marathon, man.

I just had a marathon dream. Not about running a marathon, ha ha ha ha ha ha, that would be way way less realistic than the dream I did have: it was O'Neill's birthday, and he and basically everyone we'd ever hung out with were on some kind of celebration circuit adventure around a dreamworld Atlanta. I unfortunately was like an hour behind them schedule-wise, and this must have been pre-cellphone days b/c the only way I could ever find out where they actually were was to follow one step behind them. Come to think of it, have you ever dreamed about using a cell phone? I myself have not.

So it was like this: I go to the first place they were supposed to be, Johnny's Pizza, which used to be managed by O'Neill's sister-in-law J (who, fun fact, he slept with once or twice in real life long before she was officially related to him, you didn't hear it from me). But the O'Neill party had just vamoosed: an empty table for 20 or something was sitting there still steaming or possibly smoldering, having obviously just been vacated by a pack of blunted savages, chairs overturned, pizza crusts and empty beer pitchers strewn everywhere.

And J was like (you have to know her voice, almost every word is at least two syllables), "Oh heyyyy, they just left, yeah, they're over at Eric and Kim's now". I'm thinking oh super, that's only a half-hour away, and I turn and head for the door but then I'm all wait where do they even live? I've only been there once and that was maybe ten years ago and I was on some serious drugs at the time, so I turn around to ask J to remind me but by then she had disappeared into the back to go perform dreamland pizza parlor management tasks and the waitress would only tell me that she "couldn't be reached right now".

And on and on, place to place. It was a complete scavenger hunt: after driving for hours and finally finding Eric and Kim's, of course the party had moved on, but Kim had been left behind to wash an enormous pile of unrealistically dirty dishes and told me glumly "yeah they went over to Churchill's to meet Al (her brother, dead) and Mason but that was only for one drink". She handed me a warm can of Miller Lite, already opened.

I took a swig and grimaced. Why did they insist on going to Churchill's? They would always pick the oddest, least cool places to drink. In real life I marveled at this for years, but I now understand that they just carefully selected corrupt, rundown places within drunk-driving distance where they would be likely to befriend the disgruntled bartender (free drinks!) and/or would be highly unlikely to run into anyone they knew who wasn't a total alcoholic.

Anyway at some point I ended up on foot, downtown, but not in a big-building part, in a deceptively rural-seeming part (these exist), where I ran into Cynthia Nixon (Mara and I had half-watched a Sex and the City rerun just before bed), who I totally, completely don't have a thing for at all but she really looked the best she'd ever looked, rather unrealistically good. Almost actually in flames, very nearly on fire.

She was also surprisingly friendly. It was getting late and after a few minutes she confided that she was lonely, so lonely, thus although the clock was ticking and I was falling behind schedule, she eventually talked me into an exploratory kiss. I totally expected this to be a pleasant turn of events, but she tasted exactly and shockingly like fresh blood, super-realistic and very unsettling, and so while being profoundly repulsed I then yes also understood why she was so lonely and I felt quite bad for her.

So I said something semi-reassuring like "let's try this again later" and then we immediately ran into Occhalini (also dead in real life) and Berrell on the deserted road outside a third unrememberable friend's house who was on vacation with his parents. Cynthia and I decided to try and use the bathroom there and coincidentally see if we could find a drink, we were supposed to be celebrating right?

But on our way in we ended up accidentally letting the dogs out, or so we thought, but then I saw a doggie door, so maybe the dogs were supposed to be out anyway? There was no way to know for sure, but then screams from outside suggested probably not: the dogs were now out in the road, cars whizzing by frantically. Of course one of the dogs was Trinka, my first dog.

Cynthia and I ended up somehow putting the dogs back inside but she wanted to take with her this trashy antique wooden cupboard which is actually one of our coffee tables in real life. And on and on. I only eventually caught up with everyone at O'Neill's parents' house at like 5 in the morning. The sink was full of dirty dishes crusted with a bolognese sauce, the only non-microwaveable food O'Neill knew how to cook for many years (not counting these soup sandwiches).

It took me about an hour to say hello to everyone (dreamtime), it was quite the rogue's gallery. By the time I got to O'Neill, I found him standing in his finished basement looking quite satisfied, with a chewed-up cigar and a giant tumbler of gin and ice, which I took from him without a word and drank in one sustained gulp, saying "let me freshen this up for you" and heading for the refrigerator.

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Questions for discussion:

1) Is it really so unrealistic for me not to have a cellphone in America?
2) Why would everyone choose to go over to Eric and Kim's anyway?
3) Why do I continue to have "romantic" dreams about women I'm definitely not consciously attracted to IRL? This is a first for me. Mirtazapine, I'm looking at you.
4) Exactly what am I doing watching Sex and the City?
5) etc.

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