Gummy
last night, after making madhavi watch The Producers (she only kinda liked it), we wuz flopping around in cuddle-land and i told her about the pizza cutter dream.
i used to have this dream every so often when i was younger. i really can't recall if it was younger like eight or younger like fifteen and no idea if i had the dream three times or twenty, but it was reoccuring.
in the dream, i'm asleep in my bed in my room which is not my bed and not my room, but happy and cozy none-the-less. the door to the hall opens and two men wearing white whirlpool repairmen-style uniforms come in. they've got a big pizza cutter. they roll me over, open up my back, and take out my spine.
then i thank them and am sooooooo happy!
i realize this is not the ending most people expect from a dream involving spine removal. hey. what can i say? it was a good dream.
all this came up because i'm once again having back problems. i've started physical therapy and i'm hurting. ow ow ow. my arms and wrists have gone all blargy and i'm trying to make it all better. my physical therapist, sarah, seems to know her shit but doing all these stretches, etc, is making me sore.
anyway, after madhavi got done going, "you are weird, but yet oddly the sexiest man on the planet and i think i will have your name tattooed on my butt" (not exactly true) i told her about this novel i tried to write which i have not thought about for a long long time.
when i was twenty-three, i moved to hawai'i with wanko moonstool and tried to write a novel. i got pretty far into it before i realized that i had learned so much writing the first third that i needed to start over at the beginning. i can only remember bits and pieces of it. the plot was about a young man named Gummy who felt like he couldn't really become a man until he found out who his grandfather had been. the grandfather had gone off to WWII a raconteur but returned taciturn. all the stories had disappeared somewhere in the pacific and the grandfather had died on the day Gummy was born.
how does this all relate? well, in the novel, his grandfather's ghost inhabits one of Gummy's vertabrae. as the story progresses, different characters also take up residency in Gummy's spinal column (i think mostly women he's loved but can't recall exactly) each trying to guide the boy in his or her own direction. consequently, Gummy's back is always screwed up from all the pulling and arguing in his spine.
when i woke up this morning i found the last draft of the novel and emailed it to myself here at work so i could read some of it today, but it showed up as a replace blocked file.txt. that isn't good. i hope it hasn't gone viral! i hope there's still a copy of it somewhere...
it would suck if i lost it forever. i think i will remain optimistic.
i did turn one of the chapters into a stand-alone story. i should at least have that. if it's good, maybe i'll post it.
