The dream begins, but I don't remember becoming aware of it. It just sorta... becomes.

As always, I'm at the Hot Legs bar, front row, staring. I know the music is loud, but I can't hear it. People are speaking around me. I can understand what they are saying but I can't hear them. But none of that matters. I'm focused on her.

She's singing. And though I can't hear her, I understand what she is saying, even though she is singing in a different language.

Which, though it's a dream, is really weird.

I smile at her. She smiles back. I get up from my seat, and approach the stage, oblivious to the audience behind me. The lights change to blue. She kneels down, singing into her microphone, to me. I reach up to touch her face...

The scene suddenly changes... liquefies... dissolves...

I'm at home, standing in the foyer of my parent's home. She is beside me, grumbling of course, but I squeeze her hand and the grumbling is replaced with a forced smile.

I'm speaking now, though just like at the bar the words don't make any sound. "Mom, Dad... this is Priss."

"Hello Priss," My mother says silently, smiling politely. She leans over and whispers to me, "Did she have to park her bike IN THE LIVING ROOM. You know, ON THE CARPET?"

My father appears out of nowhere, "So, uh... Ben's told us a lot about you. You like boomers, right?"

Priss's reaction is swift. She punches my father in the stomach. Silently, but hard.

"OOF!"

"Bastard!" Priss says, then storms off to find a beer.

My father takes a few minutes to recover. Red-faced and shedding tears of pain (or maybe joy?) he grins at me. Strangely, he seems pleased. "Well! That's quite a jab you've got there Priss. Say, would anyone like a drink?"

The scene suddenly changes... liquefies... dissolves...

Worn red leather.

Long brown hair twisting in the wind.

Brief flash of a red motorcycle brake light ahead of me.

The road. White dash lines blurring in the headlight as we cross over a bridge and sink into the neon wash of the city's embrace.

Riding side by side, cruising.

She turns to me... flashes a smile.

I reach out to her. I see the lightly tanned skin of her bare shoulder between my fingers, but I can't feel her. I want her to stop, to slow down, just for a moment, so I can ask her something.

The scene suddenly changes... liquefies... dissolves...

She is gone, and so is the night. I'm sitting on a park bench. A bright sunny day. A lake glitters in the distance. Children play on some swings nearby. A man walks up to me, wearing a leather jacket and jeans, hands in his pockets. He takes off his sunglasses. It's Leon. He shakes his head and grins at me.

"In your dreams, pal."

He's mocking me, but about what I'm not sure.

He sits down on the bench and lights up a smoke. He looks around at nothing trying to look cool. He eventually leans forward and starts to say something. I can't hear him, but then the meaning of the words starts to filter through, like someone talking under water.

"You know you haven't got a chance.

"Huh?"

"She's mine."

Ah. I get it now. Subtle. As only Leon can be. Now if only I could figure out a way to respond. I want to but I can't.

Leon leans over to me, gets his face up close to mine. He smiles, blows smoke in my face.

"Wake up."

One eye opens. Barely. Sunlight is streaming into the room.

My room mate is standing in the doorway.

"Hey Ben. Wake up dude. You're gonna be late for work."

"Mff... yah... fanks."

I pull the covers tight around me.

Wait for the snooze alarm...

The scene suddenly changes... liquefies... dissolves...

I'm at home again, seated at the dinner table with Priss and my mother and father. I'm trying to think of something to say, or rather, to think out loud.

"Um, sooo..."

I notice the look on my mother's face. She has questions. I open my mouth to interrupt. Too late.

"So Priss..." she begins, "Ben says that you might be a lesbian?"

Priss does an amazing spit take.

Astonished, I say the only thing a man could possibly say at a moment like that.

"MOM!"

My father is grinning again. "Is that so?"

Shocked even further, I say the only thing a man could possibly say at a moment like that.

"DAD!"

Priss does the only thing she can do at a moment like that, and takes a serious pull on her beer.

As always during my dreams, my subconscious mind is mired in mental molasses, and I somehow realize too late- again- that my mother has more questions.

"Well," she says, with an air designed to suggest she is merely on a quest for knowledge, "I read that whole thing on the internet recently--"

The molasses thins, a little. "Mom," I interject, "She's not gay!" I pause for a moment. "But she may be bisexual...

A wicked pain apparently shoots up my leg. I speculate a high rate of probability that it might have something to do with Priss stomping on my foot. And I say "apparently" because I can't physically feel the pain, yet something is telling me it is excruciating. So I reply in the only way a man in that much pain can.

"Hey! That hurt--"

My mother clearly still has questions, but Dad beats her to the next one.

