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A Squirrely Business Plan

Dreamed 2009/3/2 by Wayan

THAT DAY

My ex-girlfriend Cheryl just emailed me to call me a moral coward. Been a year since we broke up; what seems to have provoked her was my recent work on the World Dream Bank. Has she spotted literary cowardice? Maybe she's right--as I reread the pieces she mentions, they do seem subdued... safe. The last truly risky work was a full year ago--an epic nightmare on the conflicts in the love-triangle at the heart of that tempestuous year. But Cheryl, and Emily too (the third corner of the triangle) were both uneasy that I wanted to bare our private lives on the Net, and asked me to pull it. I did--the first time I've censored the World Dream Bank that way.

Have I been self-censoring since, to placate others? I read through my raw dream-journal for 2008, and am shocked to find rich powerful images and messages, all unpublished--self-censored. Cheryl's right! I have been holding back, afraid to offend her and Em. Yet... Cheryl flames me for holding back. Can't have it both ways! It may no longer matter to Em: she's put me behind her. That year's dreams and dramas are dead issues now. But Cheryl's still gnawing it over obsessively; her letter read innuendo into dreams that weren't even about her. Everything offends her! Can't appease the unappeasable.

I wonder what my dreams themselves think--of that year, of Cheryl's letter, of my self-censorship.

THAT NIGHT

I'm in my family's house, squatting on the tile floor. I lean back against a padded office-partition. Looks like it was stolen from the Stanford Library. From inside the office cubicle it defines, a guy's projecting a slideshow. At first the slides showed charts and plans and lists. A business presentation. He tells us, step by step, his business plan... to seduce someone.

Each step sounds reasonable enough--he says he's in love, and just needs to prove his love, reassure his lover, and take the initiative because his lover is younger and less experienced.

But at last we get beyond the pie charts. A photo of his lover... and it's the young son of a suburban family. Not even a teen, a borderline case we might excuse: a small child, and straight, too. Our businesslike seducer guiltlessly lays out strategies to convince the kid he's ready for sex (though he's not) and gay (though he's not)...

One side of me listens to each step of his seduction plan in isolation, thinking "yes, that's logical"; the rest of me, seeing the whole, gets steadily angrier with each slide.

But a third side is puzzled. How can I--these two Is--ignore the crucial truth of that snapshot? This isn't a human business plan! The seducer's a giant skunk, and the suburban family he's stalking is a family of squirrels. The young son may be only months old, not years. He'll never be legal age--squirrels don't even live to 18! Hell, even sneaky suave Mr. Businesskunk is probably a three-year-old...

So a gay underage skunk plans to hump a baby squirrel. Moral? Immoral? Or just too ridiculous for morality to apply?

Black and white cartoon of Pepe Le Phew, that suave skunk, wooing a bewildered squirrel; a dream image by Chris Wayan based on an old Looney Toons poster.

NOTES IN THE MORNING

So goodbye to you all: Em, Maddie, Cheryl/Serena and all your alts. I'm your past now, and you are my past. Set me free; I set you free.

Dream well.



LISTS AND LINKS: criticism - creative process - business - sex in general - pedophilia - gay men - mustelids: skunks, ermines, weasels, otters - rodents: squirrels, rats, mice - sexy creatures (or at least they wish, Pepe!) - dream humor - romantic advice - triangles and trios - prodigies and the gifted - Only in San Francisco - dreams by Emily - Cheryl - breakups and exes - letting go - dreamt the same night: The White Deer Re-Enacted and Handmade Dimensions

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