Simon Fraser (IV)

Freddy had a dream that woke him at 5:30 in the morning. He was in a restroom – the type you would find in a restaurant or small office – a shitter against one wall, a urinal against another, a sink against a third, no stall or dividers, one door.

Freddy (or “Dream Freddy”) was sitting on the toilet having finished his business a moment before. He noticed that the door was slightly ajar; not the best scenario in which to begin a dream.

Of course, as soon as Dream Freddy realized the door was open a sliver, it opened wide and another man entered the restroom. He was tall, perhaps 6’4″, thin, black shirt, black pants, black suit jacket, middle-aged and entirely rude. His entry caught Dream Freddy by surprise.

“Uh, occupied,” Dream Freddy said. But the stranger ignored him, went to the urinal and started to take a piss. “Excuse me!” exclaimed Dream Freddy sitting on the pot, “Occupied!”

The stranger ignored him and continued pissing, his back to the dreamer. Dream Freddy got to his feet, pulled up his pants, flushed. Noticing that the stranger was finishing his business at the urinal, Dream Freddy quickly moved to the sink, hoping to cut the jerk off, force him to atleast wait for the splash of water that would clean his hands.

Dream Freddy turned on the cold water and had his hands under the stream but for a moment before he was shoved aside by the stranger. He was stunned – what had he ever done to this stranger? Was the guy paid to be an asshole? Whose payroll was he on? And what had Freddy ever done to warrant such insult?

The stranger finished washing up as Dream Freddy stood there flabbergasted, then he stepped out as unaware of the first occupant as he’d been stepping in. “Excuse me?” Dream Freddy said as the man exited. The door closed behind him.

“What the fuck?”

And a little voice inside Dream Freddy’s head which was inside sleeping Freddy’s head said, “What are you gonna do about it, boy?” Like a slavemaster or white-hooded motherfucker telling a black man, “I defy you to defy me, nigger!” Like a gob of spit landing in the eye of his spirit. A castration of the authority of oneself. The non-existence of the self. That’s how it felt to Dream Freddy. “Fuck it,” he said and didn’t bother washing his hands. He went after the dream stranger.

As soon as he went through the doorway, he was in a wide open office area, like a bank or library. Without money or books. He was in a university or college of some sort. Cheap mustard-hued industrial carpet, desks and chairs and small filing cabinets scattered geometrically around the vast room. Not a computer or modern office device to be found; no dividers, no interior walls; he’d stepped into the past (or a severely underfunded institution).

Clerks and administrators sitting at their desks sifting through papers that had no meaning, typing words without thought on old oversized Olympic typewriters, transcribing, affixing, posting, wasting their most valuable resource – time to live.

Dream Freddy spotted the stranger making his way through the nostalgic maze of vintage office furniture to the glass doors (reinforced with wire mesh) which led outside.

Dream Freddy turned to a clerk, a pasty white woman in a frilly white blouse with gray hair dyed far too blond for someone of her pallor. A large pair of glasses rested upon the bridge of her nose, their cheap faux-gold chain slung around her neck. Her eyes never left the original copy of whatever it was she was transcribing; her fingers never left the keys – she was a “A-S-D-F-J-K-L-colon” girl all the way. She typed away, something so unimportant that she forgot each word as soon as it had been typed. Sentences meant nothing to her, paragraphs even less. Her life was measured in words per minute. And every word was an average of five letters.

Dream Freddy broke into her world, “Excuse me?”

She stopped; her wrinkled face, plastered with foundation and blush, looked up at him.

“Do you know that gentleman?” he asked her, pointing at the stranger. She shook her head. “I was going to the toilet and he walked in, refused to leave and shoved me away from the sink.” Dream Freddy still could not believe the unmitigated gall.

“What do you want me to do about it?” the old crag asked.

And the little voice in Dream Freddy’s head spoke once again: “What?! What do I want you to ‘do’?! Holy fuck, lady! Does anyone here know what good manners are?! Keep taking orders, bitch! Have a blind/bland life!”

