Maatstaf. Jaargang 30

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Rachel Pollack Fake dreams-Series Two

1. A young woman is swimming the English Channel with her right side paralyzed by a drug. During a rest period she bobs in the water beside a boat containing her husband Arthur, her daughter Ruti, her trainer Carol, her doctor, Dr. Carpentier, a photographer named Mark, and several crew members whose names she does not know, except for Captain Tarrowey, whose name makes her desire rye bread. As she floats in the water, held up by rubber and cork floats, with bits of oil from her scalp to toe rubber suit polluting the water, she gingerly feels her right side, wondering if the drug will wear off too soon, disqualifying her in the eyes of the record book people.

She imagines the man from Guinness poking her frozen flesh with white plastic needles, while he stares at her eyes, her lips, her teeth, searching for pain. She can see him, in a black derby hat dripping rain all around its brim, his thick rose glasses (rimless) slightly steamy, so that he has to lean forward to examine her, his left shouder weighed down by a huge sack of beer bottles, some full, some empty.

He breathes in her face, a smell of beer, garlic, Gauloise cigarettes, and beef jerkies, and then his eyes swing from the left to the right side of her face, watching the one flinch and the other sag. He sticks more needles in her, angrily jabbing them in so far she doesn't know if she'll ever get them out again. She can join a carnival, she thinks, the Porc-o-woman, half woman, half porcupine. They can put her on the posters, her left side topless, with her nipple standing up and painted a dark brown, the right side sharp enough to puncture balloons. But - she worries - what if carnivals no longer exist, washed away in the flood of special effects spectaculars? What if - she worries - she leaves a note for her husband Arthur and her daughter Ruti, ‘Dear Kids, I will no longer embarrass you in front of your friends, and tear your shirts, and pull up tufts of carpet. Don't look for me. I love you,’ and runs away to the circus only to find the circus has run away from her? She thinks of all the Special People - the bearded fat lady, the dogboy, the snakebodied woman with tattooed breasts, one showing Neal Armstrong stepping on the moon, the other displaying Montezuma foolishly shaking hands with Cortez, and the Hopeful Writer, her body covered in rejection slips, except for the fingertips. What if all of them have gotten jobs in computer companies and gone to live in the suburbs, where the neighbors make sure to invite them for fear of seeming rude?

Don't let him use needles, she thinks, and falls asleep, her head resting on the edge of the float. She dreams of herself as a stony island, devoid of fruit or crackers or potato chips, yet constantly pecked at by oil spattered gulls.

2. A worker in an atomic energy plant falls asleep while slipping what she believes are irradiated rods of plutonium in and out of silvery scabbards. The rods make a soft swishing sound, and as the day slides forward she moves them slower and slower until finally, after the afternoon coffee break, her white gloved

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fingers drip off the rod, and she falls to the grey and brown linoleum floor.

She dreams she has changed her name to Backwater Mudpack and become a healer in a poor neighborhood of her hometown, Wappingers Falls, New York. All day she squats in an empty apartment with cracked plaster walls, a single light bulb covered in cheap yellow paint, and a greasy linoleum floor displaying a faded picture of Krishnamurti blessing a community of pigs. The neighborhood (mostly immigrants from North Dakota) have offered to furnish the apartment, bringing old couches with torn arms and frayed tassels, or metal cots with saggy blue and white mattresses. Backwater refuses, telling them that the lumpy furniture would slice up the resonance from her sub-vocalized chants.

All day the people come to her, their faces and thighs covered in sweat. They display holes in their chests, they show her feet eroded into flaky white stumps. Some wear little colored flags attached to elbows or knees; the flags are yellow, or white, or black, or red, a code of some sort.

Backwater treats them with salves, ancient recipes mixing crushed fruit - plums, tangerines, peaches, bananas - with breakfast cereals, Rice Krispies, Frosted Flakes, Corn Chex.

Though none of her remedies work the people come to her anyway, lining up from just before dawn until curfew. All day she squats on a velvet satin cushion. At night she finds it harder and harder to uncurl and stretch herself on the filthy floor. There she prays for Krishnamurti to come to her, to heal someone, maybe the boy whose hands have turned into pigeons constantly flying up and pecking at his eyes, or maybe the old woman who wants her skin changed into dollar bills so that when she dies her nephews can afford to bury her. When Backwater falls asleep Mrs. Coldfinger from across the hall comes in and wraps her in an old silver sleeping bag. Backwater wakes early and lies there, unable to move, even to pull down the sleeping bag zipper. She thinks of going to Canada, of becoming a goose and flying so high the evergreens look like a lumpy green carpet.

Outside, the patients stand in line in the cold hallway.

3. A computer student falls asleep over stacks of printouts. She dreams she is in labor in a small clinic in Iran, where veiled nurses rush back and forth carrying tiny newspapers announcing the outbreak of war. The woman pushes hard and out comes an armored tank displaying a flag with a picture of Joseph Stalin. She leans back, only to find her contractions continuing. Nurses wink at her with their single exposed eyes. Outside her window a choir of exchange students from Burma sings, ‘Soldier Boy’ and ‘Will You Love Me Tomorrow’ and other hits of the Shirelles. With a loud weeping noise the woman's womb gives forth a whole series of objects: clay models of the U.S. Supreme Court, a poster advertising the Los Angeles Opera, a lead statue of the Eiffel Tower. The woman bites her lips and pounds on the sheets, certain she will never finish being pregnant.

The doctor comes in wearing a rubber mask of Henry Kissinger. ‘It's your own fault,’ he tells her. ‘Who told you to go to Tucson when your mother was waiting for you in Chicago?’ He reaches into her womb and pulls out a bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich. Outside a sound truck blares ‘Put your soul in God's bank and watch that interest mount up.’