A Short Story

It is not often that I have nightmares, but when I do they are unrelentingly lucid. It is as if I am living a surreal, threateningly suspenseful, parallel life that should be a novel.  My job is to resolve the issue, integrate with the indigenous population, and survive.  It is not rocket science.  It is just life, life in Fayettenam.   Several times I was expeditious enough to write them down.  A recurring theme in these lucid dreams is duping local yokels, and I don't mean duping in the sense of pulling the wool over their eyes.  I mean excavating a foundation for you own life in the midst of a local controlling faction that in all probability never has traveled to another place.  This doesn't necessarily mean hillbilly.  There are plenty of intelligent local yokels about.  Most of them have money, and hence they have influence on local politics.  In my dreams it is made clear to me after a lifelong pursuit of personal fulfillment that a small group of affluent men control most things.  Often they are bisexual.  Often they want to have sex with your, or at least they are intrigued by your rebel presence, want to sample those goods, or feel privileged enough to be able to have sex with you if they want to.  They after all are in control.  I am able to thwart these men for the most part with college-bred sensibility.  It is called intelligence.  Luckily I was reared in a God-fearing family with Christian values and manners.  I have no real need to commit crimes, lie, cheat, or steal, because I have learned through education that these iniquities in the long run will cause you distress.  I have an instinctual feeling that the FBI is trying to dig up dirt on me.  It may or may not have something to do with the Gulfstream jet which frequently flies over the top of our home.  This is no coincidence.  I have written about Leon Panetta's CIA jet before.  These organizations don't have much else to do but fly around America spending the taxpayer's dollars.  This is no delusion of grandeur.  This is no psychotic hallucination.  Within five minutes of exiting my house to water the garden, no matter what time of day, this jet appears flying directly over the top of our yard.  That is an example of clockwork.  I walk outside to water the garden, and this Gulfstream jet appears.  I must be really special, a real threat, or else the CIA takes pointers from my gardening skills.  I have a nice tomato patch.  I am getting tired of flipping the plane the bird.  I guess they are tired of seeing me flip them the bird.  Better yet they have nothing better to do than waste the taxpayers dollars.  L3 Communications has their own dollars, and yet also they come from the American taxpayer.  They are one of the largest defense contractors in America, hence their money comes from a private contract awarded by the President.  Often not upon are they bid.  Who cares?  Their jet wash is a small percentage of the dross that pollutes Cumberland Country.  Dig as they may, there are very few skeletons to be found in my closets.  I never have had sex with a child or another man, although I have slept with another man's wife.  Only was it with their consent.   Never have I buried dead bodies, although I dreamt of it least night.  Of one of the many apartments I rented in Columbus, somehow I made my way back.  There were the seams in the floor above where I had dug shallow graves to hold the dead bodies.  Somehow that group of Ohio oligarchs got it in their mind that I had taken their satchel full of money.  John Freeman and I had been joyriding on those winding roads north of Columbus.  I had been going to fast and my Toyota Tercel unibody wagon flew off the road and into a tree.  The next thing I remember is waking up in Duke University Hospital a year later with my wounds healed.  There was a slight scar on my neck, but all-in-all I was whole.  Completely recovered but with no memory of the accident.  The statute of limitations had passed as years passed, and the whereabouts of the satchel of money became a legend.  Still those bisexual men in Columbus somehow thought I knew where it was.  I thwarted them, and they didn't mind.