Many Dreams from Many Nights after Many Different Meals: Part Fourteen

A History of Beautiful Women
I am in the school park behind my house in Decatur, Illinois. Oak Grove Park is a sand area and a merry-go-round and a swing set--a single swing set. And there is a slide. I forgot about the slide.

I am standing in this park and I am watching the parking lot. In the parking lot stands Dr. Hunter S. Thompson and actor/director/writer/producer/author/playwright Bruce Campbell. They are fighting vampires. And I don't mean vampires in the contemporary sense; these are bat-looking, flying, mean motherfuckers with manes. And they have big, big teeth. I forgot about the teeth.



Bruce Campbell has a torch and a kindo at his defense, a combination that he wields with none too much grace. He is outfitted in a black Hawaiian shirt with complimenting green and yellow flowers and black slacks. He is also wearing loafers, a watch, a wedding ring and glasses. Apparently he didn't figure he would be fighting vampires with Hunter S. Thompson today.

The good doctor has at his disposal the following amenities: a cross bow, a personal midget servant dressed in a white suit with red bow tie, a ready supply of wooden stakes ammunition, a hurricane (the drink, not the tropical storm). With his bucket hat, sunglasses, and cigarette held in place with ivory holder the manliest of men Dr. Thompson is swearing and fighting triumphantly.

"You filthy animals!" he screams as he misses a kill shot. The corpses of those that have fallen litter the gravel parking lot. It is a good day for the good doctor. Bruce Campbell is trying his best to hide under the cement tables in the park pavilion. Today is not the best day this 'jack-of-all-trades' has seen. Patrick Stewart is King Arthur and he is fending off the undead with his shield, hacking and stabbing valiantly. England's true king has seen worse than these wretches. I forgot to mention King Arthur. King Arthur was there the whole time.



While Thompson shoots at vampires, he leaves his drink resting on his midget servant's head. It remains balanced, never a drop being spilled. With each victory, the doctor takes a mighty swig of the rum drink. It is a bottomless vessel.

King Arthur tires of this wanton fighting, however, and turns his attention to Thompson's midget servant. Arthur sheathes Excalibur and picks up the pint-sized patron, holding him out in front of himself as if the midget were a freshly soiled baby. From my house, I can see that Arthur is leaving the mele and walking toward my house. I lose track of him when he descends the crest of the hill. I forgot to mention that I have been watching this from my window since I Thompson started yelling, and also that there is a pair of large hills at the base of the park.



When Arthur reappears, he is already in my back yard some how. The midget is vacant from his possession but he still has the hurricane. He stands on one side of the fence and I am on the other side. He is in my back yard, for some reason, and I am in the field behind the park. Holding the chalice of rum drink out in front of him as an offering, King Arthur asks, "Do you wish to know the secrets of the universe?"

It doesn't take me a second to answer, "Sure. But I also want your hurricane."

He relinquishes the hurricane and I take a long, slow drink. The mix has too much pineapple for my taste with far too little rum. And that's when the singing began.

The clouds went technicolor and opened up to a rainbow sky. Everywhere there were voices singing the verse from Genesis that starts "And the wind blew through the Garden of Eden". I have only read the Bible once in its entirety and I don't remember that passage at all. It doesn't matter though, because I am experiencing the most beautiful thing I will ever experience in my entire life. The sound becomes light. The light becomes color. The color becomes joy. I see the face of God. Excalibur is mine, and all is right with the world.

And then I wake up. I've got to pee. I am lying on the opposite end of my bed than when I fell asleep. And I hadn't done any drugs to promote such a psychotic change of place. What a waste of a religious experience.