Dream Theater: Emotional Fallout

My friend Jill O____ has been in a country-western band since... well, forever, really.

And from time to time through the years, they've gone on tour. 

So it wasn't a complete surprise to find out they were in Madison, except that I didn't know anything about it. 

Still, somehow, I was able to catch their show. But Jill was so busy setting up, and performing, and then tearing things down afterward that we couldn't spend any time together. We didn't even get a chance to say hello. And then they were gone, on to the next gig.

Life on the road ain't easy. There are plenty of country-western songs that will tell you so.

The next morning I found myself on the University of Wisconsin campus, at an office inside the student center.

It was a busy place, with lots of people milling around and standing in lines, talking among themselves. What were they all doing here? 

That's when I saw a sign on the wall, hastily written in thick black marker. It said there would be a meeting that afternoon to support "anyone who experienced emotional fallout from last night's musical act."

My first thought was, "Huh. That's very Madison." My second was, "I wonder if they'll let me attend?"

"The Night Crier" on The Strange Recital

 For those who enjoy the weird and uncanny, The Strange Recital podcast is a wonderful listen. Brent Robison and Tom Newton have been supporting short fiction--and creating thoughtful, immersive audio treatments of short stories--for over seven years. Their specialty? "Fiction that questions the nature of reality."

I've been an admirer of theirs for many years now, which makes me especially happy to announce that my short story, "The Night Crier," has just been released on their platform. 

The Strange Recital describes it this way: "A man can't sleep. He's alone in the night. What is that sound, forever repeating from the dark woods? It has to be silenced at all costs."

Please give it--and their many other episodes--a listen. I promise, it will be listening minutes well spent.

Dream Theater: Let Them Eat Cake

Photo from DelectablyMine.com

Oprah Winfrey was hosting a televised song-and-dance spectacular dedicated to getting Americans to eat more cake.

The irony of this wasn't lost on me.

That being said, however, I have to admit I was impressed with Oprah's performance. She was singing and dancing and changing in and out of fabulous costumes like she'd been tutored by Beyonce herself. Which may indeed have been the case.

But as I watched this all from home, as more and more celebrities took to the stage to encourage greater cake consumption among ordinary people, I found myself growing more and more furious.

Didn't they see the irony in all of this? Weren't they the least bit concerned about how this multimillion dollar television special might be received by the rest of us? Were they that out of touch?

I decided I was going to write a blog post about it, and put it up right here. I was going to take them all down, Onion-style.

Several headline ideas had already occurred to me. Among them: 

"Wealthy Assholes Demand You Spend More Money on Cake."

"Celebrities Solve World Crises With More Cake."

"1% Says More Cake is Key to 99%'s Happiness."

Dream Theater: The Knitting Group

Photo from KnittingNeedleGuide.com

J____ and I moved to Madison late last year. We're still in search of new friends (sometimes I fear that we always will be) and so we decided to join a knitting group. It seemed like it might be worth a try. "Fibers, fun and more!" the notice said.

The meeting was in someone's house. Everyone there was excited to have two newcomers show up. There were men and women, all ages, all smart and funny, and very welcoming. I had a great feeling about this new group of people. Maybe we'd finally found what we were looking for. There was a lot of animated conversation among us, because they were still waiting for one person to show up.

I never caught her name, but from what I gathered she was the one that everybody looks forward to seeing. The center around which everyone else revolves. She possessed some really outstanding skills, they said. She'd done some incredible things. Her talents went far beyond just knitting.

And then suddenly, she was there. An older woman, with short gray hair, and tattoos peeking out from her sleeves and collar. Her face was deeply lined from a lifetime spent in the sun. A closer look revealed a number of small, circular scars running up and down her hands and neck and face.

Because we were new, she was going to formally welcome us both, one at a time. I would go first.

Everyone else circled around us, she and I facing each other in the middle. She rolled up her sleeves, exposing more tattoos and more of those strange circular scars. In one hand she held a bunch of knitting needles, all sizes and colors, which she began pushing through her skin. 

First the length of one arm and then the other. Then her neck and cheeks, in one side and out the other. There was no blood; she showed no sign of pain. If anything, the process seemed to be bringing her some kind of joy. 

