TIME, IDENTITY, GENDER, IS MEANINGLESS WHEN LOVE IS YOUR ANCHOR

Last September, I took a short afternoon nap (this happens a lot: middle age sucks, sometimes), and I had this dream. I woke up, and immediately typed it up. What does it mean? Only that I have a pretty active imagination, for an old guy. It’s too short to publish, just a fragment. Lemmee know what you all think.

     TIME, IDENTITY, GENDER, IS MEANINGLESS WHEN LOVE IS YOUR ANCHOR

     It is a dark, dreary apartment when first I meet Tommy. Tall, tow-headed, wearing that ridiculous leather duster, always carrying his umbrella. Tommy is asking Sensei about some move. Sensei calls me to demonstrate. We stand in the center of that apartment, which seems bigger than it is not, and I am Brenda now, tiny, red-headed, white-clad. I offer my tiny, pale wrist to his large hand, and, as he takes it, I see his eyes close, and I feel him feel me, tasting my pulse. I begin the move, but no more: somehow, he is one with me and I with him, and we are all together, like the Walrus, I hear my pulse in his touch, and I am motionless. “Sorry, Sensei”, I tell my frowning teacher, and Tommy releases my wrist, eyes still closed. I offer my other tiny, pale wrist, and he takes it, eyes still closed. The pulse is no longer heard, but the move, and the memory of the move is still gone.
     Windows shatter inwards, but I cannot see the breakers. Sensei is to his feet, five-foot-five of smooth, elderly Asian, Tommy is whirling in a rustle of leather, umbrella out, but I am rendered helpless by something, and so, I shift…
     I am now a Japanese rent boy in the 25th century, sitting in a retro-rickshaw, and two white men on either side of me are harming me, though it hurts not, and they probe into me with the scaly arms from right and left, impossibly moving my vitals about without killing me, strange gazes from their white-bred faces, and Tommy is reaching in with his umbrella from the roof of the rickshaw, impaling one with that umbrella of his through the head, which oddly sinks in and through, and Tommy’s face is distended as he bellows an unintelligible war-cry, and the other one flails about the cab with fishy appendages without any smell but that of panic. I shift again…
     And I am the hostess, at a suburban house, my name is Brenda again, tiny pale red-head, but I am not that other Brenda, somehow I am different, marginalized, whether it is by the time or the place or the center of that place, and I am paying courtly tribute to my guests in that way only a hostess may. Am I a wife, or a queen, or some CEO? I do not know, but my moves are smooth, as they once were in that place before, where I was another Brenda, but my moves are no longer martial, but societal, and I am a gazelle in miniature here, on neutral ground, still unclear as to the whys and wheres and hows and whens, but flowing smoothly, smoothly. Until I come up to that tall wall of rawhide, and Tommy turns, his psychotropic umbrella in his fist, not a weapon, only his prop, and I look up to his freckled face, and he looks down at mine, and we smile in recognition and warmth. The periphery of my vision tells me my nemeses are here:  I can read their stilted movements, their blank gazes snapping to me whenever the flow of guests permits visual identification, and I panic, though I know I am safe. Tommy cries “Wait!”, but too late. I shift again….     
     I am a teenage hustler in Missouri, and I am backed into an alley because I propositioned the wrong truck driver, and he and his buddy are “Gonna teach me a lesson, ya little faggot” in their words, and I am too small and too slow in this body, wishing I had some memory of far away to help me defend myself. The truck drivers are again those reptilian-eyed men, staring straight at me, with lidless eyes of maroon crescents, and they bear down on me, smiling ferally. Tommy is at them suddenly, umbrella flailing, duster snapping about as he twists and turns and batters at them. I recognize him, and cry his name, but this is error, his attention diverted, one of the drivers has him down, I see the leather corners go up in the air, and the other joins in, and I shriek his name once more, and I shift….
     A rainy day in a small town, and I pull the lacy curtain aside, and see Tommy on his skateboard in the heavy rain, water shedding from that coat he always wears, but he turns around deftly on his wooden plank with wheels, and goes back into the storefront he has recently emerged from, and comes back out with umbrella in hand, and the weird rainbow unfurls to protect him from the falling wetness, and I sigh, and smile, but he doesn’t see me, but skates on, his freckled face looking from side to side, as if seeking something, as if seeking me but not knowing it’s me. I am Belinda now, but so far my enemies have not shown: perhaps we are safe here? Time will tell. I cannot recall if we have ever been safe before, or if ever, or if we had time together longer than a single shift. This puzzles me. But I sigh, and hope, and dream of being in his arms soon, whether as a man, or a woman, or in this century, the next, or the prior.
     Time, identity, gender, is meaningless when love is your anchor.