INTRODUCTION

This dream was so bizarre I was sure it was symbolic and indirect--until the next few days' equally bizarre events echoed it. I've included my journal of the day before the dream as well as after; I think you'll agree the dream seems to refer to the future more than the past.

SUNDAY

My friend Patagia visits. She's a poet (example: Witness), but today she's brought a story--her first ever. I read her the complex dream-poem I'm struggling with, Blind Ancestors. The two pieces, to our surprise, share a theme: how do you fight destructive urges and habits you inherited? Heavy stuff. We work two hours, til we're exhausted.

That afternoon, I start painting a freaky dream called Acorn and Pelt, full of financiers and dwarves and time-traveling bunnies. Make a big oval yin-yang of red and blue--Republicans and Democrats. Then struggle with calligraphy--edit down the text, reletter smaller, then glaze over the words... Still talky, but progress. Patience...

That evening, I read The Shadow of Albion, by Rosemary Edgehill and Andre Norton: a Regency novel without the Regency--set in a parallel world where magic works. Unlike this world, where I just spent the afternoon painting a psychic dream...

But all this is just background, really--I spent all day tense, excited, waiting for word from my e-friends Emily and Maddie, who are coming into town tonight. We've corresponded, sharing dreams (very weird and psychic dreams) for a year, but never met. Despite that, I have a distinct crush on Emily, so I'm excited, nervous, even a bit scared.

Find myself cleaning my room, indeed the whole house...

I have eight tiny brass keys to eight little locks. With them, I climb to the top of an outside stair, up to the front door of an empty house. The door-lock seems extraordinarily small; the first key I try fits perfectly.

As the door opens, a clan of fairies materializes! I hand them the key. Now they own this house!

And this is my purpose. Though I'm hazy on the magical mechanics. Curious, I ask "Did the key summon one of you, and you led the rest here?"

They answer, "No, each key frees a whole clan on the spot!" Wow. Powerful keys. Or is it the locks? I recall hearing of elflocks...

If I'm careful and plan well, it seems like these eight tiny keys will be enough to give the Folk substantial diplomatic presences in eight scattered cities--reopen contact with Faeries, bring magic back into our world!

But which cities? I plan it out with them, talking of states and regional cultures.

Travel's hard for me, due to fragile health and lack of funds, so my plans are restricted to the North America for now, and the fairies will have to fund the purchases of abandoned houses.

That's not a deal-breaker: each clan can fund the next, for they have magical resources I don't... once summoned. But I can't summon a clan until there's a house to ritually unlock; so the Elvish Resurgence will have to be gradual.

Better slow than none!

We talk about regional variations of culture and cuisine. "Who eats the most fish?" the fairies ask. That seems important to them. I mull it over. Hawaiians? No... "Alaskans, probably. Salmon, moose."

Wait, is moose a fish? Suddenly I'm not sure. The word is so strange. Moose, moose, moose... But people always mention them together. Apples, oranges. Sheep, goats. Salmon, moose.

In their new house, I sing an improvised ditty about "fairies in a ring and mortals in a line." Can feel it has a certain summoning power, if not as strong as the brass keys. Then I deliberately reverse the imagery, thinking "Why not? Not all humans are linear. Let's see what magical effect THIS has. Will it stimulate human magical abilities? My own?

So I sing "Fairies in a line, mortals in a ring..." The effect's immediate--and unexpected.

A blonde girl in the fairy clan confesses "I was abused--raped. I'm not scared of sex any more, but I want to ENJOY it again. Would you be willing to help me?"

I already thought she was adorable, so I say "of COURSE I'll help."

So she rolls around naked on the yoga mats covering the floor. Elves love yoga, of course. I stroke her--connecting her pussy with the rest of her body seems important. She gradually gets excited and I slide my fingers in and get hot too.

She crawls on my back, kisses and tickles me. She seem turned on by this--girl on boy, doggy style! An odd position, but just having all that affectionate weight on me and tickling me feels good, and soon I come--not too intense, but the climax lasts a full couple of minutes, on & on! Doggie style indeed! I'm coming more like a dog than a human....

I spurt all over their floor.

But I don't clean it up. Wicked, messy boy! Instead, my come sinks slowly into the hardwood, staining it in a calligraphic pattern like a Chinese character--one too complex for me to easily read. But it feels like a third spell as strong as the elflocks or singing of mortals in a ring. Whatever it is, it's a message.

Oops. Now my messiness will cost me. This is suddenly my mom's house, and an aunt's announced a cash prize for the neatest room. I hope her standards for "neatest" are clear and explicit--this won't be easy to judge OR win.

