Nice Nice & I are driving across the roofs of 5- and 6-story parking garages in a small town that we are playing in. The van shoots over the side of one roof and comes crunching down on the next one. At some point, we find that there's a big wall on the far side of this one parking garage, so we can't keep driving on roofs. We go to the bottom hoping that it won't matter that we don't have some ticket or something to exit.

We go to a hardware store and are looking around the aisles --- I think one of us is peeing or something. I run into Andy Devos, who is happy to see me. He is my friend from childhood that I met at Beachmont Christian Camp (BCC) and started my first band ever with. He says he has something serious to ask me, and in the middle of asking, he says, very casually, "Are you black?" to this old, small man of indeterminate race who happens to walk by us at that moment. The old man, who has a light brown hat on, like the kind of hat a taxi driver might wear, he looks very perplexed and says softly, "Excuse me?" and Andy says, completely calmly, "Oh, I was talking to my friend about a girl." The old man steps away very confused, and Andy smiles at me.

Nice Nice and I are practicing at a giant high school. A famous producer and engineer is the gym teacher, who lives in the school with his wife. We have our gear set up in a classroom. The gym teacher is not really paying attention to us, he's reading a newspaper, sitting with his feet up at a desk in the classroom. He off-handedly tells us that we're a really racist band. I try to object, but he casually insists that I'm just unwilling to admit my racism. We argue for a while, until I finally ask, "What can I do to make our band less racist?" He tells me that we need to try and play some funkier stuff. Jason and Mark and I make google eyes at each other and smile, and start playing some really funky shit. We play funky shit all the time, I guess we just hadn't done any at this practice, but once we get into the funky stuff, the gym teacher sucks his teeth and tells us we're on our way to being a non-racist band.

Then the gym teacher's wife informs me that the principal is looking for me. I try to tell her that I am cool because I don't even know who the principal is or what he looks like. Then a parade of people busts into the gym, and the principal is driving a little slow-moving go-kart at the front, waving to the crowd that is walking in around him. During the commotion I take off to the far side of the gym where there is a bar and bathrooms. The bathrooms are at the top of some bleachers and there is now some long lines forming to get to them. I hang out there and watch some sports news which is on the TVs above the bar. They are playing some big news story about how some grizzled, almost sea-captain-looking football player with white hair and busy white eyebrows punched another player in the face after scoring a touchdown. They keep showing this footage of the puncher standing at the edge of the end zone, and the other guy on his knees in front of him, pawing at the puncher's stomach, when the puncher leans back in slow motion and belts him. Then they use some new camera technology to show what the scene would look like without football helmets or uniforms.

Waiting near the front of the bathroom is a boy and a girl who are brother and sister. The girl is pretty hot. The boy is a little younger than me and the girl is probably just out of grad-school. They are arguing, but not very passionately. Apparently, the girl accidentally killed somebody during her medical school studies but won't admit it, and I don't think anybody knows about it besides her brother, and now, me. I tell her that I think it's pretty fucked up to kill somebody and not admit it, and she starts crying and tells me I don't know what it's like. I apologize and tell her she's right, but that she might get in trouble later if she doesn't admit it now.

Elizabeth is using a big illustrated picture in a book about Indians to show some kids across the room what she thinks the party we're both at should be like. In the picture, the Indians are naked. I try to stop her from showing the book to them but she is persistent, basically ignoring me. I slap her, and then realize that everyone across the room saw me do it. A young Latino cop slowly makes his way over to where I am to arrest me. He is very calm --- eerily calm. I pick up Elizabeth and try to tickle her. I don't even register what her expression or reaction is, I am too busy watching the cop coming towards me and trying to cover up the slap, like I had just been roughhousing with her or something. I can tell he doesn't buy it by his serious, calm demeanor.

I'm at Jake's parents' house, it's really late at night and there are some relatives over. I have to pee really badly, I think I may have been drinking, and I go into this bedroom where two little girls are in their pajamas in a bed. On the other side of the room there is a toilet but no stall, and I go over there to pee. Right adjacent to the toilet, almost touching my right arm, is a hamper full of dirty clothes. Looking down, I catch myself peeing into the hamper by accident, and correct myself, but it somehow happens a second and third time. I pretend that I have pretended to pee into the hamper just in case the little girls have noticed, but I am not sure if they have. It turns out that they have and that my little trick did not fool them. I feel ashamed.

There's this candy called TOMMYBELL that's made by a guy named Tommy Tommydough and his wife who is Betsy Blass. Her nipples are elongated towers of glass, 2-4 inches long, and periodically new little pillars push through the skin around the nipple, drawing no blood. Tommy breaks off these new pieces and makes the candy along with some kind of similar liquid ingredient from his scrotum, but I didn't see what that was.

