stonily on.

Finally I turn a corner and enter deep woods, on a rough path under gum trees, up by a creek. Old rusty cars, a cave-mouth, then a steep crumbly bank I climb.

At the top, find a man below me, stuck. Got caught in a small slide, buried, face out but a big mass right above, ready to fall... I tear chunks of dry clay loose and clear his face and torso fully. One arm still buried deep and I don't want to spend all day at this, hurting my hands--no tools to dig with. So I leave him there, with legs free and one arm free, to dig his own arm out.

2) CHEERLEADERS ARE TIME-TWINS

Walk out onto playing field for high school. Avoid football practice at far end but don't notice till too late that cheerleaders are tossing great energy-arcs, like lightning-rainbows, toward this end of the field, and I go right under the arches. At the near end of each arc, a girl appears with a burst of light, who could be a twin of the cheerleader at the far end... only younger.

Oh! Could BE the same person--I'm wandering through a time-displacement game! Hard to be sure, as they're many yards away and moving fast and separately, but they seem like... time-twins.

3) QUIT RIBBING ME

Two of the girls start teasing me. One, Silky is tall and slender; she flirts openly with me. But the shorter one sprays water all over us. I stick a Frisbee on my head as a rainhat, but still get wet. So I open my umbrella. But the ribs are all broken! I know Silky did it, and complain "Look. This isn't just because you two are teasing me--and I'm ATTRACTED to you, OK? Isn't dislike either--but you DID break my umbrella and I want you to fix it or get me a new one."

They shrug "Shit happens, and we're playful and sexy and you're being boring. Come on, PLAY!"

I fall into it. I'm dull, why can't I be GENEROUS about it?

But they're using sex and play and charm, to get away with trashing my defense against chills and damp. I'm thin and prone to colds. I need that umbrella! And it needs ribs.

So I look Silky in the eye and say "You broke it, you fix it. FIX MY RIBS!"

NOTES NEXT MORNING

• Half-free the buried man = 1. My ancestors, in photos? 2. The business about ribs suggests Adam. The primordial man inside me?
• Time-twins = sexy photos of my relatives. I'm attracted to more than my sister: my mother and grandma and various cousins when they were young were all beautiful.
• Football field = I've avoided competitive boys' games but get tangled in girl's games, of sexual lures... and something about time, selves over time.
• Today I saw not one but at least THREE generations of women in my family who are beautiful, strange, and USE sex to get attention, like cheerleaders.
• I think I resent play, sex, flirting! Reluctant because I got hurt and want reparations first, before I'll play.
• Ribs = 1. Abuse! The only bone I ever broke was in middle school. Four bigger kids attacked me for fun as I read in the library--they broke a rib. 2. In Hebrew myth, Eve was made from Adam's rib. But here, girls break (steal?) MY ribs, re-enacting the abuse I faced from classmates long ago. I probably thought of the Eve story because Miriel's hypnotist friend is called Eve.
• Breaking my umbrella so I get soaked = depression, even suicidal thoughts raining down from Miriel? Our telepathic bond is too close--I really have no defense, no umbrella!

NEXT NIGHT

I'm in the City, at dusk, on the edge of a downtown plaza, with my girlfriend, a thin smart brown woman in a tight minidress. She's flirtatious tonight. I grab her and pull her dress up. She's naked beneath. I take this as consent to do anything, despite our being in public. My usual fears and worries are silent. I raise her by the hips, as effortlessly as if we're on the moon. Hold her to my face and lick her clit. She arches her back as my tongue goes in her. I feel so turned on as she shivers in pleasure... as people gather round us and watch, in a silent, envious ring.

"So," I think, "that's how to deal with ribbing."

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