The Joy of Making Doc Laugh

I don't know what they were talking about, because I was at the other end of the garage talking to my neighbors. Half of me wishes I were there, but the other half enjoys wondering. Sometimes the mystery is as good as the reveal.

Where Do I Put This Jacket?!

From: SuzannaBanana
Sent: Wednesday, July 06, 2011 11:06 AM
To: Doc
Subject: Reverie del Taco

I had a dream last night, a dream too involved for me to thumb-type it out. It’s already fading from memory, but here’s what’s left.

I’m backstage at some event, a dance or club, or maybe the EE Ball 1997. That seems about right, since it was at The Gift Center and this looks like an antechamber I passed on the way to the ladies’ room. The room is small, with primed but unpainted sheetrock and beige office carpet. There are clothes racks, a box that used to hold t-shirts, and a couple of chairs. People are queued up, presumably to drop off their smoky garments to be dry cleaned while they go back out to the darkened, noisy club. There are two girls working at this makeshift dry cleaner, and they are dressed like extras from an episode of Law and Order, any episode of Law and Order where Brisco and Curtis have to go to what Dick Wolf imagines a rave would look like. Plastic skirts, four or five asymmetrical pony tails each, purple lip gloss. The line isn’t moving, because everyone in the line is too intoxicated to figure out how to move.

I am holding the jacket from Accountant Boy's favorite suit, the silvery olive one that he wears to summer weddings. I walk up to one of the girls and ask, “Where do I put this jacket?” She stares at me stupidly. I look down at the white folding chair in front of us, which has another sport coat draped across the padded seat. “Look, I see other jackets, and I’ll put this one with them, but I need to know that this is where they go. Is this where we are supposed to put the jackets?” She blinks at me, then starts talking to her friend. I ask everyone else in the room, but it is as if they are unable to process the words I’m saying. It’s not that they’re ignoring me. It’s that they cannot comprehend what I’m asking, as though they don’t speak my language, so they stare at me after I say something, then just turn in another direction. I am so frustrated that I begin to cry.

The scene shifts subtly, and now you and I are the ones working. I get the impression that you’re wearing some type of Be-Dazzled™ bra top. It’s got dark sapphire “gems” all over it. It looks lovely against your skin and with your hair. I am wearing something similar, but I can’t remember what it looked like, other than that we look a bit like cocktail waitresses at the Stardust.

I am still holding the jacket, and I ask you where it’s supposed to go. You keep responding in a way that isn’t a completely relevant answer. “Where does this jacket go? THIS one? The one I’M HOLDING?”

“We take in jackets. That is a jacket.”

“WHERE DO I PUT IT?! Am I not asking the question correctly? O.K., Suzanne, be clear and concise.” I stop and take a deep breath. You look at me intently, ready to try to listen and understand. I say, in as slow and measured a voice as I can muster, “I am holding a jacket. I would like to put the jacket down. Where do I put the jacket?”

“We clean jackets.”

“DOES IT GO ON THIS CHAIR?”

“There is a jacket on the chair.”

“But do I put THIS one there, too???”

“You are holding a jacket.”

This scene is interrupted, thank God. Two guys come in and drop a very large suitcase on the floor in front of us, the kind that zips open from the side, like a trunk. There is a pile of cloth tied into a long, crooked roll in the middle of the case. Something wriggles under the thin canvas, and at first we think that it is a person. We look up at the men as they walk away. “Hey, you can’t leave that here!” They keep walking. When we look back down at the suitcase, the canvas has changed into long bolts of silk in tropical colors, saffron, lime and blood orange. The wriggling continues, then a tiny, tawny dog pokes its head out from under the fabric.

“Chihuahuas! Look at that one! He’s a little badass!” The little badass Chihuahua steps out a bit further from under the silk and looks up at us. He has big ears, big head for his body, and enormous eyes, but he doesn’t look weird for it, not alien. He’s clearly a puppy, but he’s already got some pretty good muscles on him. He stares up at us with cheerful defiance and wags his tiny tail at us. We laugh, delighted at his bravado.

And then I woke up.