When she was spiked like an Indian fakir, I noticed that her face had changed. It had grown smoother and the deep wrinkles had disappeared, so that she resembled the woman she must have been many years ago. That was when she produced a large crochet needle. She pushed it into the hollow of her throat until the skin gave way, then hooked it into the wound where it could dangle back and forth. 

I'm not the sort of person to put much faith in mysterious rituals or their results. But this group of new people obviously did. Despite my horror at what was happening right in front of me I felt it was important to play along, to pretend I believe in things like channeling spirits and reaching out into the beyond in order to bring back something strange.

By then the group had drawn closer around us, so that only a few inches separated the woman and me. Her eyes rolled back in her head. She opened her mouth, showing the crisscross of needles inside, and then she began to speak. 

She told me I'd come from Chicago without a purpose. She said I hadn't been happy there and wouldn't be here either. There was a darkness all around and inside of me. It was too late for a new start or even some kind of change. 

She kept talking, pushing me past the point of playing along, past the edges of my comfort zone, past the point of no return.

I told her to stop, and when she didn't I shouted. The room grew quiet. The wrinkles returned to her previously smooth face. And I knew for certain that for a moment she truly had been someone--or something--else. 

"We're getting out of here, J____," I said. But J____ was nowhere to be found. Somewhere along the way he'd slipped out, leaving me both alone and completely surrounded at the same time. 

Dream Theater: The Comedy Convention

Image from Thrillist.com/Doug Roberts/iO Chicago

There was this big comedy convention in Chicago, with classes and shows and lots of funny people. And I was in some of those shows, and really killing it as the comedians like to say.

I hadn't been doing improv long, but I was showing a lot of promise. It came easily, just being a slightly exaggerated version of myself. People were loving it.

And as it turned out, Ted B____ was there, too.

We'd been roommates shortly after I finished college. Ted was one of the funniest people I ever knew. But he could also be trouble. He was an admitted pathologic liar and sometimes petty thief, whose biggest talent might just have been getting whatever it was he wanted.

So while I was surprised and happy to see him--it had been a long time--I was also wary. And as it soon turned out, with good reason.

"I need $20," he said. He'd come here to see me, he said, and now he was out of cash. Surely I had it on me.

I told him no. I doubted he really needed the money, and if he did, chances are it wasn't for a good reason. When he persisted, I sent him away.

Besides, my next show was coming up shortly.

When I got to the theater a lot of famous funny women were there. Tina Fey. Amy Poehler. Kristin Wiig. And Karen Y____, a mutual friend of Ted and I, who'd made somewhat of a name for herself in Chicago entertainment as well.

I said hello to Karen, who I hadn't seen in many years. I told her I'd seen Ted not too long ago.

She just looked at me with this strange blank expression, so I continued, telling her about Ted wanting money, and wasn't that just like him?

"Ted's not here," she finally said.

"He is," I told her. "You didn't know? You haven't seen him yet?"

"He can't be here," Karen said. "Ted's been dead for over twenty years."

Dream Theater: A Visit with D____ and W____

Photo from Wayfair.com

My first job in Chicago, after moving there from college, was at a small furniture store that specialized in futons.

The store was owned by D____ and managed by W____, two good-looking gay men in their thirties. D____ was tall, dark and swarthy; W____ was shorter with long blond hair and almost pretty. Were they a couple? Perhaps. Probably. No one else who worked there could or would confirm it one way or the other. But looking back all these years later they almost certainly were. I was much younger then, just a few months away from Iowa, and still naïve.

D____ could be a bit of bully and had a habit of picking fights. When he did, he would say the most vicious and humiliating things. I wish I could remember some examples, but it's been so long ago and I have a tendency to block out unpleasant memories. I do recall the word "failure" being used a lot. Sometimes in a teasing way, more often as a condemnation. 

W____ was D____'s favorite target, but anyone at the store would do if he wasn't around. I worked at the store for about eight months, but everyone knew I had my heart set on becoming an ad copywriter. During that time D____ became increasingly abusive toward me. 

