Sometimes You Drink From The Wrong Cup

CAUTION: This post is for adults. It has graphic and possible triggering subject matter, crude language and sexual material.

It went on and on, the nightmare. It began badly enough, but that didn’t last for long. I was in a dream place, you know, the place in a dream that’s half real and half filled-in? Like that. I was walking out of the woods, to the old Montgomery Ward store at the old Glen Burnie Mall. Why? Hell if I know. It didn’t look right. It was alone with no mall. It had gigantic store front windows. I looked, and in both I could see dozens of nude women, painted and posing, still-life art. Erotic but not erotic. Just nude art. What the fuck is wrong with me? What, I can’t have a wet dream, I gotta be so dysfunctional that women are reduced to alabaster mannequins? Holy shit.

How long I looked, I don’t know. Not long but long enough to see that they were real, not statues. Some smiled. Well, I walked on past, shaken, never wanting to see it again. Would I have to return this way to go home? Never thought about it. The parking lot was empty. Bold as brass, along toward me walked two girls, probably about 20 years old, one dark haired and tattooed, one blonde. Both clean shaven and the blonde’s genitals high and visible. I stared, they grinned and giggled, and I turned to look when they passed. It was something new. Nudity was allowed anywhere and I just hadn’t seen a lot of it. But the times, I guess they had just changed.

Then it was night. Just dark. I entered a store, but it happened again, one doorway leading to many others, and once I picked one, I couldn’t go back. I was in a labyrinth again, this one mostly straight but still a maze all the same, and what’s worse was, I knew it. I mean I consciously knew I was dreaming, and I said, “Oh, no, not again.” Sadly, lucid dreaming isn’t a cure for nightmares. I woke up several times. I even propped my head up to watch TV, but sleep took me back like a prisoner and the dream continued. Stuck going from store to store, not buying anything because I found myself without any money, and in the next minute I had two canes, one traditional and the other metal and uncomfortable to the left hand. I needed them to walk. But did I? I didn’t remember that. As I walked along, a highway above me on top of a slope I wasn’t able to climb up to, I sometimes emerged outside, interacting with several people or groups whom I begged for help. Lots promised to help but then vanished, and others tormented me to some degree. A group of boys seemed concerned, then decided to mess with me until they realized who I was and backed away in dread, into the woods, behind a streetlight. How I had gotten up on the road I don’t know. I don’t know why the sudden realization of my identity was so terrifying to tough older teenage boys.

Some thing, some certain, specific thing happened. I don’t know what it was. An older black couple helped me get to the road, but there was nothing else they could do. Nearby I could see the giant screen of the old Governor Ritchie Drive-in theater. It was in the right place in relation to Montgomery Ward, more or less. It was too creepy. I don’t know of a Drive-in theater left in this country. I think they should be brought back, though.

Out of the maze of stores I seemed to have walked miles through, I wasn’t that far from my starting point. Yet I was helpless. Three women showed up. Not my age, a bit older, but not much. One seemed familiar and I can’t remember the other two. She was blonde, likely by coloring, had her hair in a style on top, had a gap in her front teeth, was very tall and strong-willed. She asked for my cell number but I had to struggle to remember it and I didn’t have it on me. I gave it to her, and for some reason it reached my ex and her husband. She said they were one their way, which meant that I could get out of the dream. None of this shit makes sense to me. Being trapped, and knowing I was dreaming it, and waking up several times only to have it keep going while I was awake and continue when I fell back to sleep is something I’ve never experienced. Like most people, I try to find some meaning. Why all this bizarre shit? It’s getting worse. And I don’t want to dream about nudity. I really don’t. And I hate the fucking trapped, maze-dreams I can’t escape from mostly ever, this time in a truly remarkable way.

It could be that I was filling out annual paperwork the other day. The program requires I have an emergency contact and next-of-kin. I don’t have any. Perhaps that’s part of it, dealing with that thought. Old people whose children are gone don’t have next-of-kin. Get over it.

Look. I don’t have answers. I have questions. I’m haunted. I’m trapped. I just got rapped in the nuts on prescription co-pays again. I take twelve pills in the morning and the rest of the day I’m useless. What I take later doesn’t even matter after a cocktail like that.

