2/23/10

When You Know

Feeling drawn, as I often do when I am "blue", to the music of Rebecca Pearcy. I saw her perform in 2000 at the Thekla in Olympia as part of the very first Ladyfest. I'm not usually into singer-songwriters or the acoustic guitar, but Rebecca set that afternoon really moved me. She dedicated one song to a friend of hers who couldn't be at the show that day, because he was scattering his mother's ashes on Mt. Rainier. The song was really intense, simple and beautiful, and I remembered it very well. When I went back home to California, I found that song ("Poppies") on a newly-released 7" put out by Yoyo, with really pretty hand-made covers. I listened to it so much that I wore that shit OUT. Luckily both songs wound up on Rebecca's brilliant second album, Constellation. I wrote her a fan letter about that song. The next year I went to see her perform at the Capitol Theater as part of 2001's Yoyo-A-Gogo, and she dedicated the song to me. I was about to turn 16, and it was the most wonderful thing.

Anyways, another of her songs mentions that (I'm paraphrasing) "one of the coolest things about sleeping next to someone is waking up and telling them what you just dreamed about". This is bittersweet for me. For as long as I can remember I almost always forget my dreams. I often deny that I have dreams at all. In the past couple years whenever I've given up smoking, I would have very intense dreams. Intense enough for me to not want to quit smoking. Since my dental surgery I have had to, in fact, quit smoking. And I've been having some dreams lately.

Last night I dreamed that I was at my parents' house, but it wasn't the house we have now, in Alameda. I think it was a house that was still in Los Angeles. I don't remember this specific house but I know from the light coming in the windows that it was tropical. In the dream I am visiting my parents, going through my old stuff. I find a VHS tape hidden somewhere and I watch it. It's a porno, starring this guy I hooked up with over the summer. I can't believe it. In the video, he's doing all kinds of kinky shit. All kinds of kinky shit that turns me on to the point of not even turning me on anymore. The feeling I am having in the dream, apart from arousal, is a kind of melancholic thing. I think to myself: "But you never did any of those things with me!" Sort of indignant. It gets very intense and in the dream I am nervous that someone is going to walk in on me watching this gross nasty porno. And in the dream, they would know that I knew the boy in the video. I know he's only pretending to enjoy it, but it still blows my mind.


Andy Warhol, Sleep 1963

I woke up and looked at my alarm clock. It was 3:53 in the morning. I tried the new lube I got from Brandon and jerked off, and fell back asleep. There's another song by Rebecca Pearcy, "Messy", about masturbating to the thought of a former lover "for all the things we haven't done / but I'd like to do, with you / some day soon".

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