"And what's all this about kangaroos? Do you like kangaroos Priss?"

Priss, who had been nursing her beer the entire evening out of respect for me, then guzzles the entire contents of the can, then opens another one (from whence it came I cannot say) and continues guzzling.

The I say the only thing a man can say at a moment like this.

"DAD!!!"

My mother puts down her utensils and casts a worried look my way.

"Honey, we're just worried you might be hooking up with... well, you now, a bad girl.

The mental molasses suddenly thickens, threatening to form a solid.

The beer guzzling woman at my side suddenly slams her empty beer can down, silencing the table. For some weird reason I can't see anything above her neckline. I start to ask someone to adjust the camera but then remember my voice isn't making any sound.

"Yeah, I'm a bad girl!"

Silence. The real kind.

"I kick Ben's ass every night at video games, take him for a ride on my bike, hang out with my gang, get wasted, and then we go back to my place and I tie him to the bed and we go at it like... like... like..."

I whisper into her ear, though why I'm whispering escapes me. "Rabbits."

She continues, "Yeah, like rabbits! That's right. Until 4 frikkin a.m. in the morning!!! She pounds a leather-gloved fist onto the table. "YEAH, I'm a bad girl!"

Only the sounds of cutlery lightly scraping plates can be... seen.

Visibly shaken by the outburst, my mother eventually summons the dignity to speak up. "That's nice." She turns to my father. "Isn't that nice dear?"

My father, who had been relegated to the periphery of my dream's vision suddenly comes back into view.

He looks nervous.

Just as suddenly as it appeared the dream slowly fades to nothing and darkness, like a shark swimming away just under the polished surface of black water.

I wake this morning with the same desperate feeling I'd had yesterday. The loose threads of my rapidly fading dream wanting to unravel as I blink at the bright sunlight peeking through the blinds. My conscious mind, desperately craving more sleep, half-heartedly grasps at each thread in a vain attempt to stitch it all back together into a picture I can hold on to, a memory. I smile to myself as the dream slips away one more time. Time to get up.

Brushing my teeth. I stare into the bathroom mirror and contemplate what little I could always retain of the dream. The most important part. Her.

I know she isn't real. She's just a character in a story, a two-dimensional collection of lines drawn with artful precision to resemble a beautiful woman devoid of the surface flaws we all have in the three dimensional world.

Rinse. Spit.

But when I stare into a mirror... am I not staring at a two-dimensional representation of myself? My reflection is still me, but it takes the same basic form that she does. In a sense, my reflection lives in the same kind of world that she does.

Where do I come up with this crap?

Rinse. Spit.

I stare into the mirror again. My tired brain staggers on, like a drunk at a party that doesn't know when to pass out.

No, she's not real, but how I feel is. And it doesn't seem fair. Am I a loser because of how I feel? Why should I care what other people think? Does it really matter that she's not real? Okay, so I'll never really meet her, but maybe I'll meet someone like her.

But that's not fair either.

What if the person I meet has more to offer than *she* does? And I turn her down or pass her by completely because I'm waiting for a fantasy girl that will never show up?

I study my reflection. I'm tired. I can't think about this anymore. I'm going to be late. My eyes wander over the reversed image, refocus at something at the back of the room. A rack of magazines and books wedged in between the bathtub and the toilet.

Turning away from the mirror, I look behind me. I take three steps and crouch down in front of the rack to flip through the selections.

Hey...

Kenichi Sonoda, Artworks 1983-1997.

How the hell did this get in here?

I take a moment to examine the cover for moisture damage. Seems okay, but I'd still like to know how it got--

"Hey man."

The doorway. My room mate.

"You're going to be late."

"Did you borrow this?" I hold the book out for him to see.

He looks at it like he might catch something from it.

"No way man. Hey, you better get rolling."

He turns and walks away.

He looked nervous.

Hm.

Starting from the back, I open the book carefully and flip through the pages, admiring the images.

"Sonoda-san, you are the master," I remark to myself out loud with a sleepy grin.

The inspection of my book continues until I arrive at page 20.

Ah yes, page 20. Top left corner.

Leaning back against the bathroom wall I study the image of Priss on her motorcycle. Sonoda-san took his time with this one, that's for sure. This pic is as good as it gets. Crisp lines, rich colors, the red leather, the flowing brown hair, a hint of mischief in that elusive smile. And those eyes.

Yeah, she's a boomer. Eh, whatever.

A drip from the faucet. I look up.

Centered perfectly, my reflection is staring back at me.

