Meat-eating & job anxiety

I left class in a place in the city by a river. It looked like Georgetown. I was walking in a crowd of students and wearing an outfit I was unsure of. An Asian photographer was taking pictures of us, and it made me a little uncomfortable. I crossed under a highway overpass because I decided to pick something up to bring home to my mother for dinner. I went to a store with dozens of live animals: mostly pigs, some sheep, guinea pigs, and rabbits. Customers picked an animal to take home, kill, and eat. There was the option to have the staff kill the animal before taking it home. There was a warning sign stating that the pigs scream when killed.

I never saw the place where the animals were killed, and the environment was happy and friendly. The animals were tame and the staff helpful. I could spend as much time as I wanted talking to, holding, and playing with the animals. I thought about what it would be like to walk one of the pigs home on a leash, and I considered having the staff take care of one and bringing it home that way. I didn’t want to eat them but I knew my mom would. I decided I would buy some frozen fish, which they also had available, to bring her.

There was one giant animal that fascinated me. It looked like a hideous cross between a sheep and a horse. I loved it and wanted to hang out with it, but a staff member was working with it. It didn’t occur to me to ask what it was.

I left with my purchases and found myself in a version of my old office in DC. I had a great time talking with Mark and Amy, but I don’t remember it well. Amy was eating something with many layers of different meats, and it repulsed me. I had tentatively decided to take another job there since I couldn’t find a new one. I was feeling partly excited, and that I was going to make the most of it, and party embarrassed that I had to come back here for lack of options. I filled out some paperwork that involved creating a complicated version of my social security number with a black HR woman. She told me my first day would be in two and a half weeks. I thought of how I would spend those days, sleeping in but still looking for a better job.

Later that night I went back to the scene where the animal seller was, but I was here this time for a political event. There were groups of people with different chants and stances along the political spectrum. However, the overall crowd leaned liberal, from left extreme to very moderate conservative. I was with a group of liberals, but the extremists were so embarrassing that I started to sympathize with the conservatives. Then my attention lapsed completely and I started to watch some dancers practicing in a lit pool in the middle of the darkness. As they practiced their moves, their legs elongated under the water. I called someone else over to watch because it was so interesting, and we watched in silence.

BYO Dream

Sheba's birthday is the next day and she's having one of the big BYO dinners we've been doing for all our birthdays this summer. We're excited about the venue--the cheap Indian food spot on 1st Ave.--and decide to go that night as well.

A bunch of us pile on to the special mode of transportation Sheba arranged for her birthday. It's a row of square white tables with chairs strung together and dragged by an engine in the front. There are no wheels on the tables or chairs. It's rickety and doesn't maneuver turns well. Normally you can order food and drinks for your table while being scraped over the streets of New York, but that feature won't be operating until Sheba's birthday. I spend the ride discussing with someone the pitfalls and potential of this apparatus.

Shuvo and I are excited and happy to arrive, and we walk over lawn with tacky lighting to the front of the restaurant. He slips in through the window and disappears into the restaurant, which is glowing yellow, leaving me behind. I decide not to call out to ask him to wait. The waiters see me, give me slight smiles and nods, and move some candles from the windowsill so I can crawl in too. I become nervous about the challenge of climbing in through the tiny window opening in my short dress without flashing the restaurant patrons. There's a jukebox on the windowsill blaring Rihanna's "Shut Up and Drive," further cramping my entrance and irritating me. I'm aware of the nearby front door that could afford me a much simpler entry, but I don't want to disappoint the waitstaff by taking the easy way, even though they're paying me no mind.

After a struggle I make it through the window and find myself in my parents' bathroom. I called Shuvo but his phone was there, ringing on the bathroom counter. I pick it up and stalked away with both phones in my hand.

Fearful adventures

After some indecision, I decide at the last minute to join Grant on a short vacation to Budapest. I'm at a track just about to jockey a horse race and the plane leaves in a hour. I leave to pack a few things and come back to give them to my mother for safekeeping. The announcer is encouraging the jockeys to walk along the track. He wants us to observe its slippery texture due to last night's rain, in order to better guide our horses along it. Instead, Jade picks me up in a monster SUV and we drive along the track so I can see all of it. It is a straight path through some woods with a yellow dirt surface. You have to turn your horse around and go back every time you reach the end, as the entire race consists of 10 laps. I admire how Jade carelessly takes out a few small trees with her wide U-turn. The road's shape and slope are a combination of a street leading to my childhood house and a path to my dad's place in Maine.

I'm afraid to race my horse (whom I don't meet) because I haven't ridden in well over a decade, and I can't remember ever having galloped a horse. I imagine myself falling as soon as we reach top speed and being trampled. I struggle with my anxiety for a bit, and then realize that I can't both run the race and go to Hungary. I ask a stranger to give the person in a charge a message: I'm not going to race.

I urge my mom to drive me to the airport in a hurry.

Arriving in Budapest, I'm surprised to learn Grant knows his way around. He treats me with a certain standoffishness, and I can usually only see his back. We walk dark alleys, slither through clammy crawlspaces, and take rickety metal stairs on our nighttime hike from the airport to where we're staying. Upon arrival, the apartment we've rented is instantly familiar and cozy, despite its dilapidation.

I leave alone to join some friends for dinner, including Cynthia, Charles, and Shuvo. The friends will morph into others several times throughout the event, but there are almost always four of us. We ordered meals and waited. When Cerina appears, I thank her for some previous gifts, and feel as though I need to come up with something to give her. After an extremely long, hungry period, our food arrives. Mine looks appetizing to me. It's eggs and maybe some meat, a biscuit and a churro, all covered in gravy. Rather than eat we all stand up to take a walk across a long wooden footbridge over a beautiful lake. It's a warm, sunny afternoon. As we're walking I think sadly about the food I didn't touch, but I no longer feel hungry.

On the walk, the cast is Sobby, Jen, and Shuvo. Sobby is proclaiming how happy he is that he's finally in love, and how happy we should be for him. We assure him that we are, we're just in mellow moods. Sobby breaks out his snowboard and I remember that this, after all, is a snowboarding retreat. He starts flying around on his, and I take out my snowboard and tell him that I'm not good enough on mine to be able to fly yet. In his fit of love he grabs me and one of the others and tows us on a ride above the treetops over the far side of the lake. I'm thrilled but as he flies more wildly I imagine my likely death among the trees and rocks below.

As we're riding we continue to talk about his new relationship, and one of us remarks that she seems like a very nice, safe girl. He explains that she may seem safe but she has a crazy, dark side. He sees it fit to exemplify this by whipping us into an upside-down loop. He takes the loop too slow, and I start to feel gravity pulling my head earthward. I manage to move my snowboard back under my bare feet, but it's difficult to control because I haven't installed my bindings yet. After that, he takes us speeding toward a huge building, and I knew he's planning to go in through a wide, open door.

Even though I'm begging him not to, we enter and fly over the heads of a zillion young people up some stairs. I start to lose my balance and see that in a moment I will have a chance to disembark without dying. I do, and land straddling a railing. Looking down I realize I'm wearing a little girl's one-piece swimsuit. I tuck my snowboard under my arm and walk past the staring people.