3

I ve been packing up the house but I don t exactly know why. I just know this isn t my life. It s the life I was born into, to overcome, but now all that s over.

I got a job offer the other day. It pays the same but is in a big city. It could be a totally different life. Meanwhile I m looking at a pay raise in the next couple of months. Maybe I ll get it and then want to stay.

The landlord pulled up soon after I got home from work. He s always been crazy but his younger wife usually keeps him within limits. Lately he s been sick and it s aged him dramatically and hasn t helped his maybe-dementia.
I stepped out and sat out on the steps of the back porch, watching him as he managed out of the driver s seat of his truck. My voice is lower now, my neck straighter, and I don t think I could even muster the look of a lamb in my eyes anymore. I think he s noticed. I ve picked up on that before, him treating me a little differently now that I m back from deployment and acting differently.

Before when I was a lamb he wasn t worried about me. Now though, he knows I ve got deployment money. He knows I bought a baby grand. I feel like he s not happy he doesn t get to cash in on the lamb he used to think I was.

He said he was too sick to mow the grass with the bush hog anymore, plus it needed repairing. It was always part of the deal. I paid such and such for rent, he took care of the grass so I wouldn t have to buy a tractor. He wanted to change things now. He wanted to be paid extra to mow the grass.

With me being in the military it was unreasonable that I take care of it, always had been. He tried to say they had painted the house while I was deployed, that a tree branch broke through the roof once while I was deployed, that he and his son fixed it. He was trying to say that it cost him more than I realized to upkeep the house.
I tried not to glance at the house as he said these things. It didn t look freshly painted to me; I had a hard time believing anything about a tree branch.

He reminded me of that old woman in the book Dolores Claiborne by Steven King. She suffers dementia due to her past and hates her maid with a passion. The maid is Dolores Claiborne, who decides to kill her husband during an eclipse since he tried to rape their daughter. The demented woman keeps yelling to Dolores about dust mites, dust mites everywhere, dust mites so bad it s like Dolores is trying to kill her with them. As her dementia worsens she obsesses over them, becomes terrified of them. That s how the landlord is about leaves being near the house; though its spring, and fall long gone, and all that s under the porches is some twigs and rocks and dirt. He keeps insisting I rake them out, keeps insisting the house will burn down. I rake them out, but it s never good enough

He told an obvious lie about how last weekend a guy came out here to look at my Jeep, wanting to know if it was for sale. My landlord said he came up here to protect my house and Jeep when he saw what looked like a guy snooping around. He said that as the guy left he turned to the landlord with such concern and told him how if those leaves under the porch weren t raked out, the house could burn down at any time. The landlord told another obvious lie about how soon after that he went to get the house insured. The woman came out and looked the property over but told him sadly, and with great concern, that she couldn t insure the house because those leaves under the porch meant the house could burn down at any time.

I agreed to the raised rent during the summer months, to cover his expenses for mowing the grass. I maneuvered out of paying it this month. He should be glad enough I agreed to a raised rent at all. He finally left.
I could smell he felt tricked. He was picking up that maybe I could see right through him, that just maybe I could tell when he was lying or not, that just maybe I was more of a man then him, and he didn t like it. I d seen that look before. Life s a war, I guess.

I thought about that job in the city, same work I was doing now, just in a different location. I thought maybe I d move anyway, even if I did get such a substantial pay raise at the location I m at now. The universities and colleges are all in the city. Maybe it made sense to live near the school I’d be going to, instead of living near my workplace. That way my days off would be more convenient. Plus I’d be in the city, in the downtown where café’s and restaurants and parks are in walking distances from the apartment. Maybe ..

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(Sunday)

Woke from a dream involving Stephan Ridaeu, an actor I see around a lot in French films. It was long and certain parts kept repeating, as if the dream was trying to make the story better.
I was on a plane with a girl who I seemed to work with, but our dynamic was like that of two friends who never went all the way, but instead had a brotherly-sisterly way about each other
except with a flirtatious streak that kept us entertained.