One afternoon I decided I'd finally had enough. (Most likely, I'd been thinking about it for quite a while, wondering what I was doing there when I really wanted something else.) So rather than meekly taking what D____ was dishing out--as I'd seen W____ do so many times before--I fought back. 

The particulars are forgotten except for how it ended. D____ said he was paying me more than I was worth. I shot back, "You can't afford to pay me what I'm worth." And with that, I walked out, fueled by a blind belief that something better was waiting for me. 

The seed for this was likely planted by an astrologer I'd consulted with several times during my college years, who said to me, "As a Capricorn, I will only tell you this once: there will come a time when you'll have to leave everything behind in order to get what you want. Don't be afraid." Over the course of my life this has become a combination escape hatch and self-destruct mechanism.

As fortune would have it, a month or so later I found a freelance copywriting position with a catalog company, writing film summaries for a company that sold VHS tapes by mail. It paid $9.00 an hour, a significant raise from what I'd been making. I remember feeling as though I'd finally made it, and being very proud of my work. As I said earlier, I was young and still very naïve. 

Many years later I stopped in at the futon store. I needed to replace the futon that was serving as a sofa in my apartment, but if the opportunity arose I also wanted to let D____ know that I'd done okay. That I wasn't a failure.

D____ was working at the counter that day. He greeted me warmly and even reminisced some about my days at the store without animosity. A photo of W____ looked down from a spot on the wall, and I learned that he had recently died of AIDS. D____ was also visibly ill.

I bought my futon and scheduled the delivery and wished him well. But rather than feeling any kind of vindication or triumph, I left shaken and saddened. There were no anti-retroviral therapies back then, and none of the hope they would later provide.

Since then I've often wondered if D____'s cruelty hadn't been, at least in part, his way of encouraging me to move on toward what I really wanted and was supposed to be doing. I don't mean to excuse or justify bad behavior, but there are times I feel as though he gave me the motivation to make a change that otherwise might have taken me much longer or not have happened at all.

So after all this preamble you might be wondering, where's the dream? 

Here.

I found myself visiting D____ and W____ at their home. They were living in a beautiful high-rise condo, all deep colors and dramatic lighting, with one of the most stunning views of the Chicago skyline I'd never seen. It seemed as though the whole city was at our feet, sparkling in the night like stars on the ground. On one wall a giant photo of Oprah Winfrey smiled out at us, and I had the impression that D____ had been associated with Oprah in her early days. (As it turned out, I would spend several years of my career working for her.)

They were both older than I remembered, and bemoaning some of the health problems typical of aging, but were otherwise fine and happy and doing well. Even though I'd played a very small part in their collective story, they treated me like an old friend who'd returned after a long time away. I was comforted by this improbable reunion, and their welcoming presence, and the fact that they were still together after so many years.

Dream Theater: Heavy Hitters

Photo from nkcpa.com

I had a new job, working for the biggest asshole in the company.

Each week, on Friday at 4:30, he'd scheduled a regular meeting for his entire team. Of course, attendance was mandatory.

It was Friday, 4:25, and I had no idea where the meeting was actually taking place.

A lot of people were already leaving for the weekend, but his admins were still at their desks, beaten-down looks on their faces. None of them knew where he was or where the meeting was happening.

But somehow, with just seconds to spare, I found the room and walked in.

Everyone around the table is a heavy hitter. Charlize Theron. Ben Affleck. Viola Davis. Javier Bardem. 

And as I take a seat I think to myself, "Is this a new job, or a movie about a new job?"

My boss--our boss--is someone I've never seen before. I look at the serious faces surrounding me and decide to take the bull by the horns. I launch into a speech.

"I believe in treating people with kindness and respect," I say, hoping to nip in the bud any problems with this guy or my coworkers. "And if they don't do the same to me, it's always because of one reason: fear."

Some of them shift in their chairs. Maybe they're surprised, or interested, or uncomfortable. 

"I know what I can do, and I know what it's worth," I tell them. 

"And I always know where I can find another place to do it."

Dream Theater: John Oates LIVE! in Concert

Photo from AspenTimes.com

A group of us were going to see John Oates perform in Chicago. I didn't know any of them. We'd won the tickets through a sweepstakes or something. 

