Dream Log Archive

Category: Event

  • September 10, 2024

    (interactive mystery event / swimmer travel / shower rescue)

    I put on an event at what looks like a converted house or old barn. Inside, it feels like a colonial-era space with rustic wood and varied furniture. It’s set up for people to have drinks and watch a show.

    The hostess, a shorter woman with a cropped blue pixie cut, has seats reserved for her family and friends. They aren’t seated near each other—her family in one area, her friends in another—and she sits with a table of guests. Everyone is chattering excitedly. The show is highly recommended, but we ask participants not to talk about the content with anyone who hasn’t attended, to keep the mystery. They only know that it’s interactive. The lights dim and the show starts with a projection.

    The video shows a colonial town. A witch lives in a cottage outside of town and is being pestered by townspeople for being a witch. They point to parts of her attire as clearly witchy. She refutes them and they eventually leave, but as they go she remarks on how they knew about all that, since she is actually a witch and those are things witches use.

    The first audience segment is introduced. An audience member walks around the tables while a recorded dialogue explains her character, an old woman from town, and her perspective. The show is a mystery adventure where all participants are characters who use clues and their positions in the story to reach a conclusion.

    There is a knocked-over tunnel near the witch’s house, like a TARDIS. A middle-aged man in a brown suit wanders too close and gets sucked into another time. When the others find him, they look through the tunnel and see him walking on a beach. Someone asks if time moves differently on each side, since it really is him, and even though he’s been missing for days, it hasn’t been long for him.

    HS Classmate C is at the event and brags about a Halloween comedy show she put on as a child, saying it was like this one. She did two shows a day for four days leading up to Halloween and charged three dollars per person. She considers it a proud success, even though her parents had to advertise to fill the room. I think to myself that it’s not comparable to this proper, adult, paid event that is sold out in advance.

    Olympic swimmer Mirco Rembrant, or something like that, swims at the same place Friend A and I do. We’re coming back from a meet and end up on the same flight as him. He’s alone in first class and we’re in the back. It takes him an hour to get from his last Instagram location to our pool for his publicized practice. He gets picked up in a racecar from the airport while Friend A and I walk.

    As we walk, we complain about how stuck up he is and how the public doesn’t even know. The team sends a car so he doesn’t waste time. On a map, it looks like we traveled from somewhere in Southeast Asia to the Middle East near India on a thirty-minute flight. He only adds another thirty minutes for local transport, while we wait much longer because of commercial flying rules.

    We pass the main pool, where spectators are crowded around and he’s showboating again. At the member entrance, we’re blocked. They try to stop us, but we push through since we’re part of the team. They say they’re blocking his fans and that it will be harder to stop them if they see other women entering. It doesn’t make sense to us.

    Friend A wants to shower. At first I plan to wait, but the locker room gets crowded and people are searching for his locker room. I don’t want to be left alone, so I go in with her. The girls’ showers are separate but still part of the same larger room the boys use.

    Friend A takes the end shower near the doors on the second row in. I take the one next to her. I still have shorts and a white T-shirt on when I turn on the shower and wash. Friend A offers to tell me stories about what she’s been doing in the past months we haven’t seen each other, so I sit on the floor and listen.

    I notice the curtain next to me is lifted slightly. At first I worry about peeking, but then I realize the man there is a swim member and he looks unconscious. I crawl over and check his wrist through the opening. Just then, the stall is opened by fans chasing Mirco. They accuse me of being lewd, even though the man is unconscious. I try to explain, but they don’t listen.

    The others look at me in disgust. I refuse to let him drown because no one else seems to recognize how serious it is. I keep holding him up and checking his vitals. Eventually Friend A comes to disperse the situation and help me.

  • April 22, 2020

    (bus rides / support group / sex event escape)

    I’m being transported along with others on a set of buses—several yellow school buses and one small nine-seat shuttle. I’m on the shuttle, which is completely full, while the other buses are less crowded.

    On the way there, I sit near the front, but on the return trip I sit in the back. At one point on the return, I’m the only passenger left, and I chat with the driver as we pass Neighbor J’s house.

    I’m in Hometown Center, working at a company on the third floor of my high school’s math building. The job feels boring, maybe something like accounting, and my desk space is small.

