a few nights ago i dreamed i was in new orleans with my entire extended maternal family, and someone gave me and my girl cousins a bunch of tabs of quality LSD and we took them even knowing we had to deal with grandmothers and aunts and uncles and our kids and other potentially disapproving people. but we didn't care. and the acid had these really intricate and detailed and beautiful drawings on each tiny tab and i took two and then had to put my kids to bed. things started to get weird there. i don't remember all of it. but one aunt was kind of stuck to the wall in the kids' bedroom, kind of near the ceiling, clearly defying the law of gravity, and she was asking me for help to get her down. and i did. then my cousins and i went to a bar in the french quarter and i was reallly tripping out there. the music was really loud and the bar was really crowded and smoky and i lost sight of my cousins almost right away - they just melted into the crowd. so i decided to move to a higher seating area to have a look out over the hundreds of patrons. and as i walked up the stairs into this balconey area the lights dimmed into a reddish glow and the music softened and then silenced, and although i knew i was still in the bar, i also felt i'd walked slow motion-y into a different realm. because as i looked around at the filled tables i saw it was all women, all beautiful dark-skinned women, and they were all holding these black wooden (or maybe they were gourds?) rattles, and they were all staring at me. and each table i passed, they would all stare at me very languidly and gently shake their rattles. i couldn't tell if they were blessing or cursing me. it was very strange and i either woke up a bit after that or else i don't recall how the dream ended.

the next night i dreamed that i was at a record store (real vinyl records) and i found out that my stepdad had moved into the apartments above the store. the way i found out was this: i was browsing through the record bins and looking at some king crimson and then he was standing right beside me. he was wearing a backpack and i asked him what he was doing there. and he told me. and i told him i thought it was really shitty of him to move back to town without telling me, and also without me saying it was okay for him to come back into my life. and he got mad and walked up the stairs to his apartment. he had a friend with him, a guy i've never actually seen before. this friend was all in my face about how shitty i treated alexander after all he'd done for me thorugh my life. and i got really angry and told the guy to step off because he didn't know what he was talking about. except he didn't. and i was filled with rage so i grabbed at leon's wallet, which for some reason i was carrying, even though leon wasn't with me, which has a long chain on, attached at one end to the wallet and attached at the other end to his large ring of keys. and i began swinging it around above my head like a big old flail and told the guy again to step off. only he didn't and instead said, "so you wanna go?" and i said "yeah, i wanna go," and i whacked him a good one in the face with the keys. he staggered back and i kept swinging my flail round and round, this time to the side of me instead of overhead. i kept coming at him and he whipped out a folding lockblade and started taking swipes at me. i dodged and whipped the flail at him again, hitting him in the cheek. he staggered, then came at me, slashing. he managed to cut me across the belly, then the shoulder, then my face. i kept whipping and whipping but in my dream i just wasn't that good at using the flail. i wanted to wrap it around his knife-hand and force him to drop the blade. he kept diving in for cuts and kept succeeding. i was bleeding from a dozen wounds and my hands were getting slick with blood making it even harder to get a good flail shot in. finally as he jabbed out at me again i dodged the knife and managed to dance around behind him, garroting him with the chain. i wrestled him to the floor, my knees on his shoulder blades, my hands wrapped tight in the chain, criss crossing it at the back of his neck, and slowly strangling him to death. he flopped around under me for a llong long time. and then finally he was still. and everyone in the record store stood around me and his corpse, silent and shocked, and i realized that if i didn't want to deal with cops and courtrooms, my only option was to run like hell for the rest of my life, never seeing leon or my kids again. and that's what i did.

then, last night, i dreamed leon went over to his oldest friend's place. his friend is currently in voluntary recovery for his alcoholism, in real life, and he has been busy with meetings and balancing his new life away from his wife and family and who knows what else. anyway, in my dream, my husband finally got to go hang out with him. we haven't seen him in months and months. so he goes, but then he's gone all night. he doesn't call, he doesn't come home. i try calling over there to see what's going on and there's no answer. i am wondering when it would be fair to freak out and call the police looking for him, right around dawn. six am. i'm standing out on the sidewalk looking down the road for him, and he appears, staggering. i run up to him to see what is wrong, where he is hurt. only he isn't hurt. he is falling down piss-assed drunk and looking damn foolish, too. he throws his arm around me and i have to support his weight almost entirely. i stagger under him and try to guide him home, all the while hollaring at him about going to drink with a recovering alcoholic. and the whole time he's laughing at me and totally incoherent and stumbling, and i'm getting madder and madder. finally we arrive at our doorstep (which isn't our doorstep at all) and there are about 12 stairs leading up to the front door and i can see the back of wayne coyne's head in the livingroom window and i say to leon, "oh great. not only do you only have four hours to sleep this bullshit drunk off, you also have to walk past WAYNE FUCKING COYNE at SIX AM WHILE YOU'RE PISSED OUT OF YOUR MIND!" and leon just laughs and pats me on the back and then i can't support his weight anymore and i let him fall on the grass and he falls and just lays there, unconcious.