So my straight neighbor who looks a lot like Greg Vaughn of ABC’s “General Hospital,” though hairier and not as beefy, showed up in a dream again that planted an open-air bar ala H2O from “Dante’s Cove” next to my property. One of my trees was hovering over the bar and the bar owner wanted it removed. I couldn’t do it myself or afford to pay someone so my neighbor offered to do it for me.

I was in the bar chatting with a friend while I watched him busy at work with his shirt off and sweating as he worked at bringing the tree down. I went out to talk to him and we chatted a bit as he wiped the sweat from his brow. His muscled hairy torso looked like he just got out of the shower.

He asked me, “Am I hot?” I was dumbfounded and didn’t know how to reply for surely he couldn’t mean it the way I imagined since he’s straight. I said, “Huh? Hot? Well… uh… you look like it. Do you want a drink or something?”

“No, I mean hot like them,” he said motioning his head to three really hot guys sitting at the bar.

Bashfully and stumbling over my words I replied, “Uh… well… uh… kinda.” I looked down saying, “Well yeah.” I looked up and caught his gaze, “Sort of bordering on smoldering actually.” He grinned and moved closer. I could feel the heat coming off of his body as I pressed my hand to his sweaty hairy chest. We moved in to kiss, but were interrupted by the bar owner who protested and threw my hot, shirtless and sweaty neighbor off of his property. He turned to me and said, “You too. And I still want the tree gone so now you’ll have to pay to have it done.”

It was twilight and I was alone in the lower portion of the school playground. Darkness was fast descending but the faint outlines of trees and the stairs to the upper playground and brick wall by the alley were clearly visible. I walked with trepidation up the wide steps to the upper playground were softball games I was excluded from would give the other boys great joy during the daylight. I whispered to myself, Careful… they’ll see.

But the playground was deserted except for the oaks that towered over it. I made my way to the wall and looked up over it into the alley to see what was happening, and it too was deserted except for a lonely black car. Yet the essence of all the children playing and people passing who long since made their ways home were felt as clearly as if they were still their. As the blue light melted into blackness I moved to the center of the playground and spun around feeling the freeness and openess of it all. I grasped my open shirt collar and whispered to myself Should I? Do you think I should? Will they see? I ripped off my shirt and now I was no longer a boy, but a man free and carefree. I raised my arms in victory and spun round and round.

How interesting to dream of a place that was hell for me 20 years ago. I still see it but the playground surrounding the school is now a parking lot. The massive trees whose leaves I would watch blowing in the breeze and daydream about from the upper story classrooms are long gone, as are the brick wall and steps. The segregated playground of a Catholic school in 1980 was not a fun place for an overweight gay boy just beginning to realize he no longer fits in. He can’t go into the girls playground because well, he isn’t a girl, and yet the boys don’t embrace him in theirs — where it’s all rough-housing and team sports — because he is the “odd boy.” Cast aside — more accurately, ignored — I took up residence by the brick wall overlooking the alley.

I would look on as the boys pulled off their ties and shirts to organize themselves into softball games. One of the boys once approached me, raising my hopes that maybe he’s coming over to ask me to be on his team? Instead, and to my horror, he showed me a picture of a naked woman as he then ran back to his teammates laughing. Let down and not sure what just happened, I decided to climb up and hang over the wall. Perhaps something more interesting could be happening outside the proverbial convent walls — something that could rescue me from this. I looked up and down, but it was deserted.

Still continuing to look at nothing in particular, I would imagine what could be happening or what may have happened in the past. People walking their dogs…. cars driving by… friends walking and talking together. Anything would be better than turning around and watching them all yelling, laughing and having fun. Soon someone came along. It was a college kid who was smoking. As he passed I realized he was smoking pot and he offered me a drag. Terrified, I shook my head NO and quickly turned back around to face the softball game only to find I had been joined by two other boys, also odd outcasts. The three of us would spend future recesses playing make believe games for all we had was fantasy to get us through the reality that we were not accepted because we were different.

I was sitting at an organ getting ready to play for a packed house when I realized that a guy I used to work with was there (who I had a crush on, who was straight and who now is an asshole). As I was starting to play, I realized he had dissected the organ. Everybody began to look up at me wondering why I’m not playing. I yelled at him to put it back together, but he only continued his maniacal activity.

I noticed someone standing next to me, who turned and with a wink and glimmer in his eye, made his way past me. It was Ben Cohen! He approached the back room… err… I mean the bell tower room where the music was stored… and he looked back at me over his shoulder. I followed him and when I caught up he took off his shirt revealing his hunky torso. He took my hands and placed them on his amply hairy chest and we moved closer and closer. I could feel his warm moist breath against me as the bell rung and woke me up. With all the attention Ben Cohen has been getting, it was inevitable that he would push his way into my dreams.

So Darren Hayes had come to stay with me for awhile and I was showing him around. When we got upstairs I said, “Oh by the way, my mom lives with me. She doesn’t like bad language so you have to be careful.” Coming towards me he replied, “Cool. We’ll only have wild sex when she’s not home…” And then the recycling truck woke me up!

I’ve been listening to his new album, This Delicate Thing We’ve Made. The 2-CD set, as is, is a great album, but pulling out the better dozen or so tracks to a separate playlist makes a fabulous listen.

Not an appetizing delicacy is it? Well, in this particular dream, I arrived at my aunt’s house with my mom. My aunt had made soup and there was a picture of it in the newspaper. My cousin showed me the paper and when I looked at the picture, it was a pot of soup. It looked like chicken broth with clams floating in it and there was some foam. The photo was bubbling as if it were boiling, not the the pot, but the photo itself. They were concerned over the foam because the pot my aunt had brewed didn’t have any foam. Suddenly I saw chopped up spaghetti noodles in the boiling photo and surmised that it was starch from the pasta that created the foam. No one agreed with me and ignored me, the more I was emphatic that that was the case.

The soup was finally dished up and when it was it was this slop of raspberry Jell-O and these huge gummy clams. I tried to cut them up as best I could and began eating and trying to be nice and complimentary about the horrid taste. As we were eating, my uncle got a call on his phone and told whoever it was that he’d meet them at the apartment. He hung up and left the house. I knew he was going to hook-up with his girlfriend and obviously my aunt did too as she gave him a look that could not only kill, but curse for a thousand eternities.