Before she adds (I know my aunt!) "we want to see your room as-is, not after cleaning" I pick up hastily. Can't break a rule that hasn't been announced yet. And just a few minutes folding clothes doubles my floor space... giving me a chance.

As I clean around my sound system, I remember it hasn't played cassette tapes for quite a while; it started chewing them up.

Funny. For the first time, I notice a sort of hot-shoe on the side of my amplifier--twin slots where you can plug and power a whole row of components! I do have a portable cassette recorder with no cord, just sessile prongs. Will it plug in? Yes! Fits as perfectly as a key in an elflock!

Should have done this months ago.

But it needs something to prop it up, and it lacks an on-off switch. I wedge some broken glasses underneath to prop it. They only have one ear-hook, on the wrong side. Find another set of glasses, broken correctly (I sit on reading glasses a lot) and install those.

Yep, that works. A woman starts singing a Celtic story-ballad. And by folding the ear-hook I can turn it on and off! Cool.

But it's awkward, and at last I remove the glasses entirely and devise a more compact control--a button at the end of a hollow tube that vibrates pleasantly. Though the tube's a bit too long for my fingers.

So, naturally, I try sliding my penis in. Mmm, a snug fit, feels nice... and the vibration excites me. Yes, once I'm as big as I get, at the very end of my stroke, I can just push that ON button.

Weird. I can turn it on only if I'm fully turned on! No half-turn-ons will work.

But it feels so good that I start, um, controlling the recorder enthusiastically. On, off, on, off, oooooh! But if it keeps vibrating so nicely, I'm going to come again.

And maybe short it out. Or electrocute myself. I mean, Mom always warned me:

• Elf locks = pun. Usually means a tangle in your hair, doesn't it?
• Eight elf-havens = Predictive! The next day, learn Emily and Maddie have a long-term plan of establishing houses in eight American cities where shamanic magic could be taught.
• Offer homes, fairy woman, reopen portals gradually =
  1. In The Shadow of Albion the Lost Dauphin has given up. Just wants to emigrate, won't bind to the land. "It's too late, the rites are lost and the fairies gone." True: the one fairy we meet admits they abandoned France after the Terror.
  2. At the time I thought it was all from Shadow of Albion. I was wrong. Predictive! See Wednesday below...
• Salmon, moose = more dream puns. In the dream I never thought once of the yuppie dish. I mean, I as actor, I as audience. Yet I as playwright clearly did.
• Outside stair = predictive, if unsurprising! Next day Emily & Maddie ascend MY outside stair and summon US, the San Francisco Fairies...)
• Abused elf-woman= Emily, arriving tomorrow? She's had headaches and sexual pain paralleling mine more closely than anyone else I know. The dream hints she's half-healed from some trauma.
• Sexual attraction, making out = 1: short-term predictive! Next evening, after singing and playing music for Emily, Maddie, and my friend Cheryl, we were all talking and sprawling on the rug, and Cheryl crawled on top of me. Felt good. But I felt a strong longing for Emily too. Cheryl later admitted SHE felt attracted to Emily too; have I partly been sensing her desire not just mine? And Maddie's weird, intense energy-broadcast fascinated Cheryl though didn't turn her on. Cheryl felt VERY inhibited from showing Emily her attraction--not just their age difference but the gender/orientation gap too. I wonder now if my shyness wasn't all mine; was I picking up Cheryl's feelings and taking them for mine? I do that a lot. 2: longer-term predictive! See Wednesday; it all came true.
• Calligraphy, mysterious glyph = today I began a painting a vivid predictive dream called Acorn and Pelt; lots of calligraphy on it. I didn't come all over it, but clearly painting does turn me on...
• Room-cleaning competition = cleaned up so Emily and Maddie won't see my usual mess--several half-done art projects on card tables and desks. Cheryl said my room's NOT dirty, just busy. HER place is dirty--she just moved into a broken-down flat and her job leaves her no time to fix things.
• Sexy tape recorder = today I taped songs by our band, the Krelkins, as a gift for Emily who's been curious about our music. The dream confirms: music really turns me on!
• Sexual short circuit = clearly, getting turned on has risks. But what?

MONDAY

Slowly my guts and balls start hurting! I'm puzzled what caused it. I didn't do or eat anything unusual. Pain just from having a sex dream? Well, not just a sex dream, but a dream warning of sexual short-circuits!

Drink a lot of water, eat only fruits and vegs, and slowly feel better.

Midday, Emily and Maddie call. They're here! We originally planned to stow their gear here and rush off to a free all-woman Shakespeare play in Dolores Park, but they arrive late... in a car driven by a distant relative they barely know, who let them stay the first night off the train. He won't enter our house or even talk to anyone--stays in the car, rolls the window up, and refuses to unlock the trunk! Either my neighborhood or house or looks frighten him so much he insists they go down to their youth hostel instead. Their luggage held hostage, Em & Maddie surrender at last. Off they go. Kidnapped by suburbanites!

