Inhibition

After going on about openings, passages, and endings—and listening to whatever it is you had to say about it and after whatever we did or didn’t do in bed—I tell you about my dream last night.

Well, I’m calling it last night, but it’s actually from tonight. Like, I haven’t had it yet. But since I’m writing this the day after that, I already know what it is now.

You blink at me, indicating your confusion or admiration or annoyance or whatever it is you are experiencing.

Don’t worry about it, I say, pawing at your arm.

So Zuy was in it. She was in town or whatever. Not Soma, but maybe The City of Rivers. Maybe somewhere else. Wherever I was living in the dream.

Anyway, she was there and was part of some kind of revolutionary group. Maybe just ostensibly? And I was being targeted by the sect. I dunno why. Self-importance? My former ties to the Ministry of Secrets? Whatever the reason, there were these assassins trying to kill me. Snipers, too. And they were all pretty inept, frankly. The worst part was—and this happens to me a lot in dreams—I had a gun, but it wouldn’t fire.

You ask what I mean.

I say, The gun wouldn’t shoot.

You say, No not that part. The part about it happening a lot.

Oh, I go. Yeah, there’s lots of stuff like that where I want to shoot a gun or I want to punch someone or I want to drive a car, it just doesn’t work. Like, it seems like it should? And then it just doesn’t.

You might mumble something about the ventral medial medulla and the sublaterodorsal tegmental nucleus as being responsible for inhibited action during sleep.

I smile and touch your lips and say, Oh, ain’t chu pretty? Can I finish my dream?

You make whatever face you make, but allow me to continue.

So I can’t shoot these fuckers, I say, but neither can they seem to hit me, so. It works out fine, and somehow they leave me alone, and I’m with Zuy eating in a Chinese restaurant. I know, I say. Dreams are so cliché.

We’re talking and trying to catch up on everything that’s happened in the nearly 25 years since we’ve seen each other, and I’m getting the feeling that not much has changed. In fact, it’s one of those other clichés, right? The one that goes something like the more things change, the more they stay the same. Something like that.

There’s this other bit with a Studebaker, but that’s not really salient to what was going on with her.

You ask me a bit about her, and I wonder why you don’t click the link the first time, then remember you might be reading in a format that doesn’t have links, and so I go, Oh, right! Sorry, sorry, sorry. Yeah, she was a friend, and for a while, a very good friend. Then she fell in love with me, and I didn’t fall in love with her. I wanted to. I tried. And one Solstice we came close. Another time after that, too. And years later, right before I met … never mind that. The whole thing is, we had a few near misses with being in a proper relationship. And to be clear, I didn’t feel guilty or anything, like I was supposed to reciprocate or love her out of pity or something. I really did care about her and knew she was attractive and smart and that we had fun together. It made good logical sense to me that we could be a good couple. But I just couldn’t fall in love with her.

So then she had sex with a lot of my friends and started to literally mind control a lot of folks in my life.

You say, Hold up, what?

Yeah, I say. It’s this whole thing. We called it Lace Z, me and Horace and Dag. It’s like this network, a queen bee hivemind kind of deal. Freaky. And, you know, very alarming when you’re making out with someone, and suddenly she’s there. Like, jarring.

Not that she’s not attractive. I mean, I have wondered a lot over the years as I have become less sexually inhibited if I wouldn’t fuck her if we met up. But I dunno. She’s probably pissed at me. And I probably wouldn’t be able to. I sometimes get real hot and turned on by myself when I’m thinking about fucking someone I’m not in love with …

You mention some passages in my books, and that makes me all warm inside.

I kina wanna fuck you, now, I say. But yeah, like those. I wrote those, but they didn’t happen like that. It was more complicated. It’s always more complicated.

And you say, The sex?

And I say, The feelings.

You say, Ah. Then you ask why she’s probably pissed at me.

I say because I was pretty selfish back then, especially with her. I couldn’t really see how my actions were affecting her until later. Now, even knowing that, would I have done anything differently? I dunno. I’m not sure what I could have done, you know. I was pretty honest with her, which is more than I can say for assholes like Sunshine.

Who’s Sunshine, you ask.

Don’t worry about them. Just a rapist who beats people.

You are startled, and I ask why.

You say, That’s pretty intense.

Oh there are loads of those folks around here. And The City of Rivers. And, you know, everywhere. It’s a real problem, but no one cares.

You might mention something about the MeToo Movement, and I say the real tragedy that came out of all that—or one of several, really—was that it highlighted how quickly people were to disbelieve women and to believe men, especially in cases of abuse and rape. And then it got displaced by those types of guys and their agents into this abstract political movement rather than the sad reality that MeToo literally means this also happened to me, happened to me too. That sexual assault is that common seems to mystify people. But if you grew up on the Jung, this is not news. Like everyone I knew was involved in this in someway. Almost everyone, anyway. Lots of people.

You say whatever you want to say about it, and I listen patiently.

Okay, I say, but let’s finish the dream and Zuy stuff so I can get out of bed and take a bath, m’kay?

If you want flirt with me about taking a bath together, I just smile, then continue.

So after awhile of that, she just … moved on.

Awhile of what? you ask.

Try to keep up, babe, I say. Like, you can literally just look back a few paragraphs and see. Then I just tell you, since you probably didn’t look back: After the whole Lace Z mind control thing.

Oh, you go. That.

Yeah, so then she moved on … went to da Peach.

What’s the Peach? you ask.

Don’t worry about it, I say. She’s happy there, I hear. Which is good. Don’t know why I dreamt about her.

Perhaps you offer a dream analysis, perhaps you play with my nighty. Maybe you just sit there blinking. In any case, I roll off the bed from the other side, land on my feet, stretch, and then walk slowly toward the bath.

If you were into that idea before, I ask, “Comin’?”

If you weren’t, help yourself to the continental breakfast downstairs. I’ll see you in a bit.

Play procedures:

• If you read and played “Openings,” take the opening you selected and perhaps reworked, then incorporate either Zuy or the concept of mind control into your story. Who would have been doing mind controlling? If it was Zuy, how did she come into the story and what is it she is after? Do you have any wish to understand more deeply? Are you curious? Make a curiosity check if you’d like or if you must. Failure means no, and you don’t carry out this procedure any further. Success means yes, and you go deeper into the reasons and nature of the mind control, of the motives, or the implications. Great success means that you learn something about the nature of groupthink, how it helps and how it hinders, and you apply this to your own life, increasing your wisdom score by 1. If you don’t have a wisdom score yet, you may assign yourself one now.
• Think of someone in your life who you either loved and they did not love you back or who loved you and you could not love them back. Imagine now, if you like, what it would be like to be with that person now. Could you be sexual with them? Has anything changed? Would you want to be? Would you want to fall in love with them? You can write it out, or just think about it.
• Should you want to take a bath together, play that out. Picture what the tub looks like, what the room feels and smells like. Then you can look at me, if you want. I can look at you, if you’d like me to. If this is exciting to you, you can take care of that. You have permission. But you needn’t if you don’t want. And in any case, you don’t have to tell anyone about it ever. It can be our secret.