Polio

Connie:

I'm writing down this dream about Peg and Ted because if I try and tell it to you I'll prolly start crying. And it starts with you. In the back seat of the Galaxy 500. You sneeze, I blow on you, you blow on me, etc. but it doesn't end with violence. It's actually fun because you are your current self at your present age.

Ted is there back from the grave, why? As if there is no Ken and the same young Ted is our dad, Peg's husband even though the rest of us have grown old. Except for Peg of course who is pretending to still be as young as Ted when he died. I get into it with her about like, well, I'm sorry if you forgot, but I already told you I have to drop off my prescription on the way. On the way where? What prescription? Ted is driving us around an anachronistic Anaheim, California. There were druggists and a storefront post office.

We get out of the car and I am walking ahead still pissed off at Peg and Ted follows behind trying to place his (dead) hand on my back. He appreciates, understands my efforts with Peg. Maybe because he's no longer really there and I am. His black skinny-tie suit is way out of date.

I squirm away, feeling bad about it but can't accept his comfort. As if I blame him. Easy to make him feel bad as a way of lashing out at life. I realize it's a boyish thing to do.

Turns out we're stepping inside a yellow-brick clinic with white letters stenciled on the door as they used to do. The patient is me, and I'm on the same stainless steel table where I was born, with those aquamarine rubber sheets and gloves, and the nurse standing behind me is going to have to insert a very large needle into the back of my head. Why?

In a fetal position, I feel the needle go in and it's the most actual pain I remember ever feeling in a dream. Was it LaLa behind me in real life gnawing my scalp? It goes deep, and I hear the nurse apologizing and then gasps and says "Oh..." and starts crying. She has apparently hurt herself, but so badly that she is actually sobbing. Then I turn and see the doctor coming in, the nurse going out saying "That's the most I've ever cried-- not just at work, but ever."

It's become a little clearer why we're there. It must have been from a letter in the New York Review of Books about Syria, because I've got something like polio. And I'm a boy. With polio. And the doctor has invented a contraption where he can put me in a hanging net on a track like a rollercoaster/ centrifuge and send me flying around the clinic. In some sort of multi-purpose room. Remember those?

Then the doctor is Dick Cheney and then he's Ted again. He tells me I can pick any gift I want. I say I want this and take the thing from a box, a taped-up moving box or the one you keep Christmas decorations in. I have sovereignty of movement now, and we are rich. I sit down on a free-weight bench holding the thing I wanted between my thighs trying to figure out how it works.

Very heavy dream hangover surfacing from this. Whut? I kept saying. Oh my god whut? LaLa is by my side staring patiently but she is a bitch. In truth I'm single and I dream about my nuclear family from 100 years ago. Is that the same as having polio? Did you infect me when you sneezed? Ha ha just kidding. Mostly I'm disappointed we're not really rich.


Love, Hoolie