The book in my hands is also reflected in the mirror. Something in my tired brain says there is something odd about the image staring back at me, but I can't pick it out right away.

And then it hits me.

I look down at the book in my hands.

I look back at the mirror.

The book almost slips from my hands as I close it.

The beginnings of an adrenaline rush build in my gut as I glance at the image of Priss on the cover staring back at me. It looks like she's trying to wink.

I blink.

She's just a character. She's not real. And nothing will ever change that.

The adrenaline rush reaches my tired brain.

But what if...

I open the book slowly to page 20, and with trembling hands, place it flat against the mirror and count to ten.

The faucet drips. I can hear the TV down the hall.

I glance around at the empty bathroom.

This is stupid-

At ten, I lift the book gently off the mirror and look at the picture on page 20, top left corner.

Priss gazes back at me from her bike on her eternal ride.

I look into the mirror.

Idiot.

The adrenaline washes away.

I put the book back in my room.

Time to go to work.

The three-dimensional world does its best to console me as I drive to work, slapping me with a reality check with each red light, but I can't help thinking about what I saw in the mirror. Or what I thought I saw.

I park my car and step into the nine o'clock sunlight.

Still cluttered with the metaphysical possibilities of my intriguing yet stupid paradox theory (idiot idiot idiot...) my tired brain still maintains enough clarity to multi-task me across the street towards the first stop of my morning ritual.

One foot on the pavement.

And then it hits me.

A car.

Idiot.

Headlight shakes in the dying afternoon. The sunset's roar almost drowns out the sound of my ride. Colored bands drifting slowly like sleeping whales in an empty purple sea. I saw somethin' about that on the Discovery channel, I think.

Spinning rubber and red tail lights around me want to send me home, but I'm not ready yet. I don't want to set my feet back down on the ground. I don't want to stop this feeling. I can see the gray blur beneath me, and I can see the last orange rays reaching out to me across the dark water. But I don't want to stop, not just yet.

I don't know where I'm going tonight. Just need to clear my head I guess. People in my face today, yapping away. So full of shit. Why can't they just say what they really think? Wasting my time with their brilliant thoughts on stuff that just ends up depressing me. Wasting their lives worrying about crap that doesn't really mean anything. I don't need much. I don't want much. But why is it always so much work to get so little? And why's it so hard to keep what I fight so hard to get?

Sylia says I have a passion. I dunno. I like to sing, I like the feeling, I like to get up on stage. I like to hit that note just right. I like to hear the music behind me. I like to hear them all scream. I like the sound of empty beer bottles pounding on tables. I like to walk away and do it all over again next weekend.

But I didn't say love.

I like simple things. Complicated stuff bores me. I don't have the time. I've got places to go and stuff to do. I don't have Call Waiting or Call Answer or Call It A Day or Call Whatever. I don't even like to pick up the vidphone... unless it's my agent. Nobody ever calls with anything interesting to say. Just want to talk about what happened to them today. Same shit that happened yesterday, but different. I wish I knew someone who...

I wonder where you are. We still haven't met yet. Maybe you don't exist? Maybe I want too much? Maybe I expect too much? Maybe... shit. Too many questions. Now I'm boring me.

But I could pass you by on the highway, and we would never know. Or would we? Should we? Through your tinted glass and my shaded visor, could we tell?

Could I pick you out in a smoky crowd between sets? Would you come to see me play?

What makes you so special? Think you can save me? Save me from what? I don't need saving. I don't need to be changed. I don't need to see the light. I don't need much.

But someone to think about once in a while would be nice. Someone who thinks about me.

Now I'm smiling. I used to smile a lot. Okay, that's enough of that.

I place my hand against the tank. Top's getting cold. The sun is gone. Can't even see any clouds anymore. Time to head home I guess. The empty box under dirty street lamps that looks the same every night. Shit. I wish I could keep feeling this feeling all the time. Every minute. No one to tell me what to do, no one's ass to kiss. No one to try and change me.

Yeah, right.

Well, I hope I know you when I see you.

'Cause dreams just aren't enough.

I awake in strange surroundings feeling even more scattered than usual. The sun peeking through my blinds has been replaced with a dimly lit hall along with a silence I find disconcerting. But as always my dream is here threatening to fade to black if I dare turn my full attention upon it. Fleeting though it's presence might be, it comforts me as I contemplate my situation. I try to raise my head to look around but I'm held down by some unseen force. And then it hits me.

The pain.

Fade to black.

I'm dreaming again. I think...

My room mate is in my room looking for something.

The book.

He finds it and opens it.

I can't see what he is looking at.