Upset, worried and hurt, I wait for Em & Maddie to call. I call Cheryl, then our band, the Krelkins, and try to confirm our date to play for Emily, Maddie and Cheryl tonight. But my bandmates feel ill too! They want to postpone til tomorrow, adding "it'd have to be daytime." But Cheryl has to work tomorrow. Tonight's the only time we can all be there. So I wear them down and eventually they agree to go ahead with the original plan.

Try to call Maddie back, but the cellphone number they gave me is wrong! I think back. Emily & Maddie did hesitate and correct the number they gave me from memory, so I recall the one digit they were unsure about and dial their first guess. Correct number!

Feel like I'm fighting spells to keep us apart with my own spells of intuition and will.

Go pick up Cheryl, then head downtown to pick up Emily and Maddie at the youth hostel. Heavy traffic, takes forever... But at last they're all at my house.

First they tour the art-jammed walls. Em likes some recent dream-paintings: Razi and the Holy Wino of Shasta, and the purple one with a baby three-eyed ghost wondering about life After Birth...

Evening. The Krelkins play. I've told them Emily's another dreamer, so our songlist tonight favors dream-related songs, like Coyote Sent Me Cash and Dawn's Dream.

Later, Maddie shows me her art portfolio. Some of Emily's too--even one or two by Maddie's girlfriend Brittany. Their styles and even their subjects are remarkably similar. Not surprising, really. They're so linked they share dream-characters, sometimes even dream-events! (example: Hop)

Late night now. Nic the drummer goes to bed. Her husband Mike stays up but doesn't talk much--seems charmed but punchy, bemused by the weird energy buzzing round.

We all sprawl on the kitchen floor. Do yoga and ginger tea. I'm in love with Emily! All feline grace. But after the Suspicious Relatives, I feel terribly inhibited from showing my attraction, even from touching her, though Cheryl massages everyone--Mike, Maddie, Emily. There's a take-charge side of Cheryl that reminds me of my sister Miriel. She focuses on solid Maddie--sees her as the center of the psychic nexus, with insufficient shielding, hence all these headaches.

I can't discriminate as much--just feel overwhelmed by the energy! Four of us, all intense psychics in one room. Palpable, a circuit of energy leaping between us. Feels like the first gathering of my own people I've ever been in. I can't emphasize this enough--the sensation is extraordinary. I've felt traces before when I met shamans, but nothing like this.

In the living room, later, Cheryl goes on massaging and skilfully greasing social wheels and exploring Maddie's strange aura. She says "I see it as a bluegreen crystal density above Maddie's optic chiasm. I think it causes the headaches, or at least passes them between Maddie, Emily and Brittany."

As I drop her off after midnight, Cheryl astounds me by saying "I felt insecure all evening. All of you are creative artists; I'm not." When she'd just put out such shamanic power, reading us closely in a way I couldn't have. And she thinks she needs to do more?! Shaking my head, I drive home exhausted. Sleep 1:30 AM.

TUESDAY

I wake feeling OK but after breakfast my balls start to hurt. Eases when I lie down; I don't think I can hike around playing tour guide today. Gets pretty bad and I crawl into bed and stay there.

Cheryl calls; we talk a long time. She got a headache from that amazing energy last night. Fades as we talk. More persistent is her feeling she's unwanted: "I felt hurt when Maddie pulled out her sketchbook. You all leapt into the art realm, leaving me behind..."

She comes over at last, before going to therapy. I'm still flat on my back. She starts crying. "I'm insecure and starved and I only get crumbs of what I need..."

I say "I'm sorry I can't give you more, I'm just so drained and ill."

She promptly cheers up and shifts into diagnostic mode! Changes personalities, really--I think she's at least partly Serena now, her inner kid, who I trust totally. I don't mean inner kid metaphorically; Cheryl's multiple. She (Cheryl? Serena?) says "I feel so much better when I have something to do, when someone trusts me to work on them." She does a reading and zeros in exactly where I did--the vas deferens are transmitting pressure from... nowhere! No center, no cause of the inflammation!

She seeks a psychic image of the problem and starts shaking, looks drawn. Says "I think this is a past life, and it's really bad. Oh, Chris, I can't even tell if you're a boy or girl, so mutilated. Oh. You were a singer, a boy, and you were in love with your teacher, and he had you castrated against your will, it's gruesome, he just had it done, they crushed your testicles like an animal... butchery. And you felt so betrayed, your immune system collapsed and you got peritonitis and you barely survived it, you had horrible pelvic adhesions and were in constant pain, I can't believe you even survived. But you were crippled and couldn't sing the same way. And he threw you out on the street. Oh god, and I was whining about MY life... You were so betrayed. Oh, you're a beautiful boy, I'll never hurt you, you never deserved that."

