THAT EVENING

My friend Mark and I go to a folkdance in San Francisco--the style called contra dancing.

In the first half, I dance a lot; have fun waltzing with a cute blonde in a red dress, with narrow, almost Asian eyes, startling next to her pale hair. Then a frizz-haired girl in a white dress who likes to swing wildly--very sexy and fun.

But the second half, in dance after dance, I try to ask women to dance and they look right through me. Several even look pointedly away or shake their heads--or am I projecting? In any case I don't find partners. I sit out the rest of the evening, watch everyone else dance. The slight surplus of men means there are always a few sitting out each dance, but they're different ones--except me. I get up and enter the crowd like they do, but I come out alone again--every time.

A first I think "I got partners at first because no one knew yet how badly I danced, but after a few dances everyone knew, and avoided me." But as I watch, it's clear there are a lot of newcomers who dance worse than I do. It's something else.

Finally just sit and look at my mood. Insulted, certainly. Yet I'm almost... relieved? Back in familiar territory, looking at a room filled with hundreds of people--normal humans--excluding me without a thought. My normal state as a kid. How comfy! Now I don't have to perform, compete, fit in. I hate it, it's boring on sidelines. Yet--in the first half, interacting and, competing, I was quite anxious. Though I barely felt it then--only deduce it in retrospect, because I got so manic. Numbed my distress, so now I pay for it?

Afterwards, Mark is mad at himself for not asking for the phone number of the girl he liked the most. I say "go to the pizzeria they meet at afterwards, and talk to her if she's there." I listen, but can't empathize much--he danced every dance, often with women I was attracted to who looked right through me, and admits he never got turned down--then corrects himself and realizes he did, occasionally.

He's puzzled I was rejected so consistently, says I don't look bad, wasn't doing anything rude he could see. In fact it's considered a bit rude to refuse to dance once with someone, since you spend half of every dance with others. "Did you actually ask them? Or make eye contact and hesitate? That might be interpreted as NOT asking, given the hurry between dances to decide on next partner."

I feel like the situation sets me up to fail. My shaky new courage might have a chance, given time and no load of anxiety, but here I just don't have enough time to set aside the hesitation beaten into me.

Ask my dreams to show me exactly what behavior caused this pattern. It happened the last time I tried contra dancing, too. Why this change from first half to second?

THAT NIGHT

I'm living on a barren plain--all that's left of Los Angeles. Low hills inland. No trees, just a few stumps. All cut for firewood. Angelenos have degraded along with their land, back into a poor people impressed by much the same things that the North Africans were, after Rome fell--mystics, desert hermits and column sitters. Why not? They've ruined THIS world. What's left but the next?

I'm a hermit--or rather an outcast; hermit is the only role available for me, maimed as I am. I lost a hand at the wrist, and one leg at the hip. I can't recall how I lost them--punishment for a crime, or an accident? Half a man--I can't work, so I'm forced to beg or pick pockets.

But I turn my lack to an advantage. I'm much lighter than a whole man, and my remaining leg is built to lift a whole man, so I can jump much higher than anyone else, almost fly in fact. I leap like a ballet star, floating a long time at the top of the arc as if in lunar gravity.

I want to find a column or tree others can't climb, and make it my nest and start collecting my gleanings. But all the trees have been burned. A few rocks and crags with caves, a couple of huge stumps, the last reminders of the extinct redwoods--but no living trees and no columns I can leap to the top of that others can't climb.

My compensatory gift is useless, in a land with no heights.

I head inland, exploring the low hills, hoping. My friend Mark tags along. We find a cave mouth, opening into a huge lava tube. Doors and windows have been crudely knocked out. And holes into another tube beside it... and another. Huge airy caves, ferny by the doors, semi-furnished with rock shelves and tables. The whole row's unoccupied. At least ten suites, different colors and sizes, but all leading deep into the hills. In fact their roofs ARE the hills. Where one roof has fallen in, you can see it's quite a thin shell. Such accidental skylights form lovely atrium gardens. Strange that the caves are empty--they're quite livable. Though wrong for me: I need a height. A height others can't reach...

