I was rehearsing with C. D., then C. W. showed up. they went away to discuss something in private, at C. D.’s insistence. I hung around waiting. I noticed that R. P. wore mismatched shoes and I was amused. “Nice shoes,” remarked M. R. When they came back C. W. fired me from the band. He started out by saying nice things to soften the blow, like, “You’re pretty good at playing the piano,” but i knew what was coming. We were living in a sort of hippie compound, weird people coming and going, fans of the band. It was unclear how everyone would react.

I was on a business trip to Chicago, with L. C. from work. We met up with an all-American white collar type who made raunchy jokes as banter. He said he worked on the 14th floor of his building and I considered asking him if it was the Sears Tower. We were meeting in a big restaurant, possibly connected to a hotel. I found old friends at a table near us and went to greet them cheerily. At one point J. A. from way back when was there. We did a strange pantomime of going to hug each other but acting like we were held back by the wind. I was conscious that people were watching us and hoping they’d be amused.

I was swimming in shallow water at a beach.

Then I dreamt about Sally and Jay. I had a debate with J. L. about repressed memory therapy. Someone came to Jay for help reconstructing a traumatic memory from his childhood riding the school bus along Route 2. He wanted to go back out there and see if it triggered something.

I was trying to find a bar where I was supposed to meet up with J. K. Rode the bus there, got off too far away, had to cross all these big. complicated avenues.

Making coffee in the morning, trying to pour into a tiny cup, like a doll’s cup, spilling it on the counter. Discussed my life insurance situation with J. T.

B. B. at work needed help with his résumé. He gathered me and two others in a room within a café and described to us what he wanted the first paragraph to express. I scanned the original he’d given us and found that he was from Canada and had trained Air Force pilots. Later he asked me for money. I told him I was very reluctant to make loans. I warned him not to be a fuckface; he had to pay it back. Eventually I asked him how much he wanted. Twenty thousand dollars, he said. I’ll give you forty, I replied, and he accepted with a sigh of disappointment. Then I continued on to school, annoyed that he’d made me an hour late—here it was 9:30 already. I didn’t even know what class I’d missed. Was it possible I had free period to start the day, and it wouldn’t matter? Not likely. I tried to remember where my locker was. I thought I found it, but couldn’t remember the combination. Somehow the lock opened anyway and the locker opened. It was full of locks.

The band was ending, ceasing operations. We picked up some final things at the house, some guitars, some valuables, before leaving it forever, abandoning it to disrepair apparently. I delayed our exit looking for my shoes. We were wistful, maybe a little sad. Someone was playing outtakes from one of our recording sessions, a song I did not remember. I had a solo at the end but my guitar was heavily distorted and way too loud. There was weird art on the walls and other artifacts of time spent creatively, but long ago.

On vacation in a little coastal town somewhere, we started off on a tour of escape tunnels. There were hundreds of them apparently. It was unclear what the escapes were for—from war, from persecution, or just to a better place.

Back in high school, hanging out with D. S. In the dream we were closer friends. Also, I had no awareness that he was dead—he died a few years ago. We were talking about how fair-skinned people like us are susceptible to bug bites. K. R. sat nearby. She told me she “likes to hit this,” indicating D. with her thumb—meaning she and D. have sex.

I was at some sort of school reunion. I was watching the proceedings with a schoolmate, a woman I didn’t know too well. There was a kind of parade of people in a class a couple of years ahead of me. I told her that in school I thought of all these people as “big kids,” and I still do. I felt this was a poignant statement, and she seemed to agree. She went on to tell me about her failed marriage to another fellow student.

I owned a Les Paul with very low action, making it actually unplayable. Dreamt of this because I was thinking of the manic guy who set up my guitar once and did that, thinking I would love it.