A surreal apocalypse. A project for a revolution in Los Angeles. A mid-summer night’s dream. A long series of distorted, perverted vignettes. Everything that is familiar becomes slightly twisted with a little anguish, love and desire. Nothing will ever be the same again.
See more.
Excerpts from the Story
This girl is with me on a date. We’re at my place. I’m sitting and she comes over and is standing by me. She has on a mini-skirt; I take a chance and put my hands on her thighs; she doesn’t resist, I say why don’t we go lie down for a while. New feeling like I’d never done this before, wondering if she will accept or reject the advance.
It was time to leave this village or this city. There was a long route, taking paved roads. I was with some friends but they were still in the main part of the city. I was out on the northern outskirts. I had a bike. I see this gravel road that looks like it would go to the other city or village where we want to go. The gravel is like imbedded in the dirt and it would be alright to use a bike on it. There’s a couple of old wooden shacks there where the road starts off, sort of bucolic and poor, atmosphere like with animals around but I don’t see any. I start to go up the road but then I remember that it is getting late in the day, and if the route turns out to be long I would have to do it in the dark, plus my friends won’t know where I’ve gone. I turn around and going past the houses there’s a couple of folk and I ask them about where the road goes, and they don’t exactly know but they think it goes where I say. Then I have joined my friends. Then a next later segment. I’m going out of a movie theater; two girls are leaving next to me, and I don’t know them, one strong and thin and the other stronger and larger breasts. As we go out of the theater we all three start running as though that was the normal way we get around, running from one place to the next, like people use cars. The taller girl is going really fast it seems, almost a sprint, but it’s her normal pace, and I notice that she’s not distancing me; the other girl doesn’t seem to be running as fast but she is alongside me. They seem to act like they think for a minute I’m going to bother them. I would like to make a play but I don’t; we’re going up this hill like by the Ralph’s store in Century City on Olympic and they are going to go off to the left while I continue to the right. The breastier girl after we split up unbuttons the buttons on her blouse which is like a golf shirt with three buttons. She unbuttons the first two and then the third, showing a glimpse of cleavage. I say bye as we separate and she sort of smiles at me. Right after she unbuttons the buttons there’s also a flash of an image of me unbuttoning my three pants’ buttons.
I’m in this class. The teacher is a fanatic. It’s the first day and he just keeps going on and on; before that he handed back a test and I only got a C; I already had some other work, like the first thing I did for the class I got a D, and I’m wondering how I’m going to be able to get an A with my average already so low. I’m sitting with this girl and we’re saying how fanatical he is. Then without a break, the class really should be over, he goes right into this demonstration, a large room, a large open space where he’s moving around up front. I don’t see any other students, still the presence of the girl by me. The teacher is making something; I think he’s going to make a sail; he takes this metal pole, and he’s going to put two parts together, but in his haste he has broken the pole in two parts. He’s saying, gesticulating, that there’s no problem, he can put it together. There’s a bolt at one end and he’s trying to put it into the hole of the other part but the hole is really too small and the bolt is stripped, a clear focus on this. Then the contraption seems finished, but the scene has changed; now it’s like a wooden box with a sail like a little boy would make, and it has been inserted into these adds for boats in like a magazine classified section, businesses and private parties adds for boats, and I’m thinking why doesn’t he just buy one of these, because he’s going to take it out on the ocean like for a long voyage. My anxiety over my low grade average and how I was going to have to get an A to keep my grade point up. Also we were supposed to be correcting or going over our test before his demo, and we didn’t, but rather the class disintegrated into a sort of lunch break.
I go into this used place, a shop, like a used record or book store, and go down the stairs. At first I’m interested in computer magazines, and I see all these boxes and wooden displays, but then at the counter it’s like an auto parts counter. This first guy wants a chrome panel; he describes it and the counter person goes to the back and brings it out. I’m amazed they had it but they have everything. The guy looks at it and it’s the right part, and he starts to bend it a little at one corner joint, so that it will be right. I’m maybe waiting around to give my request. I think about this old fender, but there are some details about shaping it. I say I’m going to need an anvil, and I picture someone hammering on it on an anvil to flair out the bottom end. Then another person wants to know how much they want for the Porsche carcass out in the field. I look over and see it out there, rusty and more or less gutted. The man says a price which is a lot and the other person is surprised it is so much, and the man says what do you expect we have to make a profit.
It’s night and it’s like party time. I’m not in a cocoon, like maybe I don’t want to be. I somehow arrive at these steps outside this building, and I sit there and I don’t go in. Sandy Goldman arrives, this brown and gold dress very full like Mexican cloth. She is very attractive thus. I’m dejected and she tries to console me, and I start to list the reasons why, like I’m getting older and I need to get my career going or else it will be too late, etc. She’s gone. The vague idea of a cocoon comes back or sleeping in a cubby hole or bunk.
I’m in this cinema, maybe like the one in Creswell. I’m sitting next to the curtained entry way and I lift up the curtain and look in. I see a huge beautiful park, French style, probably much like Versailles, and in the early fall. Before this, in the beginning, I go in, it’s vague, an X film and I’m making a report. Then there’s this park which is fascinating. Then this teacher is asking for my report, and I start to go into it to give it orally in French, and I’m not really worried about it, because I know she can’t speak French. I do hardly anything and she stops me and starts deriding me saying I haven’t done hardly anything and I’ve started twisting the truth about what’s happening or being said. I think for a moment to defend myself and then decide it doesn’t matter. She continues and moves over to the board where she’s got about three columns of words in English which she’s taken from the film and translated, like a simple inventory. Then I arrive and sit down outside the curtain and I want to look in but I’m afraid I’ll get in trouble, and she starts in on me saying how I don’t do anything. She is maybe like Ms. Dorsey. Then she leaves me there and I wait; I’m about ready to lift the curtain. Then it’s like I’m cued to go on ahead by the chorus, like they indicate it’s alright, like she’s out of distance, and she has gone about some other business in the room, which is now like the lobby. The report was on this X film, and now I open the curtain and there’s this huge park. I sit and look for a while and then I go in; then she won’t find me, and she won’t know I’ve gone in, and the rows of theater seats are replaced by the park which has sides which step down to the center area in a tiered effect, birds, trees.
I’m following this underground stream. It is very beautiful; it doesn’t seem underground, except in the limits where I can go. There are a lot of branches and shrubs around it, and it is like cold and misty, but I don’t feel cold, and the branches aren’t green but grayish brown. I do this cycle that I know; I follow this stream around. It might even be that for some time it seems like I’m going around this lake. At one point the going gets very difficult, the brush is thick; I’m going through it suspended like through monkey bars, and in going through it I almost pass through and step into the stream; for a second I’m worried that it is deep and that I will get wet, and perhaps cold, but at that point it seems shallow and my foot only touches the surface. There’s a doorway, and at the same time I need to slide down through this hole, but now maybe I’ve gotten bigger and I won’t be able. Halfway through the hole I go through the doorway; a narrow stairway goes up a few steps. I’m in this theater, like in the wings and this corridor like circumvents it, and I call someone on a telephone on the wall and tell them the situation, which is that I’m going through this little hole and I’m maybe two thirds through and I’m going around this theater following this stream, and I have to get back to the point where I started and where I came in so I can follow it out, and now I’m worried a little because it really is proving to be difficult, and I estimate that I’ll be there till six or seven and then it will start to get dark, even though it is an underground stream, which seems lit artificially.