The last lava tube feels different. I know it's the last before I even enter it. The roof is gone, all the way down: it's a tiny canyon open to the sky, with a creeklet trickling through. The end of the lava row.

I wade in the stream. Mark just watches. I fish with my one hand, bare, no lure--and catch a couple of speckled trout, one a foot long, one about seven inches. I'm not sure if they're male or female. I don't think I'll eat them; got something else in mind. I'm a miracle worker after all.

Oh! This is how I'll find a girlfriend--I'll breed one out of fish and dogs! It must be done without oppressing or bothering any female of course, that's why the fish is ideal; she just lays the eggs into gravel, sex doesn't involve penetration, she never goes through birth. I'll just turn Mark into a trout for a minute, he can mate with the fish, creating, with luck and some magic, at least a few viable were-trout. Then I'll transform the most viable female fingerling into a puppy. Raised as a dog, the were-trout-girl will grow fast, acquire warm mammalian emotions, and bond to me deeply. A dog won't know or care that I'm only half a man! When she goes into heat, I'll remove the spell and she'll have the joy of discovering both trout and human forms, and her own native were-powers. And with any luck, she'll love me. Half-woman, half-trout... half-man. We'll have so much in common!

This elaborate breeding program is the only hope for love I can see. I worry about it going wrong, talk to my friends about it. Decide I have to risk it. All I can do is check for, and eliminate, known genetic defects, both trout and human, in the were-fetus. That's more than humans do for their kids, and trout do even less.

I'm doing it. I'm making the leap--despite the risk.

THE ANSWERS

• Barren plain = the dance floor! Few women, fewer still I'm attracted to, next to none sharing my interests. Nice enough folks, but so ordinary! Folkdance doesn't draw innovators.
• Crippled = my upbringing left me socially crippled--visibly so. I hesitate, wary of being beaten the way I was as a kid. I can fight it with effort, but not hide it. As I tired, late in the evening, my flinch showed through!
• Lost hand = can't reach out to others.
• Lost leg = support, security? 'Under-standing'?
• I can half-fly in compensation = becoming a child prodigy and a psychic were strengths I grew to compensate for early deprivation and betrayal.
• Forced to beg & steal = I learned to steal looks at women, never face them. This evening, did I beg abjectly for dances, or act shifty as a thief?
• Seek high place as a refuge, but it's bare = contra dance has little room for creative types. My strengths won't show--just my scars.
• Lava tubes = 1) ramps outside the dance hall. 2) bars and cafes--better places to meet singles! 3) Dorsa Brevia, the lava-tube hall where the utopian Constitution of Mars is written in GREEN MARS. If I want appreciation, hang with radicals and booknuts!
• Catch a speckled trout = In Yeats's poem "The Song of Wandering Aengus" he catches a trout that becomes a spirit girl, who he falls in love with and chases for years.
• TWO trout = the two attractive girls I did dance with, before I started flinching.
• Dog phase = Mark said "You think just because dogs have smaller brains than wolves, people ruined them. That's just liberal guilt! I read that dogs split off from wolves ten million years ago--longer than we've been people." But he'd misread the article--it was 100,000 years and dogs did evolve from hanging around people, begging, eating trash.
• Mustn't bother women, penetration is rape, pregnancy's oppression = Thanks, Mom!
• Creating a girl to love by mixing disparate genes = to make me fit to love, mix parts of me I think are incompatible!
• Fish in a desert = like a hopping hermit in a land with no heights, desert fish have limited options and heavy pressure to evolve
• Turn the fish into a puppy = (1) Death Valley's pupfish. (2) Eager, innocent warmth. The dream says "After a time of being cold as a fish, huddling in the few oases that'll shelter me in this social desert, I need to become puppylike--warm, vulnerable, and hungry to be petted." Only then can a mature shapeshifter emerge. Not a normal human adult, mind you! Maturity for me (and anyone I can love)... well, were-creatures are different.

Yeats was right--miracles can happen. But this one will take two separate evolutionary leaps. At least.

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