I’m outside my childhood home on Kemper court, trying to get my scooter over the fence. This is behind the family room, the narrow walkway. My green vintage Vespa ends up just a foot or two into the neighbor’s yard, and I unlatch the side gate and wheel it over the front path. I notice a garage freezer among the gravel landscaping near the house, door hanging open, chugging hard to keep cold — so hard that I smell melting plastic. So, it’s the first dream where I realize the house belongs to someone else now.
The neighbor’s house on the other side has a Starbucks running out of it now. I note this curiosity to my homepie friend Lauren, since the road construct “court” or “cul-de-sac” is more formally termed a “starbuck” (at least in the dream).
A big gym or theater, an enclosed space, flooded at end of year for cleaning. People can now float around in three dimensions. Varieties of ocean life shows up, one is a species of fish that leaves a trail of blue pigment. I share this info with the crowd, as a vast school swims through, turning the water almost black in places. I also half-speak/half-chatter nearby my third-grade crush Christy T. about my secret and considerable knowledge of drugs and/or sex. I slyly offer her a giant pretzel from a jar as I snag one myself… she takes it, and we’re both rather pleased with ourselves.
The performance stage club at one end is flooded for first time too. Lauren had worked there before — at one point she doesn’t recognize me and so I respectfully abstain from pursuing sex within the club (no surprises for anyone). Go there again with Lauren on a waveskimmer, dipping a paddle ahead of us, cutting water to steer. Lauren unlocks a crypt off to stage left, a heavy metal door. The way it latches, she must squeeze through a smaller secondary hatch. As she’s getting out I read an unnoticed sign above instructing to smell for lisp gas (?) first, as there could be decomposition. Geez, it’s actually a crypt!