/yesod

Tag: embarassment

  • the right to bear arms

    …I’m stunned to see the President of the United States at the door. He bustles in before I can get my head around his sudden appearance.

    He is alone and clearly in peril. He slams the door and locks it behind him, thanking me for letting him in. It is strange to see him scared, completely alone. I wonder where his Secret Service protection has gone.

    He apologizes for the intrusion and removes his tattered coat. I notice he has a shoulder holster beneath.

    My mother comes into the front hallway and is clearly displeased to see him in her home. She informs us that his interruption is right in the middle of ‘Dancing with the Stars’ and that she doesn’t “feel comfortable with that man having a loaded gun in the house.”

    Her glare is withering.

    I protest, saying it’s our duty to give him shelter and protection. But it’s clear that she’s unimpressed, perhaps because she didn’t vote for him. She returns to her program, leaving me to apologize to the President…

  • lounge act

    Woke early this morning with a handful of broken fragments from last night’s dreams, losing little shards as the day progresses, memories and images slipping through my fingers and lost for good.

    Here’s what’s left…

    …a heartfelt farewell from one of my clients, almost paternal in how touching his words are…

    …my wife and I stop off at a local bar set up in a aluminum trailer on the outskirts of town, an absolute shithole under new ownership — the proprietor is a short, pudgy twerp utterly clueless and out of place in his red satin tuxedo. I recognize him from a dream when I was very young, when he had a suave and menacing manner. His name is Kincaid. I haven’t thought of him in thirty years.

    While he vainly tries to chat up my wife, I’m cornered by a heavyset woman in a ball gown. Despite her ragged, bottle blonde shag haircut I recognize her as an acquaintance from my local theater days.

    I barely know her but she acts like I’ve been on her mind every single day of the past ten years. She tells me she’s singing now — the “talent” to keep the patrons happy. I make the mistake of saying that we’ll come by to hear her perform sometime, spurring her into an impromptu rendition of an old torch song.

    She fills each note with so much feeling that I’m mildly impressed — at least until she leans forward, putting her knee on the seat next to mine and. She takes my hand, staring deeply into my eyes as she sings…

    …I wake, a little embarrassed for her and a little puzzled by the reappearance of Kincaid after almost thirty years.