2003-01-31 3:32 p.m.

Gubben's Hus. Vollsj�, Sweden.

Last night Andie had a dream that we were at Gubben's Hus and that these ghosts were trying to kill us. She was telling me as I was running out the door to work. I don't exactly remember the details.

I was busy. My mind was trying hard to grasp a vapor�memories of my own dream from last night. I almost never remember my dreams. I had to strain to hold on to the details before they vanished into the day's atmosphere�disappearing and dissipating with each waking second, banished by the day like the fleeing morning fog.

Maybe it was an act of will. Maybe it was coincidence. But, I remembered:

Andie and I were at a party at my mom's house, the house where I grew up. My parents weren't there, but a lot of other people were�regularly attractive men and women all about 25-30 years old. There was nothing extraordinary about any of them except that they were all well�dressed enough and cute enough.

We were in my mom's bedroom on her king�size bed. Andie had the idea that she and I ought to have sex (or at least heavy petting) with these two other girls who were there. But, the girls all had to leave the room to do something before we started.

So, I waited on the bed. A few of the other partygoers milled about the room. I looked around the bedroom. Things were mostly brown. The door to the hallway was left open.

The girls shut the door when they returned. This made Dave unhappy. Ah yes, Dave.

I had never met Dave before this dream; I don't think he exists in my waking life. Dave was already having a bad time because Andie moved a pile of stuff that happened to contain Dave's house and car keys. Dave was stuck at my mom's until he found those keys. He was obviously irritated, but he didn't want to make a fuss. But, when we shut the door to the bedroom, I could see that he was not pleased to be left out in the hallway to pace back and forth, shut out from the action.

Ok, back to the girls. It was easy to see what they did when they had left the room together. They put on clothes. This seemed very odd to me, since they were naked when they left the room. If they had intended to have sex, why didn't they just stay naked?

But that isn't the point. They didn't put on just any normal clothes. They put on dark�blue marching band outfits�decorated vests, jackets, and special skirts. The vests cut a deep and narrow V shape down their fronts, exposing their bare collarbones and stretching almost to their navels�focusing the eye and the mind Southward like an all�too�obvious suggestion. Oh, I get it! They had omitted the usual marching band shirt from the equation�jacket and vest, but no shirt. I guess the marching band outfit without the shirt was supposed to be sexy. And now that I think of it, it was.

The buttons were funny, too. Where there would normally be three or four large buttons holding the jacket or vest closed, there were neat rows of 15 or 20 tiny buttons. I shot Andie a look of confusion, hoping she would understand the meaning: What the heck is up with the marching band outfits? And why so many stupid little buttons?

I thought that Andie and her two marching band buddies were all acting a bit strangely. But, strange or not, I remembered they had one obvious redeeming quality: they all wanted to have sex with me. I patiently undid row after row of dark�blue buttons.

Why do I remember the buttons? In spite of the sexual presence, the dream was not particularly sexually�charged. I wasn't turned on. As I undid the buttons, my thoughts kept turning to water slides.

And then the dream followed my thoughts. And then I was on a water slide.

It's funny. As a young boy, water slides used to be a common recurring theme in the handful of dreams I could remember. This is the first time I have had a water slide dream in perhaps 15 years.

Water slides.


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