from Deep in a Dream of You by David Cale

[Ibby]

The following is an excerpt from a solo performance piece written by David Cale. I hope to perform this piece at paradox next year, or in some other venue, and I'd like some feedback and stuff from people...

Swimming in the Dark
I want to take you swimming in the dark
Its something you’ve never done
Its something youd like to do

I know a lake
where the fish are warm
And the water barely moves
There's no weed to get tangled in
And in this place, Money isn't an object
No one can touch you here
No policeman will strike you with his billy club
Smash you in the features
No religion can harm you
No nun can get on the television
And make threatening remarks
And the newspapers wont depress you
Theres no television to reduce you
Nothing will carry weight

When people are just another disappointment
I will take you to this place
Drive you to the water
Remove your clothes with a tenderness reserved for lovers
Under a clear sky and stars
Well go swimming in the dark

Its something you’ve never done
Its something youd like to do
I know a lake
where the fish are warm
And the water barely moves

Lets go swimming in the dark.


Remember
(For Him.)
Remember when you used to wake up in the morning
and spring out of bed without a care in the world
Without a care in your head.

Remember?

Remember when you used to fall in love with one person
After another. How they would overlap sometimes.
Of course, it wasn’t love. Lets call it some kind
Of thrilling collapsing of the boundaries. One person
after another. It didn’t really matter who.

Remember?

Remember how you liked to tell people you were neurotic,
even though you didn’t really know what neurotic meant.
But it sounded mature and sophisticated. It was something
you should want to be. More sophisticated than cigarettes.

Remember?

Remember when you moved into the present tense. How alive
You looked. How for a moment you felt in relation to
everything. The world took on a kind of clarity. There was
resonance in every action.

Remember?

Remember when fear took a hold of you.
Became part of you. Took up residence. Cramped your day.
Became a feature. Remember when you realized that eventually
you get used to anything.

Youll never amount to anything
With your eyes on yourself all the time
Itll strangle and contrive you
Itll leave you where you started

Remember

And with your background it's probably some kind of
Achievement that you can even get out of bed in the morning
A family that’s only comfortable with you going down the
same, sad road they're going down
The same sad road they’ve gone down

Remember

You’ve got that puffy look
You’ve got that tremble in your voice again

Hang up the phone if your father calls you.
Hang up the phone if your father calls you.

Remember

Put your fists in the air

Remember

Get out of the house!

Remember

Don’t sit still for so long
Don’t let it build up around you
Don’t succumb to whats predictably yours.
Don’t succumb to whats predictably yours.

And you say,

"I keep forgetting that I'm alive.
I keep losing sight of it.
I keep losing sight of it.
I keep forgetting that I'm alive.
I keep losing sight of it.
I keep losing sight of it."



But remember when you used to wake up in the morning
and spring out of bed without a care in the world.
Without a care in your head.

Remember?
Remember
Remember Him.
Remember.


Blue Fir Trees
I will never forget you on the patio next to that lake in the New Hampshire, doing the Jane Fonda workout to a Philip Glass record. How the wind blew the music across the lake. The blue fir trees surrounding the water barely moving at all. There was one cloud in the sky. Stretching your pale limbs into unnatural positions and holding them there.

I read it somewhere that when the body dies, the soul leaves through the top of the head. I remember seeing my grandfather's body laid out in my grandmother's room and thinking his body looked like a shell and automatically wondering, Where's the soul gone? and instinctively looking up at the ceiling as if I was going to see it hovering there.

I will never forget the times I craved you. Couldn't get enough of you. Wanted you so bad it made my stomach ache.

The times I was embarrassed by your displays of physical affection. Worried about how it would look. Embarrassed to be wanting you, or something. Feeling that you weren't pretty enough and that was ludicrously some reflection on me. Or that you were too effeminate, and that was somehow incriminating.

I used to dream of being driven at night by some anonymous driver. Along an American highway. No words. Just to be staring out the window like some Garbo creature. Moody and silent. Deep inside myself. When we drove through Pennsylvania that night I thought, This may not be it, but it's pretty close.

In the night the lake looked like it had died.
You wondered if what you wanted in another person is really what you would like to be yourself.
The trees made sounds. When you shouted your voice echoed in the mountains. You could duet with yourself.

I will never forget flying in that plane over Boston in the middle of the night, with a black coffee in one hand trying to figure out how I could feel something so strongly then stop feeling it altogether and considering it was gone for good.

I will never forget the look on your face when you told me how you felt and how I couldn't speak, how the words wouldn't leave me because I felt absolutely nothing.
I didn't realize I had such a vicious streak till you were kind to me.
I will never forget how soft the skin on your back was.
I will never forget how you laughed at everything I said.
I will never forget how I never believed you when you said I looked good or what I did was good, thinking that you were so in love that you would say anything to please me.
That your opinion was invalid.

When nothing makes sense there's always sense of humour.

I will never forget that joke you told me about Ginger Rogers. When asked how much she weighed, Ginger replied, "145 pounds, 133 without makeup." How every time you told it you cracked yourself up.

I will never forget how when you danced, it looked like someone had taken you over.

I will never forget meeting your mother for the first time and the look on her face that seeing the two of us together was in some way confirming her most unsettling suspicions.

I will never forget how meticulous you were.
I will never forget that horrible cologne you wore.
I will never forget those kids yelling 'faggot' at you on the street.
I will never forget you saying very quietly, 'Ignore them'.

I will never forget seeing you in that anonymous hospital. Laying in the bed with your eyes focused on something that I couldn't see.

I will never forget you laying there asleep.
Still with your eyes wide open.

I will never forget after visiting you in the hospital how I sobbed uncontrollably on the telephone and felt relieved afterwards that I could feel something for someone other than myself.

I will never forget not being able to leave that room because I knew I wouldn't see you again.

But I will never forget when you finished doing that exercise all those years ago. How the music still kept playing. You came up behind me. Touched my neck oh so gently with your lips. Standing there. Miles from anyone. The blue fir trees still. The water quiet. The one cloud moving very slightly. Our chests rising. Hearts floating across the lake. Over the trees. Up into the single cloud. How it moved into the distance still beating.

And you whispered,
'When it gets late tonight.
I want to take you swimming in the dark.
It's something you've never done.
It's something you'd like to do.
I know a lake...'

[classicman]

Good lord thats a really long read - kinda like a tw post.
Srsly, Its pretty ok - what are you thinking about doing?