On my last morning in San Francisco, I had a series of four dreams that were linked together, and I hope I can convey that by combining them into a single narrative.  Here goes.

* * * * *

I’m at work, when one of my friends, a Hispanic guy about my age with a curly mop of black hair and wire-rimmed glasses, walks over to my desk and says, “Hey, I have someone here who I think you used to know.”  He disappears and returns with one of my friends from the video store at which I used to work.  We are very surprised to see each other (it has been fifteen years, after all), so we sort of awkwardly hug and talk about the usual pleasantries.  After a few minutes, I excuse myself, saying that I should get back to work, and we go our separate ways.

After a while, HispanicFriend comes back over to my desk and I give him one of those desk calendars that is large and flat and takes up the entire surface of the desk.  He thanks me and says, “Hey, you should consider coming to work for me.”  He tells me that he has a new job that involves working with kids somehow.  I agree to it, and he sets me up with a small but very classy apartment, with hardwood floors and a lofted bed at one end.  When I’m moving in, I see that there is lots of forwarded mail that’s addressed to me, but that I’ve never seen before, and it’s either taped or rubber-banded to the door as if someone has been storing it for a while.  Some of the kids HispanicFriend works with come by to say hello, and I make friends with them all easily.

The apartment is located in a hidden corridor inside a mall.  After I get all of my stuff moved in, I walk out into the mall to explore my new surroundings.  The mall is closed, so I have the place to myself, or so I think.  As I walk, I notice that the cement tile floor is covered with a multitude of small piles of colored beads, which have been painstakingly arranged into swirly floral and psychedelic patterns.  A security guy in casual clothes is kneeling on the floor and attempting to sweep them up with a hand broom, which is a slow and arduous process.  I ask him how this happened, and turn my head to see that similar patterns of beads are located throughout the entire mall.  I say to him, “It must be annoying for people to walk around all of these beads, but I have to admit that I think they’re beautiful.”

He stands up and says gruffly, “Beautiful, huh?” and promptly launches into a long diatribe about how artists shouldn’t be publicly funded, and how this was a ‘rogue’ artist anyway, et cetera, et cetera.  He asks me my name, and I tell him.  He looks at me strangely and asks, “You just moved in, right?”  As I nod in agreement, his casual clothes suddenly change into a uniform and badge, and he grabs me around the shoulders from behind.

“What are you doing?” I yell.  “You can’t do this!”

He pulls me towards the mall’s exit doors and throws me out, but I quickly walk around to a different entrance and let myself back in.  When I get to my door, there is even more mail that has been stuck to it, including the desk calendar that I gave to HispanicFriend.  To me, this is a clue that he’s in on some sort of plot against me.  On the ground near my door is a strange-looking tool, with a corkscrew on one end and a handle that rolls like a hand mixer on the other.  This is a device that is used to pick locks, and I realize that someone’s been messing with my place in the short time that I’ve been away.  I turn and see a young blond guy walking away in a bit too much of a hurry.  I walk into my apartment, grab all of the mail, and set it in a pile on the wood floor to be dealt with later.  I crawl fully dressed into the loft bed and pull the covers over myself, pretending to be asleep.  Before long, I hear voices outside that belong to a woman and the children that I had befriended earlier that evening.

I hear a slight whooshing noise, and when I peek my head out from under the bedcovers, I see my mail sliding toward the two-inch gap underneath the front door, as if someone is using a silent vacuum to retrieve it.   At the same time, someone is opening the window and trying to get in, so I duck back underneath the covers and stay completely still, while still peeking out from a tiny air pocket between the sheets and a blanket.  One of the kids climbs in through the window and walks into the main room in which the loft bed, my hiding place, is located.   He looks at my unmoving body for a few seconds and then turns to walk in the other room and climb back out the window, where he reports to the woman, “He’s still asleep.”  From the bed, I can hear her round up the kids, and they all walk away.

I get up and walk out to the parking lot in the back of the building, which is swarming with policemen and cars, lights blazing into the night.  In addition to the police, there is a large crowd of people milling around, saying things like, “He must not have checked his mail,” and “He’s way behind on his child support,” and that’s when I realize that the police are here for me.  I see my mom and BoringFish in the crowd, and I run over to them.  My mom is crying, and she asks me, “How could you do this. . .to the kids?”

“What kids?” I ask her.

My mom ignores my question and asks, “But what about all the drugs they found in your system?”

I’m exasperated now.  “Someone injected me and called the police.  I like drugs even less than I like kids.”  That statement makes Mom and BoringFish cry uncontrollably.  I look over at BoringFish, who asks, “Don’t you love me?”

“I do love you,” I say, “very much.  But what’s all this about kids?  You, of all people, know that I don’t want them, so why would I have them?  Clearly, I’m being framed for something.”

I turn away from the two of them and leave the parking lot to go back to my apartment.  The blond lock-picking guy is there with a different, more advanced version of the special tool I found earlier, which I kept in its plastic bag and left outside my door.   BlondGuy doesn’t seem to recognize me, so I ask him, “What’s that?”

“It’s for picking locks,” he replies.

I reach over and grab mine out of its plastic bag.  “Have you ever used one of these before?  I mean. . .can you show me how to use it?”

He looks it over and appears to be impressed.  “Whoa, you have the simplified one.  I wish I had one like that.”  He gestures toward his own.  “This one’s overkill.”  He reaches for mine, places it over the lock, and turns the handle.  We both hear a click, and the door is unlocked.

I thank him and leave to find one of my gay friends, who’s an expert in situations like this.  I find him at his apartment, and he says he can help, but that he, his roommate and I should go to a party first.  When we arrive at the party, which is in a large gymnasium, he instantly disappears with a boy and I’m left on my own.  I wander around, looking at the multi-colored flyers that are pasted on the walls of the gym.  As I walk from place to place, I have to step around couples that are lying on the floor making out, or just talking, or standing around looking at flyers too.  As more and more people start hooking up, I decide that this isn’t a party I need to be at anymore.  I feel the sudden need to escape as quickly as I can, and I make a beeline for the door, with my arm raised in front of me to push my way through the crowd.  Roommate sees me and says mischievously, “Hey, Todd, where’re you going?  We were hoping you’d stick around for a while!”  I ignore him and keep walking.

As I get closer to the exit, I see that there are three women, one of whom is lying on the floor, in either extreme ecstasy or great pain.  It’s impossible to tell which, so I stop for a minute, in case I need to call someone to help her.  Her two female friends are standing there watching, as well as the gay male bouncer who is leaning up against the wall.  I decide that the woman on the ground isn’t in danger, so I walk around them and head for the door.  As I pass, one of the women turns to me and says, ‘Wait, wait. . .don’t you want to stay?”  I put both of my hands up and continue past her, but she persists.  “I’m sure we could explain the age difference. . .”

I continue to walk out the door.  I need to find a friend, or a policeman.   Someone, anyone, to let them know that I’m being framed for something, and that now I have enough evidence to prove it.