1989/5/23: STILTDOE'S SOULMATE

By a river, I see a deer with long legs--almost stilts. I'm told she's single, and lonely: never seen any other deer of her leggy species.

A giraffe comes down the far bank... and stops in astonishment. He's single too, for he's an orphan; never seen another giraffe. The two loners' eyes meet. The giraffe wades across the river and the tall doe waits eagerly. They both mistake the other for the opposite sex of their own species! How could they know differently? She is nearly as tall as a giraffe. Her neck's much shorter and she lacks his reticulate coat, but they're no differenter than many sexually dimorphic species.

They nuzzle and lean together in obvious delight. Rub heads affectionately, though he has to bow his down to reach her--merely elephant-high.

At last, he climbs on top of her and they start mating...

NOTES NEXT MORNING

• The stiltdeer: kind of parodies the dream-girls I like to draw best: slender shy girls with long legs. So here are VERY long legs, and an extra pair too...
• Unique, mateless, lonely: I do feel this way. No one for me. Is the dream hinting mismatched lovers are OK for me, that they're the closest I can get to my species?

NEXT NIGHT: CENBUCK WITH PARASOL

I'm in my parents' house on the lip of Polhemus Canyon. I call my sister Miriel to look out the back window, overlooking the canyon. A deer is pawing at the back door, demanding to be let in! A stag. But he only has one horn. Unicorn? No, it's branched and on one side; the other antler's lost.

I don't open the door. He gives up at last and turns away. Out behind our fence, he pauses to put on a fedora hat with ear- and antler-holes, and picks up a dull purple bookbag or briefcase. With his hands! Slim shoulders and arms emerge from his long neck. Not a humanoid torso, but still, a centaur of sorts. A cenbuck. He opens a colorful umbrella and rears up his neck/shoulders, and holding the parasol precisely, vertically, picks his way off through the chaparral, down into the canyon...

NOTES NEXT MORNING

• The businessbuck: I drew this guy partly because women (or at least female beings) fill my dreams--not overwhelmingly, but a clear majority of characters, maybe 55/45%. I have more female than male friends, but that's not a full explanation--my dream-pattern's quite rare! On average, women dream a realistic 50/50ish gender mix; men dream disproportionately (and often anxiously) of other men (at least 60/40, often 70/30). My dreams reflect my social world more realistically. My dream art, now... it's even more female-predominant, maybe 60/40, because I find women more fun to draw.
• But this guy needed to be sketched. Such striking, weird, paradoxical gender signs. Fedora hat and briefcase--butch--but bright flowery parasol too--femme. Fussy, almost prim, but one horn broken--in a head-butting fight? And that hat somehow made the rest of him... nakeder. What's he mean?
• Deer, recurring: What do these have in common besides deerness? (Well, and weirdness). Not sure.

NOTE 21 YEARS LATER...

What the two deer-dreams have in common may be... bad puns. Dough and bucks are both American slang for money. And remember that centaur was a businessdeer. Fedora hat and briefcase don't just mark gender!

At the time, I was unconsciously preparing to quit my middle-class job and move to San Francisco to be a dream artist. Most of my financial planning came a year later, but I think my dreams were already prompting me to focus on bucks and doe, at least temporarily, so I could escape the 'burbs and find kindred spirits.

I did. And it worked.

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