BITCH, BITCH, BITCH

I wish I could have more insight into my damaged brain’s workings. I don’t. And of course, some things I never want to know. Right now, I’m not by any means alone. People are experiencing sudden loss of memory, short-term, forgetting why they went somewhere, watching TV and not remembering what they’ve just seen. If it’s on demand, they have to rewind. Errands are missed, time deadlines, appointments, you name it. Things do not go well with us.

It’s not hard to see why. The COVID-19 cases are rising so sharply I’m terrified that the mass grave thing might become a thing again. I hate seeing others suffer, and so do most other people. But when we can do so little to stop it, that hurts. Yet during this time, we can help. We can wear masks, use physical distancing and stay home whenever possible. I went out today and I was very pleased with everyone but one person who seemed like she didn’t care and only wore a mask because it was required in the store. People here are serious about it. That’s good. But it ain’t like that everywhere. Pictures of people without masks, grouped too close together at restaurants, those get to me.

The BLM protests had to happen. George Floyd was murdered in cold blood. But people close together, unmasked, well, that’s a price we have to deal with. And we can bitch all we want, we can blame all we want, and we can listen to ass wipe Trump lie if we want, but he’ll still be an ass wipe, people will still die, and there won’t be any second wave of the coronavirus because we are not through the first wave yet. We ain’t even close. Trump had Pence lie yesterday. The Wall Street Journal praised Trump’s “leadership” in the crisis. You can find bullshit anywhere now; once-reliable sources are compromised, and I pray that trend doesn’t continue. Because you don’t want to be caught drinking from the wrong cup.

If you’re not on social media, forgive yourself immediately. It was toxic before Trump. It’s a deadly atmosphere now. It is bringing morale lower. The hatred is everywhere. Zuckerberg is not to be found. He took it over, now it’s a monster. He drank from the wrong cup before he was weaned.

It’s not fair. Or it’s scary. We have nightmares of being trapped, chased, and worse. Your dreams may not be as demented as mine, but I’ll wager they’re pretty awful.

When we drink from the wrong cup, nothing good can happen. I did that once.

THE WRONG CUP

It was the dry summer of 1994. During a heatwave the devil in hell himself would have bitched about. I don’t know much about it. I had no idea it was coming, and I had driven to Glen Burnie to the mall. I stopped on the way to get a Big Gulp from 7-eleven. I always had one with me. I got to the mall, parked at the section for Montgomery Ward. I was headed to Radio Shack. All of the sudden, the sky turns olive green, thunder cracks the sky, and I had never, until then, seen rain like that except from the remnants of Hurricane Agnes. I opened my door to see if it could really be that bad, and barely got part of my head out and it was soaked. In an instant, as if a five-gallon bucket of water had been poured over me. I shut the door, but immediately faced a problem: between the Big Gulp and the rain, I had to piss. It was okay. I had an empty Big Gulp cup on the passenger side floor. I pulled down my jeans, arched my back and filled the cup. I had plenty more left, so I quickly emptied the cup outside, then finished pissing. I wasn’t about to open the door again, so I sat the piss cup on the console and smoked a Winston. The radio had a tornado warning out for the area. I could believe it.

Long minutes passed. It didn’t let up. I was guessing five inches fell in short order. It was like that. Downhill, the parking lot sloped toward Montgomery Ward’s entrance. Water was almost up to the doors. I saw someone cross the water. Knee deep. I sat and waited. Thirsty, I picked up the Big Gulp and took a drink. I was dry after the smoke. I immediately opened the door to spit and throw up. It was piss! I’d forgotten all about it. I tossed the cup on the pavement, rinsed with soda, and ever after threw my cups away before getting another soda. Fuck that.

We’re all having nightmares. Even if we don’t remember them, we do have them. We have never been in such a position as we are in now, and it’s scary. We forget why we are in the store. What we went to the bedroom for. It takes three trips for us to get it right. We’re in a daze. Shell-shocked. And there’s more to come. Stay on your toes, and to the extent that you can manage, remain awake, and pray your souls are not taken over by darkness. Do good things for yourself and others, and whatever you do, don’t drink from the wrong cup.

And Bear, fuck you. Telling people to drink piss. What’s the matter with you, anyway?