Correct or not, it resonates--and would explain both my drive to sing AND why I got pelvic/testicular inflammation from stress when trying voice classes the first time. Hurt so much it was a few years before I dared to try again. Our local school teaches bel canto singing--the tradition going right back to the castrati.

Afterward, making tea, she casually says "This is my calling." Then stops in surprise at what she says. But it was so obvious, she was so clear calm happy and able to handle even frightful imagery without more than sadness and sympathy--in a state whose energy felt to me just like the flow state I get in doing art. Essence of Serena.

Cheryl/Serena will be late for her therapy appointment now if she bikes, but I feel well enough to drive her there. Head back home, fragile but better. Read in bed, eat only soup, take aspirin. Can't work up the nerve to call Emily & Maddie, though. But then I know I can't go out and explore the city with them today.

Cheryl calls, excited. In hypnotherapy, she descended into trance. "I saw a river and a boatman and some of my alts [alternate personalities] and an intruder I think was Maddie! I told her she could only stay if she consented to be bound." The figure nodded, she was bound, and Cheryl opened Maddie's head and pulled out her bluegreen problematic gem and set it at the axis where time flows both ways and it lased like a neutron star. She put it back in, not understanding quite why this was healing but sure that it should reduce the headache problem... Whew. So she's done two now in one day...

Whatever it was she did. And whoever actually did it, Cheryl or Serena.

WEDNESDAY

Morning: twinges of pain, but much better--not bedridden, at least. I even record two rough takes of a new song based on a dream: Anarchy Fair.

After noon, Emily and Maddie come by and stay all day--their last. Em is wearing the shortest shorts and the longest legs in town. Pure elegant cat today.

I throw caution to the winds and tell them Eight Elflocks. They love the dream; Em's not troubled by my admitting a crush on her. Just the opposite: she's attracted to me too, purrs at my touch. We slowly caress and slowly get used to touching, all afternoon. Half falling in love, half... diagnosis.

Em's natural stride is light, slinky, almost digitigrade like a big cat, planting toes and balls of foot first. Incredibly sexy. But a few years ago, peers made fun of her walk. She learned to cover it up--walk like a human. Demonstrates and her body language goes from sensual and inviting and proud to depressed, flat--switched off.

Changing her gait tightened the inside not the backs of her legs as I'd expect; and unevenly: some insertions and parts of pelvic floor are tight. But not enough to explain the sexual blockage she's felt. As with me, feeling and expressing gives Em an initial rush of delight, but then it plateaus; body on strike! She's felt either blah or pain from sex, even masturbation; and a weird patchiness of sexual sensation, with nipples and clit and belly sexually neutral while the rest of her body shivers with excitement. Enjoying touch but zero sexual charge. It's unlike my pattern (a body-wide flattening of sexual feeling and painful "hangovers") but just as discouraging for her.

Only now that's dissolving. Whenever she hits that wall and suddenly touch feels neutral, her face and voice shift: a stoic irony, even a sort of pride? Direct, challenging gaze, very different from her feline self, who's shy but with great capacity for both physical pleasure and sheer happiness from even the smallest gestures of affection. The stoic part feels strong despite the irony. Not just holding out for love; feels cheated too. Both she and I are uncertain if it's tied to her gift; does she fear her shaman's wings would be clipped? My hunch is that this is a minor factor at most; something else is causing this.

There's still a missing piece, for even now when she senses I love her (and I do) she gains flickers of sexual sensation but not a consistent glow; can't build on it.

Still she glows--happy at a partial breakthrough. Further than she's ever gotten. And feels loved. I can't believe that someone so wonderful could be love-starved! But she is. I love and trust her immediately, the way I do Cheryl's emerging self Serena. (Strangely, given how before this my history's been more monogamous than Em or Cheryl, but I feel no conflict; even suspect this'll make me admit more directly to Cheryl I love her too, despite her thorniness.

What turns Em on the most: lie on my back and humping me, girl on boy, doggy style! Just as in the dream. Okay, I don't come all over the floor or fuck a tape recorder, but the dream-echoes are eerie.

Maddie was patient with us and rather amused. I think she sees us as puppies in love.

Still, after all the snuggling and little nips and purrs, when we have to part and I drop them off at the hostel for the long trainride back home in the morning, I do hurt. Drink miso soup with aspirin, and go straight to bed.

What will happen tonight?

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