I walked up to the White House to see the President. Not The white house, mind you, but a big brick building painted white, with columns on the portico and bushes so big there were walking tunnels through them. Not The president, mind you, but the older man who had taken in me and my group of friends. But something had changed since the last time, a day all, when I was here last. When I was here last, things were newer, and the whole house has settled into its bones a bit since then. I don't understand. I have gone to see a dog, talked to my parents, and walked the big intersection downtown with the Walgreens and the pizza place and the strip mall all behind the big parking lot. Across the road, where I was trying to get, there were more shops. Everything had a strange surreal quality to it, certainly, but only in retrospect. I never realized when I'm in the dream that the sky isn't. Not that it doesn't exist, but that it isn't to exist or not. It just isn't.
But now, an old friend sees me, and they are just that. Old. She walks under the columns of the portico and says "Oh, he's still a young man." That's it. Nothing more. I'm confused. Why say that? How did you become old? I'm worried. I quicken my pace. I reach the door and someone coming out says "Oh, it's you! You're still a young man." Why are they so old?
I push the door open, terrified in a quiet way of what might happen. There are all my friends of such quality and fire, but they're all in their seventies and eighties. The skin has fallen from once-fresh faces, the fat has built up around their middles. Hair has left the once-shaggy heads and their once-smooth and girlish cheeks are stubbly. Everyone has age spots and pants pulled too high and a comfortable look. They're all slouched in rockers and easy chairs in the entrance, lined up as though waiting for me, or maybe a bus that will take them to the mall for a walk and something interesting to do in their retirements. They're all so old. So old so suddenly. When I left them just so short a time ago, they were vital. We had plans! And now what of them? What will we do with ourselves now?
They all react to seeing my shock. There's a cheer of kindness and one or two say, in an old, familiar way, "Oh, he's still young!" Yes, I think, and you're so old! But then, I must be. Oh.
It clicks.
"How long this time?"
"Just two days, so far. Enjoy it!" shouts John Cleese from a big armchair. I intend to. I turn to look at all my friends. They're not old to me, now. They're beautiful. "Why, Annie, we never thought you would make it, living the way you did! And now you're here, outliving all of us! And Eddie! Oh, Eddie, what a looker! We've got to warn people about you or all the women in the state will be your girl. How do you still look so good, and with this gorgeous mustache!?" Annie is hunched, and Eddie's mustache is cut up badly, not the pencil-thin perfection of his youth. But his Cuban blood has held his beauty, and Annie deserved to live and got it. "Chuck, I'm just so thrilled to see you! What the hell, how do you look so good as such an old man? I'm jealous!" I continue around the circle, giving compliments from a young man to a collection of octogenarians. Then, Salty grabs my hand. His grip is old and curiously strong.
"Where's your Bible study tattoo?" He asks, tapping the hollow between my thumb and the back of my hand.
"I don't . . ." Is all I can say before he and Hiram next to him bust into a big, gut laugh. I would never get a tattoo. What are they saying? Hiram pulls up his sleeve, and Salty lifts the cuff of his pants to reveal matching blue-black tattoos, small, and shield-shaped. I'm staggered. I can't even see my body. How powerful is my psychosis? I'm feeling strange about everything, but I want to meet all my friends even so. I want them to know how beautiful they are still, or how good it is to see them, or how much I loved them all when I was young and how close we were as friends. The thirty aged firebrands assembled in the entryway of the white house are laughing, now, and I feel bittersweet. Maybe tomorrow I'll be eighty, too, and this youth is only a recollection. But I'm luckier than they are. I get to re-live myself again and again, and they are trapped in a linear progression. I get to know that the story ends, and they had to write it one day at a time. My whole perspective has changed. Everything is lovely.
I awake.
5:31am
