Meme Journal

In the dream, we are walking through labyrinthine corridors at a small college east of here, searching for the auditorium. We finally find it, but when we walk in, it is more like an enormous barn or ag center, with rough unfinished walls and dull dirt floors.

We sit in our front row seats--frayed lawn chairs--and the house lights dim. A hush falls as the main attraction is lowered to the stage on guy-wires. He's billed as the last long pianist, but his instrument resembles a cross between a harp and the sail of a small boat. As he descends, his assistants--two squat women in drab custodial uniforms--begin to play the National Anthem. It is halfway over before I realize that everyone is standing, the entire barn reverberating in a massive chorus. I have been sitting stock-still, entranced by the stubby and inexpert finger-plucks of the two squat women, thinking I could easily be the next last long piano protegé. 

Immediately, the older black man beside me becomes enraged at my lack of patriotism, and says so, firing tiny flecks of chaw-spit from his mouth. I launch into a lengthy explanation of my hard day at work (babysitting a neighbor's iguana) and my well-deserved exhaustion--how I just finished watching six hours of National Geographic (Goes Wild!) before the show--while, unbeknownst to me, my father approaches the long pianist to make a request. The next thing I know, I am at center stage, singing an African-ish acapella into a bulbous phallic microphone, with the older black man hyping me to my left, and the squat female assistants backing me up on hand drums.

As I reach the finale, Merritt Moseley approaches the stage with his infant daughter, and I drop to my back and hump the air emphatically as the crowd erupts. At least that's what I hear. I can't imagine anyone could doubt my patriotism after such an act, but as I return to my lawn chair, blushing, I hear my mother screaming "Let's see you do any better" at the restless jeering crowd behind her.