1: PREGNANT WITH TEARS

A Chinese girl with a pudgy sad face is talking on the phone--talking dirty. As usual. She does phone sex for a living.

But... with her other hand, she's massaging her crotch, I think. She's hunched forward so I can't see her cunt directly, but I think she's not just acting excited for her customer, she's really masturbating.

Her stomach bulges out strangely. I pat the bulge, feel it. She lets me, absent-mindedly, while she goes on talking to her customer and rubbing and rocking. Her belly's all spongy, not firm like pregnancy or bouncy like fat. Something else is filling her up. "Tears" pops into my mind.

Even as she satisfies her john, and comes herself, squeezing her eyes shut and squeaking like a cat... she's pregnant with tears.

2: MODESTY HOLDS YOU BACK IN THE SWIM

But phone sex is just her day job. Nights, she's an actress with a specialty niche: swimming commercials.

Tonight she's working on an ad whose director isn't quite clear on how it should go. They try this, they try that--camera angles, different strokes. Most of the actresses patronize the one boy in the cast, a street kid "with only," the girls say, "20 minutes of education."

Only one girl doesn't mock him: the teary girl, who's in a stupid swimsuit--a simple, normal bikini bottom but an awkward lacy smock for a top. It was supposed to be "modest", and maybe it is on dry land, but in the pool, the lacy stuff floats up like seaweed, often baring her tear-swollen belly, half-baring her breasts... and often hiding her face!

Plus, when she swims, the drag holds her back.

Several others have similar "modest", draggy designs. Did the director pick these, or is this just another hideous swimsuit season?

3: STICKY HAIR SAVIOR

About the director. She's quite young--an heiress in a big rich family who was supposed to get her share recently, when she came of age. But her family's been stalling. She wants to use the money for this campaign to sell a new product she invented: shampoo made with certain mineral salts. Assaying the mineral content of various seawaters is essential, and she has people with water testers out right now. They've been delayed, though. They keep saying "Another day or two. What's the big hurry?"

"Well, my campaign to save the world from sticky hair will be delayed!"

What a contradiction she is! Pure LA rich blonde... yet idealistic. But such a silly idealism! Yet not stupid--her upbringing was just so sheltered. Or maybe I'm ignorant and the Sticky Hair Plague endangers us all. I admit, her hair's gorgeous and mine's an old birdnest.

I hope she gets her fair share of the inheritance. Even if she wants to blow it on her ditzy crusade, isn't that her right?

But I think she's being cheated. I was tinkering with electrical equipment in the house, and found an elaborate pipe hookup--apparently there'll be a toilet here when they finish, though the plumbers aren't here for me to ask. The pipes look funny though. Look closer. The label says SALT ASSAYER! These testers hid her equipment and didn't sample the waters! I can't imagine why... unless her family bribed them to stall her.

Family sabotage! This isn't right. Her campaign may be silly, but it's hers. I have to warn her.

4: MARRY FOR MONEY

Now... I'm her. Singleminded. They still won't give me my fair share--dispute my birth date and competency and anything else they can invent. But according to the family trust, if I'm married, the day of my inheritance is much earlier, long past. They can't delay any longer, if I have a husband. So I decide to get married--for money.

One of my film crew will do. He agrees. Why not? He knows me pretty well, we get along, I'm going to be rich, and I'm cute. And I have great hair. What more is there?

I didn't mean that. I'm not forgetting love. But I won't let them steal my inheritance! My heritage, really.

A small civil ceremony. We stand in my parents' bedroom and go through with this marriage for money. I feel ashamed. But I'm determined to get what is mine--no matter what the cost.

After the ceremony, my family's lawyers hand me my first payment. I'm suspicious, and won't take a check. They seem to have anticipated this. They return with the $300 in cash.

And I leave, neither proud or ashamed, just wary, expecting them to refuse to send the next payment, probably.

Only when I wake do I realize my family cheated me again.

I assumed it was just because I'd been so poor that I'd never seen a such a high-denomination bill before.

A $300 bill.

NOTES ON WAKING

• The Chinese girl: me of course. I'll tell sexy dreams on the Net, but in real life I still try to please others, not me. Swollen with old tears, not pregnant with new life.
• Swimming = social life, especially dating.
• Awkward, "modest" suit = shyness & shame. Slows you down, AND it reveals what you want to hide and draws attention, making you look stupid.
• Hair campaign = my feminist/puritan mom taught me to ignore my own looks & never judge women by their looks. Beauty turned as guilty for me as sex or wealth! I still skimp on all three. Cheated of my natural inheritance!
• Must be married to get my inheritance: If I'm not loved, I'm not a real adult. No matter who, no matter how jerky my lover is, that's proof of maturity! (What a great ad--"Adulthood: leave home without it!")
• Sampling the waters = uncommitted dating or relationships, NOT guiltily settling for the first lover who won't batter or psychologically abuse me (my ex-lover Kay did both).
• Disguise the water sampler as toilet = I think sampling the sexual waters is shitty/selfish! Toying with others' affections. The dream may also warn I don't sense who likes me, because my sensors are placed where they pick up MY OWN SHIT! Oops.
• $300 bill =
  1. A really big lie. America never issued a $300 bill, but we do have a saying: "As phony as a $3 bill." This is 100 times as fake! They really did cheat me again.
  2. A month ago, I made $300 on my first art show. I think the dream warns that's a fluke, that art's a poor path to independence. Or it could be warning of deeper brainwashing--that my parents actively trained me to fail--never to make money. An inheritance with a minus sign!

A NOTE 25 YEARS LATER

It was true. My parents taught me that competition, selfishness and money itself were wicked; I felt guilty competing for jobs or negotiating salaries. Not a formula for success! I still can't compete.

But being a cheapskate wasn't wicked. So I worked quietly in a library, saved half my paychecks, and found I was quite competent as an investor, where businessmen couldn't see and judge me. I retired at 36 to do art & music in comfortable, independent poverty.

If you can't undo all your parental brainwashing, work around it.

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