John Lithgow has a new dress. Ray Liotta refuses to stop pretending to be asleep and help John Lithgow zip up the back. I can’t help because I’m covered in mud.
“Look at my legs!” John Lithgow yells, his nose almost touching Ray Liotta’s, “My thighs are on fire!”
Ray Liotta wants to have a pruno-brewing contest again. It isn’t fair. He learned so much while working on Goodfellas. He really knows how to tease out delicate, floral notes hiding in the Tang.
Me and John Lithgow are growing out our beards, both of us certain that it will improve our banjo playing.
Ray Liotta won’t let up about the dream. “John doesn’t think it’s that weird,” he says, handing me a bowl of crab bisque.
John Lithgow looks smug. He’s engaged in a heated competition with my sex dream. He’s been talking all day about stretchy legs and terry cloth. I scoop some of the bisque and think it looks a little thick.
It looks a little thick, I say.
“It is,” says John Lithgow. He holds his bowl upside-down. The contents plop out onto the table with a kind of sucking slap noise. “But I guess it’s not that thick.” Ray Liotta looks as though his feelings might be hurt. I taste the bisque. It’s like crab-flavored tapioca pudding.
I make a noise that I hope sounds like “delicious.” It was one of those dreams like I used to have when I was a kid, where all the parts are played by other people, I say, and my penis is some kind of narcissistic main character.
“Penises are naturally driven toward narcissism,” Ray Liotta says, “It’s part of the patriarchal construct.”
“Right!” John Lithgow is sopping up thick crab bisque with a baguette.
In the dream, I’m being evaluated by a council of coworkers and students. They are played by the cast of Friends, mostly, but also include people I went to high school with.
“And you’re naked,” John Lithgow asks.
No, but my pants are around my ankles. I’m trying to recite my CV from memory, but I keep making mistakes. Every time I make a mistake, food pops out of my penis. Each item is plated on bright white dishes–sauced and garnished. I am ejaculating cover images for Food & Wine. Everyone at the meeting is noisily eating, making it harder to concentrate, which means more food.
I’ve been having a lot of sex dreams, lately.
“I have a LOT of sex dreams,” John Lithgow yells from the other room.
Yeah, but these are strange. In them, I ejaculate different kinds of food and have inappropriate relationships with the people I work with.
John Lithgow walks into the room, a half made bologna sandwich dangling from between the fingers of his right hand. “That doesn’t sound strange at all.”
Yeah, but the power dynamics are complicated.
I missed you, John Lithgow. You too, Ray Liotta.
I pass by a banana grove on my way to work and think, Hey! This is Oregon!
I’m naked.
John Lithgow says I’ll be OK.
Yeah. But I’m naked. It’s embarrassing. Everyone will see me.
John says it’s not a problem. It’s natural.
My neighbors are going to call the cops. I’m sure of it.
John Lithgow and Ray Liotta are rolling up D&D characters at my kitchen table when I get home.
“What are you playing,” I ask no one in particular.
Ray is looking through equipment lists and scribbling stuff down on his character sheet. Without looking up he answers, “I’m playing a corrupt ex-cop whose family was killed. You in?”
“That seems a little like something you always play.”
“You would say that.”
“Who’s DM?”
John is mesmerized by something in the back of the Player’s Manual and doesn’t say anything. Ray finally looks at me. “Vin Diesel.”
“I don’t know if I’ll play. He’s does a lot Monty Haul, hack-n-slash stuff.”
John Lithgow snaps his own sheet off the table and whips himself up from the table. “I’m going to be a wizard!”
I have been itchy all day.
“You’ve been colonized,” John Lithgow says, after examining my bare back with a magnifying glass.
“By who,” I wonder.
“Spain.” He sets the glass on the cherrywood side-table. “Maybe Portugal.”