John wasn't appearing with Darryl Hall. But he was still going to play all the hits. It was expected that the audience would sing all the vocal parts. 

We'd gathered outside the stage door, in an alley where the El tracks rumbled overhead. Everyone was dressed up for the occasion. Some in their '80s outfits, others just in nice clothes. Except for me. All I had on was a t-shirt and jeans. But that wasn't the only reason I felt self-conscious.

There were pimples all over my body. Crawling out of my shirt collar, from inside the sleeves of my shirt. The urge to pick and pop them was nearly irresistible, but there was nowhere private I could go. We were waiting to meet John Oates, to go backstage and spend a few minutes with him before the show.

The door opened and everyone rushed to get inside. But I hung back. I didn't want John Oates to see me this way.

We filed into a dark space, not quite backstage, nowhere near the dressing rooms. Then John Oates appeared and a wave of excitement rippled through our little crowd. 

John shook hands and talked with everyone and smiled while they took selfies. He seemed to be enjoying himself as much as the people in our group.

Then he made an announcement. John said that unfortunately, the promoters had made a mistake. There wouldn't be enough room for all of us at the front of the stage. Someone would have to watch the show from the wings, away from the rest of our group, separate from the audience and crowds.

I raised my hand, and that seemed to settle it. Everyone else followed John to the stage. I stood watching, waiting for the show to start, deciding how long I would stay, how soon I could slip out and head back home.

Dream Theater: The Home of Sister Rose

Photo by carrollcountycomet.com

It was a simple proposition: one day off work at the ad agency in exchange for one day volunteering at the place of my choice.

So I ended up at a convent, offering to clean the home of an elderly nun named Sister Rose, who'd been in the hospital with an unnamed illness but would be returning soon.

For years Sister Rose had lived in a run-down brick building of three or four stories--the kind of place with bodegas and no-name electronics stores on the ground floor and dark, airless apartments above.

Her home was just two rooms, one in front of the other, with an impossibly small bathroom off to the side. And as it turned out, Sister Rose was a hoarder.

In the living room, two mis-matched sofas faced each other, surrounded by stacks of books, magazines and newspapers. In the bedroom, one dresser after another lined the walls, their drawers filled with clothes and documents, their tops covered with whatever could no longer fit inside. In the bathroom, green mold covered the tub, the toilet and the front of the sink. 

I looked around, trying to figure out where to start and how to finish the job in a single day. That's when I realized the sofas were classic mid-century designs. The dressers were by Heywood-Wakefield, Kent Coffey, Lane and Paul McCobb, each worth thousands of dollars.

Somehow, Sister Rose had amassed a small fortune in modern furniture, all of it donated to the convent over the years. 

That's when Mother Superior Justine arrived to check on my progress. She was younger than I expected, with a stern, thin face that peered at me from within the folds of her black habit. 

I tried to explain what I'd found--how valuable the furniture was, how much Sister Rose had collected, and finally, how it would be impossible for me to complete the work.

She said nothing, but her withering look told me she'd seen this all before. I wasn't the first ad agency person who'd come here hoping for an easy day outside the office.  

Dream Theater: My Pet Elephant

Photo from AnimalAreas.com

In the beginning he was cute, the way all baby things are. Stumbling uncertainly on his little feet. Exploring everything with the tip of his trunk. Naturally I fell in love.

I brought him home to a one-bedroom apartment and did my best to make him comfortable. I put a bed in one corner of the living room, with hay on the floor, and peanuts in the shell, and a water bowl big as a bathroom sink.

Nothing he did was small. There was no such thing as a minor puddle or pile in the house. Things were often knocked over and broken. The neighbors complained about the noise and smell. But he was mine and I was his, and I wanted to make this work. 

Of course he grew. As he did, so did the problems. For a while I tried to hide them, and hide from them. I said things like "It's not that bad" and "Eventually he'll learn." I promised that we'd both be better. 

But then I realized that he'd become too big. Too big to move from room to room, or down the hall and out of the front door. He was stuck. We both were.