    HS Friend A works at a McDonald’s nearby. I stop by with a friend during lunch and try to get her to come with us, but she says she can’t because her boss would fire her if he found out. We still talk briefly outside.

    I go to a small studio for a group conversation. We sit in a circle of chairs and talk—it feels like a support group setting, but not centered on any specific issue.

    A boy shares a memory from childhood where he tried to look openly at gay things, but his mother redirected him, telling him that “normal” people looked at cute fuzzy animal characters when they liked things like that. He grows up to become a major voice in furry forums, with his mother continuing to help him hide things from his father.

    Later, there’s a nighttime event on the floor of my high school science building. People are bringing in pairs for some kind of tribal-like hate-sex. The first pair is two drag queens, who are also sex workers. I don’t stay till the end, leaving a bit early to head back to work.

    When I go back toward work, the bosses are in a meeting and have taken over the office space, forcing everyone else into the hallway. I decide to leave instead.

    Downstairs, I find Language School Classmate A, who is a popular child actress. She asks where we are, and I realize she is supposed to be next in the hate-sex show but hasn’t been told about the event.

    I decide to protect her and take her home. We manage to get out of the high school building before we start being chased. I pick her up to run faster, but my limbs feel slow and uncoordinated. I end up pushing myself forward using both my arms and legs, almost crawling, trying to get her to safety.

  • April 15, 2020

    (hotel inspection / unsettling discovery / casual conclusion)

    I’m in a fancy hotel with a group. My boss mentions that we’ve received a request for my dad to give a lecture. The location is supposed to be at a hospital room, next to a golf course. Everything—the room and arrangements—would be covered as reimbursements, and I’m sent to check out the room prepared for him to stay in.

    The room doesn’t match the pictures. It looks grimy. The closet, bed, and drawers still have a few things left in them, like it hasn’t been properly cleared out.

    I check the bathroom and realize the blueprint is wrong. Instead of a standard setup, there’s a large shared shower room with multiple shower heads, some still running. The bathtub, which was supposed to be a single unit, is actually an enormous one—about eighteen feet long.

    It becomes clear to me that the space isn’t meant for normal use, but something more private and unusual. I feel unsettled, imagining weird sex parties.

    As we head outside to a meeting, I ask my boss about it discreetly. He implies that the person who made the request used to court him, and that his interests have shifted over time towards lingerie. I briefly consider asking him for store recommendations related to that, but we arrive at the meeting building and drop the subject.

    We’re a bit early, so we’re told to get drinks at a juice shop inside. We end up getting frozen lemonades and other fruity drinks.

  • February 20, 2020

    (friend’s house / awkward family moment / celebrity visit)

    I’m at College Friend J’s house, which has the same layout as my apartment but wider. We’re sitting on opposite sides of the couch watching Hannibal. College Friend J keeps trying to catch his cat.

    I want to move closer to him but don’t want to seem clingy. I slowly shift over until my head is resting near his legs. He looks at me strangely, then tells me to scoot over and lets me lean on his shoulder.

    His mom comes in and out of the room, and before she leaves, she tells him to do the dishes. After a while, I remind him, and we go to the kitchen. He washes while I help put the dishes away.

    Outside, near the front door where the car is parked, College Friend J’s dad, mom, sister, and a transitioning person are standing. His mom doesn’t seem to trust the transitioning person. We make inside jokes about her behavior based on the show Hannibal.

    Something bad happens, and his mom immediately looks at the transitioning person and insists she knows they don’t have top surgery done.

    I’m in a school classroom. A visiting musician comes in. He’s short, almost dwarfish. He plays a couple of strings on a guitar and tries to make jokes while talking about where he’s been and where he’s from, but his talk isn’t very put together. He says he’s from Scotland.

    The jokes don’t land well, and many students become disillusioned, though some still go up for autographs. One girl has lined paper folded into four sections, filled with celebrity signatures.

    There’s a flashback to Catherine Tate signing something. She says her signature doesn’t look as good as another celebrity’s, possibly Hugh Jackman’s.

    I go up to the girl with the signatures and ask what it’s like to meet celebrities. She says most of her experiences are short and she doesn’t get much time to talk. I say it’s been the same for me in Japan.

    There’s some kind of raffle, and people receive a lot of perishable goods and share them around. One item is a kind of gel mochi with something inside.