kristen and i are in a bowling alley, seated in the scoop bottom bucket seats, we place our feet on the rim of the mechanized ball returner, the place from which our balls return. perhaps rushdie will take note of the balls beneath her feet.
i turn my head to look at kristen as we both sit there so demurely surveying the empty space, lanes, stations, shoe return, before us. i turn and say to her, won’t it be strange when we marry and both of us are woods? kristen returns my gaze in slight surprise, thinking to herself how she had never thought this before. consideration perhaps past due, i reply to the look, and really most of my concern is on the name. michele wood?, she asks me. kristen wood, i hedge in return. yes?, she says. personally, i quibble, i dislike my own last name already but wood is somehow even worse. is it possible?, she laughs. well honestly, i say, do you look forward to being kristen wood? maybe, she says, past laughing now. heh, i say, heh.
gene and elijah walk down the stairs towards us carrying sodas and laughing at something humorous the other has just said. freeze.
a slumbering denial wakes in me and even as my real eyes open to roll backwards and look at the vaguely startled frozen tableau in my dream, my mouth turns inside around to speak. come on, it says, he’s almost completely surely gay. do inside out words travel down the larynx or just up to float in front of nether looking eye cavities? this dream is bogus either way, i tell myself. i don’t care, the seated me next to kristen answers, there’s something delicately fragile about him which makes me want to tie him up and leave bite marks on his ass. you’re disturbed, my mouth says as my eyeballs roll on their own in disgust. catching flashes of my darkened bedroom, i decide it’s probably best just to nip this in the bud by waking up. dream me stands up as the lights in the bowling alley begin to go out. hands on hip, you know i’m right, she mutters out. and in. and out.