He puts the book back. I can see his face. He seems disappointed, confused.

And nervous.

The scene suddenly changes... liquefies... dissolves...

The park bench. It's raining now. Clouds race by silently. Leon has his sunglasses on. He is speaking under water again.

"Hit by a car eh? That's no fun. But I did warn you. She's mine. She's my rock and roll dream. Why don't you just give up now, before something really bad happens?"

I try to speak, but I can't even move. Leon's tone of voice changes suddenly, almost sympathetic.

"Hey, but you look a lot better today. I think you're going to be just fine..."

I look at Leon. Bring my face up close.

I try to speak, but nothing happens.

I wake very suddenly. The room is lit now. No windows though. A quick look around... I'm in a hospital, in bed. My left leg is up in the air. It feels very heavy and it hurts. My right arm and head are wrapped in bandages. They hurt too, but not as much as my leg.

A nurse is beside me, checking something beside my bed.

"Yep, you're going to be just fine. Just fine."

The nurse smiles at me and leaves.

I close my eyes.

The scene changes.

I open my eyes. The bed has been changed so I'm lying flat now. I stare up at the ceiling. The rest of the room is a blur around me.

Hinges creak a little, rush of cool air. Someone walks into the room... a hint of gasoline wafts in with them. Boot heels tap on the smooth linoleum floor. A chair is dragged towards the bed. Something is tossed on the end of the bed landing on my left foot. A heavy coat?

And then it hits me.

My leg doesn't hurt.

And then, someone speaks. I guess I can hear people in this dream. Weird.

"So this is where they're torturing you eh?"

A woman's voice, low, kinda... gravelly. Familiar, but not.

"You don't look so bad. Hell, I've been banged up way worse than this."

I close my eyes, expecting the scene to change.

I open my eyes.

And look up into hers.

"You okay? You're not talking much."

"You-"

She smiles. That smile.

"Hey, you recognize me? Great. No one else around here seems to know who I am. Guess I'm not as famous in the real world eh?"

"You- You're- real?"

She looks at me like I'm crazy, then laughs. "Wow, what've they got you on anyway?" She taps the IV stand next to my bed.

I say the only thing a man can say in a moment like that.

"I dunno, but it's working. DAMN, is it ever working!"

She grins.

"Yeah, I'm real. But only because of you."

I stare at her numbly, waiting for that part of my brain that constantly calls me idiot to start working again.

"The book? The mirror? Remember?"

And then-

"No way! No effing way! You mean... it worked?"

She nods, then sits down on the edge of my bed next to me. I can feel her thigh against mine. All I can do is stare at her.

"Freaked me out at first," she says with a grin. "One minute I'm at Raven's getting a refill, next I'm in your bathroom."

"Really..." Somehow I'm forming sentences in this dream. "Yeah well, that would freak me out too."

"Just imagine how Pops feels."

I laugh.

She smiles that smile, again.

"So... wanna blow this popsicle stand?"

"Wha?"

She moves away from the bed. The corner of my eye tracks her as far as the closet. I hear hangars being shoved aside.

"You don't wanna stay in here forever do ya?"

I close my eyes. And wait for the scene to change, liquefy etc. etc.

Silence.

Damn. Just another dream.

"Hey, no time for naps. We've got lots to do."

I open my eyes.

She is leaning over me again, black motorcycle leathers and a spare helmet in her hands.

"Let's roll."

The scene... changes.

Nothing hurts.

Spinning tires and red tail lights around me want to send me home, but I'm not ready yet. I don't want to set my feet back down on the ground. I don't want to stop this feeling. I can see the gray blur beneath me, and I can see the last orange rays reaching out to me across the dark water. And I can feel her arms around my waist.

"Hey," she says, just above the noise of the bike.

I nod. "Yeah?"

"When we get back to your place, you gotta show me how you did that thing with the book and the mirror."

"Oh?" An old feeling grips me. Grasping at threads, fading, dissolving, unraveling. "You want to go- back?"

"No way."

Her arms wrap around me just a little tighter.

"I just thought you might like to meet my friends too."

"Oh! Yeah... that'd be cool."

I smile.

"But we don't have to do that right now," she says. "We've got lots of time."

And then it hits me.

"Say, Priss? How would you like to meet my parents?"

She laughs.

"In your dreams, fanboy."

Before I change lanes for the off-ramp that will take us home, I check the mirror. Centered perfectly in the vibrating silver glass is a figure. Blue jeans, leather jacket, sunglasses.

He has a book in his hands.

One of the pages is blank.

He takes his sunglasses off.

He looks nervous.