dream a little dream...

A warning... my dreamed are FUCKED UP. they always have been. but the great thing? I'm a writer, so they always inspire me. so enjoy...


All my dreams last night were all very tied together in a small texas town. I don’t know that it had a name, but I know it was small and in texas, and it was supposed to be located somewhere between Austin and San Marcos, both places of where i had lived, both plkaces only a few hours from the desolate regions where shit like the Texas Chainsaw massacre is supposed to take place. Anyway, this is a dream town that at some point I had supposedly lived…

It was a nice summer night and i was having a party in my front yard as were many of my neighbors. It was a block party and there was bbq and beer and good conversation. Parts of the crowd were going across the street to my new neighbor’s house. They had done up there whole house Halloween-style and wanted people to come over and take a Halloween "Scary tour". I realized I had never met my neighbors, as they had only just moved in a few days previous, but still had no interest. I didnt like Halloween and i didnt like being scared. All my coworkers were going but still I hesitated.

As we had all stayed out drinking and partying on my front lawn, dusk became night and night was becoming dawn. The partying was thinning and i didnt remember anyone saying good-bye, but so it goes. With the sun coming up I felt safe to go into my neighbors house. It was day, nothing went wrong in the light of day, i thought.

One girl and a guy who worked with me agreed to go with me. We knocked on the door and a little girl answered, and said come in, take the tour, then ran off into the back.

"What about the parents?" I asked. "Don’t you think its odd no one has seen them? I feel uncomfortable going into a house with just kids and no parents?" My coworkers were like, "Rex come on, don't be a pussy. The parents are probably downstairs working the tour."

We went through the living room which seemed already very lived in, which was weird considering they had only lived here for 2 or so days. The walls were dirty, the room unkempt, the tv on. There were old halloween decorations hanging about but they all seemed covered in dust and tattered and torn. Nothing was new. The room reminded me of a 70’s home that had been left to grow old over time.

We turned around the corner, there was a single bedroom with a single bed that was untouched. There was a bathroom. And then there was a long stairwell down into the basement. The stairwell seemed rather longer than it should be, and the whole house felt wrong. It felt dark. The little girl, in her white dress and her dark eyes, and her two front missing teeth, laughed, and said, come on! And disappeared into the darkness.

"I changed my mind," I said. "I’m gonna go wait on the couch."

So I did. I sat down on the couch, which threw dust into the air when I sat. I watched an old 50’s or 60’s sci-fi film. The tv was as old as the movie. Huge box with fake wood paneling and dials and no remote. The picture was hazy, as if color were a new concept. The movie was only just entertaining. It was the kind with ships flying around, but you could see the strings holding them. There was a ship lost in space and melded with another ship and then almost crashed into another ship, and then a space robot came to attack this ship that held the last people from earth. If they died, humanity died.

And I fell asleep on the couch.

When I woke I looked outside and realized it was still night. How was that possible, we came in at day? I hadn’t slept for 14 hours, had i? I looked at the windows and they seemed almost reverse tinted. Something was wrong. Where were my coworkers?

I looked outside the window and there was no one outside. I went to the front door, except there wasn’t one. The front door had vanished. "fuck fuck fuck fuck."

I walked to the deep stairwell. And looked down into the darkness. I heard talking and laughter. I started to walk down the stairwell. I took two steps and stopped. The laughter was behind me. I walked back and found the room with the single bed, except the whole room had changed. The bed was much larger, and the two girls sat beside the bed talking to my two coworkers who were in the bed with the sheets and blankets pulled up to their necks. I looked at the little girls, both with white dresses, and they were laughing. They had chocolate smeared all over the bottom half of their faces and they both had forks in their hands. And they laughed and giggled together at me.

"We have to go, something is wrong," I screamed at my coworkers, but they just laughed. I pulled the sheets back, and there it was.

There bodies were open like boxes. Their innards were gone. They were hollow, as the girls had been eating their insides. My coworkers laughed. "This is the best Halloween tour we've ever been to!" And the girls laughed, and I realized that it wasn’t chocolate smeared across their faces. The girls ran back over to my coworkers and resumed cutting with butter knifes and forks at the insides of my friends.

I suddenly realized I had to escape, that the parents would be home any minute. And if the children were this ghastly, how bad would the parents be?

Then the alarm went off and I woke up.

In case you don't know: my boyfriend.

Trailer Park to New York

I grew up in a trailer in Texas. A trailer, if you don’t already know, is a large tin box put up on cinder blocks and called a home. My neighbor had these huge faded-pink plastic flamingos in her yard that were so old they were rotting and caving in on themselves. She herself had a concave face with only two teeth in her mouth, both of which had assumed a kind of yellowish-brown color scheme that the flamingos were beginning to adopt. She and her plastic pets looked like something out of a horror movie.

My parents divorced soon after (not because of the old woman or her flamingos, mind you) and my mother and I moved into an apartment, and I took up reading comic books. They were a source of escape and fantasy. Every time I turned a page, I was the ultimate hero, or sometimes the sinister villain, and I could do anything. In my mind’s eye, I could move objects with my mind, or I could see the future. I even dreamt that one day I could escape my welfare upbringing that I was oh-so-ashamed of when I later attended one of the richest school districts in Texas. My peers were driving BMWs to school and my mom was a waitress at Ming Dynasty serving pu-pu platters.

So I read comics. And I came up with my own worlds and realms and colorful cast. I wrote and drew (though not well) and fantasized that one day people would read my work. But it was a fantasy, and under it all I knew that. I didn’t think myself hopeless, just realistic.

I never could have guessed that a mere decade later I’d be living in New York City working in the comic industry I was obsessed with growing up.