Dream Freddy followed the stranger, pursued him, moving swiftly through the mindless quagmire of typists and obedience.

Then he was outside in the open air. Dream Freddy was walking along a wide concrete corridor adjacent to another building on campus. The building’s shaded glass windows concealed the activities within. On the other side of the corridor that ran the length of the building was a grassy slope with flowers and shrubs, an occasional set of perhaps ten steps which led down to an even wider pedestrian walkway of interlocking brick. An iron railing prevented anyone from trodding upon the grass, flowers and shrubs. Hundreds of students were coming and going or socializing in small groups, eager faces, happy voices, graded.

Dream Freddy followed the stranger, ten feet behind.

“Hey asshole! Hey fucko!” he taunted the stranger. A few students glanced at him – presumably those which had been called assholes and fuckos before.

The stranger kept walking.

“Hey cocksucker, didn’t anybody teach you it’s rude to intrude on someone in the crapper?!” The stranger’s head perked a little – as it occurred to him he might be the one being addressed. “Yeah that’s right, I’m talking to you, fuckface.”

The stranger stopped and turned. Some of the students turned their heads too; most kept moving though. Dream Freddy approached the stranger.

“Are you going to apologize or are you a complete asshole?” The stranger did not respond. He stood there with a small fire kindling in his eyes – a bully or a coward. The same shallow face of the high school senior who had shoved Freddy in the ninth grade, saying “Get outta my way, weasel,” for no other reason than the illusion of superiority. It had taken Freddy another fifteen years to have this dream, a decade-and-a-half of having to put up with these undeveloped problem children, these pathetic creatures buried to their noses in self-pity and delusions of otherness. Poor sods all.

“Are you listening to me, motherfucker?” Dream Freddy asked the stranger, every slur and curse another broken link in a chain. Students moved past them, unconcerned with their argument.

“Are you fucking deaf?! You fuck! I was using the restroom, fucknuts. You come in, you take a piss, you shove me away from the sink and you leave. Are you some kind of fucking moron?!”

The stranger didn’t say anything; he turned and started to walk away.

“Where d’you think you’re going? Hey!”

The stranger continued to walk away, as if Dream Freddy had merely been a dying mosquito buzzing around inside his dew-moistened tent.

“Hey!!!” yelled Dream Freddy, pushing the stranger hard from behind. The stranger stumbled forward a few steps then turned to face his attacker and finally spoke, “Don’t push me.”

“Don’t push you?… Don’t push you?!… Don’t!… Push!… You?!!”

Almost all the students in the corridor had heard him. He had everyone’s attention. But all Dream Freddy saw was this son of a bitch standing in front of him with his fists clenched and ready; his voice silent with power. Goliath.

“Fuck you!” screamed Dream Freddy in absolute rage as his right foot swung up quickly and he fucking hoofed the bastard hard in the gonads.

Whoomp! Time stood still as every student and pedestrian in the plaza who had stopped and watched could hear the sound and feel the force reverberate in their own sex organs. When the stranger crumpled to the concrete, a little part of everyone went down with him.

But even as he lay on the ground in what must have been complete and utter pain, the stranger still managed to conceal any emotion; he was that ignorant. A few students came to his aid; they said nothing to Dream Freddy who stood there wishing the stranger would rise to take a second kick in the nuts, and a third, a fourth, a fifth.

But the stranger did not stand. He had a look on his face that seemed to ask the question, “What am I doing here on the ground?” Pretty much everyone else in the plaza continued on, going about their business, off to lessons, off to learn only those things which can be taught, not those things that must be experienced.

And Freddy, the real Freddy, slowly floated up to the surface of the world, opened his eyes, stilled shrink-wrapped in crusty salt, and saw the dull blue Los Angelean pre-dawn light coming in through a window.

He looked at the clock, jerked off, took a shower, brushed his teeth and walked to the donut shop for a coffee. 6AM and he felt wonderful, magnificent, alive, and most of all, polite.