The seat between us on the plane was filled by a stranger to us, Rideau, who mostly talked to the girl, and the girl was charmed. The girl was in the
aisle seat, and I was in the window seat. I slept, because I had just gotten off deployment.
I wasn’t in uniform but it was as if I was, the clothes I wore looked as if I really were coming back from a completed deployment. I slept with my face toward Rideau, so that I was half in-half out of what was going on.

The girl had to leave as if to go the restroom but was gone a long time, and Rideau started talking to me. I didn’t say much, since I was so sleepy, but
the way I said it, so masculine, I was so Him, Rideau changed his expression;
it became curious to the point of a careful, silent infatuation.
The dream was like watching a movie, because in it my character’s eyes tended to be closed.
_Care if I slide open the cover on the window?_ Rideau asked.
_I’m good either way,_ I muttered sleepily, my eyes closing again as I shifted a little to make my sleep more comfortable. He reached over and had
to lean over me a little, because the seats were wide like recliners.
He looked at my face, and my arms, and was aware of my body against his arm,
reaching for the slide on the window cover. He could feel my breath on his
face and paused for a second, looking at my closed eyes.
He opened the cover just in time to pull back when the girl arrived back from the restroom ready to chat more.

The airport we arrived at was huge, and had rooms in it like a hotel. It was like that show Star Trek Deep Space Nine, or Babylon 5, except it wasn’t set in the future. It was this huge airport slash hotel, full of restaurants and bars, temporary quarters and laundry facilities.
The girl was excited with me, the stranger had been so nice, and she was enamored. He had agreed to meet up with us, and she was hopeful about him.
_He’s so great,_ she kept saying; all she wanted to do was talk about him as we explored the complex
and found our rooms.
I seemed to think the whole thing was funny, it was like I rarely saw her in such form, acting like a school girl with a crush, and I kidded her about it, and joked about how on earth she could understand anything he said with that French accent.
She retorted that he could’ve been speaking French for all she cared, the language barrier wouldn’t have stopped her from getting to this point.

I did her a favor and made an excuse for not joining her to meet up with Rideau, but later they both came by my room, laughing and cheery after having had a few drinks. Her cell phone rang and she had to step out for awhile.
I made small talk with Rideau, while we waited at my door for her to come back. I told him she seemed enamored with him, to let him know I was watching how he treated her.
He agreed and at first seemed normal about it, like we were just two guys waiting by an open door, but then his face fell again, as if he
were thinking to himself, him looking at me, then towards the hallway where the girl was still talking on the phone. He moved slowly but I was still surprised when he kissed me, softly, as if he was trying to convince me to kiss him back, then he pulled back, and paused with a vulnerable expression, while I just stood there, confused.
Soon after, he left, just as she was getting
off the phone, and they agreed to keep hanging out on their own. It was like he was telling me something with the kiss, telling me that he wouldn’t touch her, wouldn’t hurt her, that I was his choice.

I sat on the edge of the bed, still stunned, and Rideau immediately comes back in, because it’s much later in the evening and he’s finished hanging out with the girl.

It’s like I’m in the role of Jonas in the movie Broken Sky, and Rideau in the role of Geraldo in the third scene of the movie. Suddenly the film that is my dream isn’t a film anymore, and I’m back in my body, and Rideau is a real person, not a compilation of the roles I’d seen him in; he wasn’t an image. He was the actor himself, he had a certain musk to his skin that I could smell, and a warmth and heaviness to his body.

This is Real, I started thinking to myself, now that I was really in the dream. This is what sex is like. All I could think was this changes everything. Life isn’t some film, it’s this. Me in 3D.

When I woke, I had to lay there for awhile to get my head around the intensity. I felt like Him, not the guy who writes notes trying to figure
his life out.
It was effortless like when I was high on marijuana. It was like the dream started me out as a viewer, feeling as if I weren’t Him, but
merely witnessing the world around me.
In the film my character was treated as if he were Him. And at the end the film dissolves and I’m
standing there in 3D, having been Him all along.
My having felt like a viewer was just some figment of my mind.

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