It takes a certain kind of human animal to thrive in this city. It’s not just that you have to be hard-working and diligent, you have to be willing to tolerate the smell of piss on the subways some mornings. You have to have a kind of ambition underlying your sense of self, something in you that is not willing to wait for the next lifetime. You have to know that you have to do something.

So here I am, planning comic book conventions for a living. I answer to Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, and the rest of the Justice League. (I’d love to work with the X-Men and the Avengers as well, but they work for the other company at the moment.) I read comics, attend comic-cons, and meet the big guns behind the books I loved as a kid—and I get paid for it.

The comic books that used to be for fanboys and nerds are now plastered all over the big movie screens—and they’re making millions. The transformation from indie comics to Hollywood hard-hitters and from 1930’s pulp to the new century of CGI, comics are the LA agent’s new best friends. We’re all familiar with the Spiderman, Superman, and X-Men franchises. And for those of us in the know, we were happy as pigs-in-sh*t for movies like V for Vendetta, Hellboy, and the upcoming Watchmen. And of course this summer, we’re all wetting ourselves over Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, and Batman’s Dark Knight.

What’s this have to do with me? I’m writing comics, meeting illustrators, networking editors, and all the while still dreaming big. Whether I’m on the precipice of getting published and making a name for myself, or if I’m just destined to hang in the background, I don’t know. What I do know is life is good.

My fellow nerds have done great things. From comic book to movie screen, people’s dreams are being realized every day. Why not mine? Why not yours? I came from a tin can house on bricks and now I live in one of the greatest cities on earth in an office surrounded by my fellow geeks.

Have a dream, follow it, and see what happens. The worst thing that could happen is you end up happy.

Read Buffy

Remember when you were a kid, and you couldn't wait for Wednesday to run to the comic book store and pick up that next issue of the Uncanny X-Men Muir Island Saga? Excitement itched under your skin as you waited to find out what was up with Rogue and Magneto's kiss, or if the X-men were gonna make it back from Shiar space. The way ya got a boner when Colossus put on a suit to escort Xavier to Wahsington DC...

Yup, those were good times. Now I'm ready Buffy Season 8 in comic format, and this shit is genius. Joss and BKV and let us not forget the artist (shit, i can't remember his name)... man, this stuff is like crack. If you haven't read it, pick it up, especially if you were a fan of the series.

Of course, if you liked Angel (which I did), avoid Angel Season 6. I picked up the first issue...and it was NOT good. icky.

Kissing Dreams

I have a really good memory. Like insanely good. Though, it only works when it wants to. Either I recall something with perfect accuracy, or I recall nothing at all. And apparently, so does my subconscious.

Last night as I slumbered, I dreamt of having dinner. It was me, a buddy of mine, his chubby girlfriend who he planned to dump, and strangely enough my dad and two kids (The only person from my waking life being my dad, the rest are new). As we’re talking, the chubby girlfriend says, I can’t believe I’ve known you so long. I say HUH? She’s says, "you slept with my brother in Alabama 10 years ago." And WOOSH. The fictional dream gives way to memories of truth and reality.

I can’t remember his name with 100% assurance (no surprise there, I can never remember people’s names, just everything else about them), though in the dream she called him Jeffy. I'm pretty sure his name is Will. Will was a man I met in a bar called "The Plex" back in Montgomery, Alabama when I was tinkering to come out to myself. I was 18. He was late 20’s, maybe early 30’s. He was ruggedly handsome, shaved head, tall, muscular (though not too), and blue eyes that reminded me of the ocean from my childhood in Guam.

I went home with him the night I met him, from the bar to his place following his truck in my truck, and pulling up to nice 2-bedroom in central Montgomery. I followed him in and he asked if I wanted to watch South Park, which I’d never heard of at the time (this was back in 97-98, South Park was still in its first season). We laid down on the bed and watched and laughed our asses off, kissing during the commercial breaks. He had perfect lips and large hands. He was passionate, embracing, enthralling. (Haha, wow, I’m such a drama queen when I write.)

I think all my lovers since owe Will much, because I think I learned how to kiss from him. Yes, I could kiss before, but I was a novice until I met him. He taught me to take the other person, and at the same time give in to them. It was the first time I had kissed a man, not a boy.

It was a completely different experience. And a beautiful one at that. I don’t remember if we got naked that first night (though I’m sure we did), as all I can recall is the kissing. At some point the next morning, his arms wrapped around me against the winter chill that entered the house, the door sounded and his sister came in. She wasn’t the chubby frumpy girl in last night's dream, but quite beautiful. They exchanged some soft words, he hugged her, she left. Later when we woke up he explained this was actually her house and that he was only in town for her wedding. We spent the next few nights together, exchanging kisses and deep stares and just exploring each other’s bodies. He never ruined the softness of the exploration by suggesting we fuck, he just went with the flow. The experience had a fluidity that NYC homos seem to lack. Though we were strangers, I think we knew each other on some level that others would rarely get a glimpse of. He may have been the man who actually taught me intimacy, though I would not again be able to touch upon it for another decade.


...and with that, i promise my next post will be less sauve, and more gross. like about that video of the two girls pooping in a glass and eating it. then vomiting it up and eating that. and making out. yeah, my next post will be like that.

I popped my cherry

I'm a writer. and everyone's all, why don't you have a blog. and i'm all, your mother. and they're like, no seriously. and i'm like, suck it.

then i calmed down, took a deep breath, and here i am, popping my cherry to the whole world wide web. my legs are spread and i'm ready for the plunge. a virgin no more. now let's see if anyone even reads the crap that spews forth from my mouth.

peace.