DUI. DOA.

Once again I’m in a big house, this time at a lively drunken party with many people, family and not. I have made quite an entrance, or should have, because I’m in a convertible sports car spinning in the air in the living room. (Unfortunately, or thankfully, I observed dream-me without dream-vertiginous sensation.)  The silver convertible and I are spinning like a car spinning out on a road but also like a rotisserie chicken. Picture a top going nowhere except for an airily joyous, fast, circular ride. I land.

No one notices, or no one cares. Nor do I. I’m just at the party, preparing to mingle. Only one person, my friend Martha, remains in memory. She is talking and is a great talker, both in quantity and quality, and I hear her. Yet try and try, I cannot remember what she is saying. 

I know I’m drunk and have been out driving recklessly on the streets. I’m that drunk. Oh. Suddenly I realize I’m dead. How else the impossible spinning inside the house? Revelation! I look around at the others and call out, “We’re dead!” 

Discussion ensues. 

They begin to  believe, though with resistance, because we are flesh and blood and in the same house.

I feel almost euphoric: It’s over. And it isn’t so bad. But people will think, even if dead. (A later conscious thought: Perhaps this is a strong argument against a heaven of embodied people). They also won’t think, at least not logically in my opinion. Panicked comments fly.

“Our skin may start peeling off!”

“Don’t touch that water!”

This modern house features an unusual, shallow pool of water. Apparently people are thirsty—or dirty—and gravitating toward the water. But others fear more unknown transformations, the ordinary an agent of the extraordinary. Water may cause decay! Or . . . or . . . whatever!

I tend to find this absurd, as we’re already dead. Then again, what do I know? I’ve never been dead.