I was living in a house with others and there was a hard rain. We were watching it stream off the roof, wondering if terrible leaks would form. Someone lifted and tilted the house, so all the water flowed off the side. I was afraid it would fall over but it was propped by something, maybe a tree or wall. 

I had a dream we were looking to buy a new house. A proper house in the suburbs or the country. One we looked at was nice, lots of wood everywhere. A vintage stereo system built into the sitting room cabinet. It was high up on a hill in the woods and had spectacular views of a lake. We were visiting at night and you could see lights down there by the water. But the kitchen was half submerged, the carpet wet and just floating where the floor fell away.

There was a commotion outside the window at work. Everyone rushed over to look. One man chased another on a nearby rooftop. Was there going to be a fight, a murder? The pursuer threw something at the other’s back that produced a puff of smoke. The targeted man turned around and they seemed to be having words. Then he climbed onto our window somehow, and began to wash it. There was a pool of water ten feet or so below him that extended between all the neighboring buildings. In it were several horses. Somehow it was clear that his intention was to remain on the window until a horse leapt up onto his back. Why I don’t know. Soon enough one did, and stayed there a few moments, its front legs wrapped around the man’s shoulders. Then the horse fell backwards into the water with a spectacular splash. It seemed to be alright.

S. found a house on sale in Rockland County and we decided to move there. Turns out it was on a vast lake with rocky islands in view. It had been owned by a famous man of letters. In the dream I saw his coterie lazing on the lawn, watching the water. It was a scene from another time, like the 1920s. Then I was in the water, though it was cold. I retrieved a piece of trash, a drink can in a plastic bag, and returned it to shore. The woman of the house accepted it from me graciously. Jackie was in the water with me too.

I was roped in to buying a used van for the band. I drove it down our muddy, rutted driveway. There was just one spot available at the end, up a little incline. I stopped there but then saw a giant puddle had formed behind me. I thought I’d better back the van out through it to be safe. It grew deeper as the van rolled in. I fell out of the driver side somehow, into the cold, dirty water. I swam through it, hoping I would make it to the other side.

I was on a high floor in a hotel, looking out to the sea below. Big drops of rain were falling, making ripples on the surface.

Working on SC at my old job, trying to develop code that would make it recognize the letter A with a French accent grave—à. This was part of some language-teaching element. I realized the impossibility of perfecting the bot, that anything you add in one place takes away from something in another place.

There was some problem with water entering the office. A dew had formed on the surfaces of all the servers and equipment. M. L. was trying to make sure everything was OK.

The rebels’ manifesto needed updating. The entire section on human rights. But that would have to wait. They were conducting raids. Another water hoarder’s land had been forcibly reclaimed. He was shot as he stood on his second floor deck. He knew what was coming so he took a long drink of whisky from a bottle. He wanted that to be the last taste in his mouth I guess. Two shooters got him, first in the chest and then the head, and he tumbled down over the railing and fell to the grass below. Now we all invaded his lair, made ourselves at home. Took all his water, of course.

An ad in the campus paper claimed that Led Zeppelin was playing a run at a local bar. Each performance would feature another entire album. I told G. E. I wanted to go so bad, I said, I’d even go to In Through the Out Door night. I wanted to do it all. Meet Jimmy Page, give him a hug. But first we had to make sure it wasn’t a joke.

I was telling the story of my gay dentist, trying to get it right. “I was living on thirty… No, I was living on the Upper West. I was working on 35th Street, on the west side. I found the dentist on the provider website—he was closest.” Then I was making the journey there. I ended up at a wine store. There was a woman who was struggling through a curtain of water. She reminded me of a salmon swimming upstream.

Then I was staying at JL's house, thinking how I needed to drive back home. There was a bagel delivery as I left. Richard Pryor handed me a warm bagel.

Neil was roommates with Lewis Hamilton and had become close friends with him. They’d hang out, go to parties together. Jesse, Henry, Kevin and I, and maybe someone else, met up with them in Las Vegas, where a Grand Prix was being held. Lewis was very friendly and spent hours with us. He asked me about my mom, and said he was in town for the race. After he left, we talked about how amazing it was that we’d just spent the afternoon with him. Someone pointed out that Lewis’s mom had a young son, who was effectively Lewis’s dad. The filial math didn’t seem quite right to me.

“You mean stepdad,” I said.

“No, no. Dad.”

It didn’t occur to me that the correct term was brother or stepbrother.

We were in a shop and a bad heavy metal tune came on. I wanted to tell Kevin how bad I thought it was. I turned to him and found him behind the counter, ringing up customers for some reason. “What is this? Don Dokken?” I said. Kevin just rolled his eyes slightly at me and continued working the register.

Jesse and I made our way to some blackjack tables. “What are these for?” I asked him, thinking I was being very witty. He only smiled a bit. I didn’t feel like playing but he did, so we sat down. I dreaded the possibility of losing money. We each put a hundred dollars on the table. The dealer sat on the floor behind the table and fussed with the shuffle machine, which she held in her lap. It was taking a strangely long time, so we left. I must have wandered away first, and then met up with Jesse upstairs where the others were.

“Did you take my money off the table?” I asked him.

“No!” he said indignantly.

I was furious. I went down to try to find it and got lost in a maze of similar-looking gaming rooms and hallways. At one point I climbed up some stairs to find a swimming pool, the water cresting at the level of the floor and splashing around my feet. “At least I found the pool,” I thought, and wondered if the others would be interested in going for a swim. As the dream ended, I was either saying or thinking “I’m lost!” and I felt somehow that my friends would hear me.

Jake was picking apart a set of earbuds and explaining why the sound was terrible and they're not worth using. We were on some kind of floating platform, or maybe a boat, close to the ocean shore.

I was walking on a half-submerged branch in a lake, thinking to myself: All my life I’ve been pretending to be normal.