said the fish to the butterfly

do you choose to
stumble through a
fog or freely fly

are the heights of
soaring real or
my hand in yours

is the unfettered forgoten
moment what you
choose or am I

Night Visit

Most of the time, I can let dreams go, no matter the subject matter. However, probably due to the nature of the dream I had last night, I can not get it out of my head. It was one of those dreams that feel so real that you feel like you need to call the other person to make sure they are ok or inquire if they dreamed it too and perhaps it wasn’t a dream after all. Luckily, I am sure this dream was in fact a dream, and most of the time, I don’t put any stock in dreams—at least outside the subconscious mind crap. Nor do I think this dream means anything either, but I can’t quite shake it, so I thought maybe if I share it, it would flitter away. The names have been changed as the people in the dream are ones most of us know and love.
Characters: Me, Brandon, I have not be changed, obviously
Dean
Shane—Dean and Shane are boyfriends
Chris—Chris is Dean’s best friend
The dream starts with Shane and me in one hotel room and Dean and Chris in another. Even though the dream has just started, I am aware and filled in on all the details leading up to this moment. Dean has been upset about his age, although we are all the same age we are now. He is also sick, that is one of the details that has left me since waking. I think he had some type of cancer in the dream, but I don’t quite recall. Either way, the disease has not yet begun to make him overtly sick (and no, it wasn’t HIV, there wasn’t any emotion around the sickness, it was familiar, and I am nearly pen-pals with cancer). The four of us all know we are there to be with Dean as he commits suicide. (Told you this was troubling to me…)
Anyway, somehow the hotel room Shane and I are in is directly across from the hotel room of Dean and Chris. We are on one of the upper floors of the hotel. There is a little breezeway or sidewalk between the two, but no more than eight to ten feet. It is night out. Both rooms have huge, full wall windows that face each other. Shane and I stand pressed against our window, holding hands, staring at Dean who is standing at the other window, smiling sadly at us. Chris is behind him, head down, dreading what he has to do. No words are exchanged; everything is said through our eyes. You can physically feel and almost hear the unspoken “good-byes” and “I love you’s.”
After what seems like an eternity and countless, wordless conversations back and forth between the windows, Dean acknowledges that it is time, and Chris reaches over and draws the dark curtain, shutting off our view. Even though Shane and I can’t see through the curtain, we know what’s going on. In the dream, we somehow see the events of the other room in our minds. Chris stands aside and Dean stand up on a chair, slips a noose over his head and then the chair is gone and Dean hangs himself. We can’t see in our minds what happens next, but we wait, because we know the plan we spoke of before. We know that Chris waits until he is sure it’s over, then removes the noose from Dean’s neck and places him at the window once more. Moving beside the window so he won’t be seen, Chris slowly pulls the curtain, uncovering the window once more.
The dream zooms up on Dean’s torso. His eyes are blank, there is a limp half smile on his face, and his skin in pale and clammy looking. Shane and I continue to hold hands and draw closer to each other as we stare at Dean’s lifeless face, wishing we could remember him only as he was before as he said goodbye at the window instead of how he is now. Somewhere out of sight, Chris draws the curtain shut again, ending our last view of Dean.
Shane and I quietly try to sooth one another and fall asleep.
I wake up.

A Strong Constitution

Was it Kanye West that said he knew it that times were rough because he could only afford ten karat gold toilet paper? Maybe not, but it was someone of his ilk that said something equally asinine. Well, the financial turbulence has affected the Witt-Hinton home as well. However, we are fortunate. We simply have discovered that we have fully maxed out credit cards of which we can’t pay the balance. We are able to pay our mortgage, do a few fun things during the month with friends and eat at home most of the time. Beyond that, we are finally learning to live within our means. Which means, that once we finally get everything paid off, except for the mortgage, we will be in good shape. That means, by the time we are fifty or so, we will be good to go.
While I hate the whole bale-out this, bale-out that ideology (things come and go—let ‘em), I do enjoy seeing large corporations struggling. It makes me feel like they experience some of my pain—of course, they pass their pain right along to us, so that doesn’t work out so wonderfully, but still…
I have worked out at Bally’s Total Fitness for years. I have an amazing lifetime deal where I pay less than $15 a month for the rest of my life to use any of there gym anywhere in the country. That being said, I guess I can’t complain too much. However, things have been getting a little hairy as of late. One of the first cuts they have made has been their custodial staff. I didn’t realize just how much they did before. The other day, the hot tub was a bright Shrek green, although that was probably a chemical imbalance—hopefully. I opted to not relax in such a fashion that day. For a couple days in a row, men apparently forgot that bowel movements were supposed to go in the bowl and not on the lid—I waited ‘til I got home. When you sit on the tile benches in the sauna, you slip a little due to the algae (a.k.a. slime)—I just pretend it’s a ride. When I stepped into one of the shower stalls last week, I almost stepped on a huge swollen corn nut. While I was minorly grossed out at someone eating (and spitting) corn nuts in the shower, I bent down to pick it up and throw it away. When my hand was less than six inches from grasping the faux-corn nut, my brain caught up with my eyes and my stomach began to gurgle. There was not the harmless, overly praised corn nut as I had so naively been misled. Lying mere centimeters from my feet, within inches of contact with the skin of my finger tips, lay an entire, yellow at one end, brown at the other, several millimeters thick, half-inch long, curved, diseased, old man toenail. I quickly vacated the shower and (shockingly) was successful in my attempt to keep my lunch from vacating my stomach. Awh, how I miss the day of free flowing credit and workouts without snack disguised human appendages. If you feel the Lord subtly leading you to send money to cover the cost of a tetanus shot, I will take money orders or cashier checks. No personal checks, please. Cash or Ricky Martin porn (or Dean Cain) also accepted.
Side note: Download, Upload, or Free Load: Fuck You, by Lily Allen. My new favorite song. Awesome. You’ll laugh and sing along or be horrifically offended, and sore when you have to pull a stick out of your ass.