I have a little bike that I'm riding around "downtown Baltimore" during rush hour. There are so many cars. I have never rode around on a bike on these roads but their names are really familiar, and I think I can get to school by taking MLK past Russell and turning onto the next street. There are so many cars and people out. On my way up a little hill, I spot Nazie walking up the street in a fancy red sweater. I know I should say hi but I am going to be late for a show at school. She sees me so I have to say hi anyway, and we talk for a while.

I get to school and there is a festival going on. Shawn Phase and the Nice Nice guys are there because we are all in a band together--- but I don't really remember talking to any of them. We are playing third. First up is this Canadian emcee who is kind of popular with rap nerds. I try to like his music but it's not very exciting to me. Space 11, a local band that was semi-popular in Baltimore when I was in middle school, plays second, and John Mayer is their singer. They play for a very long time and all the school kids love them. They're really trippy and I'm kind of into it, but their keyboard player is almost 40 and I don't understand that. We play last but I don't remember how that went. I pack up my gear and push it to the side of the wall where people are sitting. I ask a black dude with dreads and glasses if he might move his rocking chair a little to the left so I could push my keyboard stand all the way against the wall. He complies without saying anything. I take my laptop with me but leave the rest of the gear and go home even though there are still people at the show. One of the people there is Katie Rose.

I have rented some of my equipment and so I take it back to the school store, which is down on the first level. The school is Carroll Manor Elementary, only slightly enlarged, and the students are all the same students I attended Carroll Manor with who would also later go to my high school, although they are now college-aged. I return 3 things to him, among them a mouse and some weird internet box to the guy at the school store – he is maybe forty years old. He seems unhappy that the mouse has the sticky remnants of a removed sticker on the top of it. I ask him if I can rent all the same pieces for 7 days and he says yes, so I pay him to get the things back.

The next evening we have to do the same thing, play the same show at the same place. I am surprised that the opening emcee is beginning his set with the exact same song he began it with yesterday, and I assume he is going to play the exact same set and I decide that, for this, he sucks. However, his third song is a slow, Radiohead-like slow jam and Jason B. comes up and tells me that this guy is terrible, and I don't feel so bad about not liking it either. While the second band is playing, I start packing up my gear. Shawn Phase walks by me and he has cut his hair, but he doesn't say anything to me. I put the gear against the wall again but forget to take my laptop with me.

I go to homeroom, then a bell rings and I go to class. There are folders on most of the desks so I know someone is sitting there. I try to find a desk with no folder. First I try sitting across from Kristen Lowe, but I notice that somebody else's folder is there, so I get up and look around again, eventually finding Andy Sanders motioning for me to sit next to him. I look inside of the desk and it's full of art supplies and tiny colored light bulbs. I realize I haven't done my homework, and thinking about it, realize that I never do homework because I have stopped going to math and science classes entirely, and that I only go to English where the homework is pretty easy and I can usually do it before class starts in my seat. I am the only person who is missing these classes every time but I am getting away with it because everyone is very busy and focused on school all the time, teachers and students.

Nice Nice and I are driving down some barren road, in a canyon or valley and surrounded by green fields. We see a giant eagle swoop down and carry a man off in the distance. We start talking about guys with parachutes and how many of the people we've seen falling out of the sky have parachutes. I argue that you rarely see a guy fall out of the sky with a parachute, and that it's more normal to see a guy just falling, even though I know I am wrong.

Parking in the mall parking lot, a midget security guard named Jose waddles up to my rear passenger-side window and hits it twice with his nightstick, deliberately breaking it. I get out and yell at him and call him a "motherfucker," and he calls me drunk and tries to fight me. I'm definitely not drunk but I did just drink a bunch of alcoholic drinks, so I back down and use my cell phone to call 911. There are a bunch of girls in my car – Elizabeth and some of her friends – and I ask Elizabeth to go inside the mall and get me a bunch of hamburgers to fix up my BAL in case the police try to give me a test. On the other end of the phone line, I can hear burly police officers laughing and fooling around. They eventually do talk to me, but the chance of help seems slim.

The first part was a couple scenes from SECRETARY, with nothing significant changed about them.

The tennis courts at Carroll Manor Elementary are lakes, and there are yellow structures made of tubes under the surface. A bunch of large creatures with a mix of human and animal characteristics are hopping around. I angrily accuse some kids of trying to trick me by telling me they are "animals." "They are not animals!" I say, "They are something else! Tell me what they are!"

There is some festival going on in the cafeteria of a school. Bands play on stage and beside them there is a table with two commentators who are doing a Spanish broadcast of the performances for Mexico. I don't know the guy who has to play first but he's friends with some of my friends, and he asks me if he can use one of my instrumental songs for his set. I say OK, and sit near the front of the audience with my laptop, which is plugged into the stuff on the stage by a really obvious thin cable. The musician gets on stage and pretends he is playing the song, but it seems obvious to me that the song is mine, and that my laptop and that visible cable blatantly have something to do with the set. The audience applauds loudly and the musician grabs the microphone to thank a few people. I am not one of them. He concludes when the one song is over, and I ask some people standing around me if they think it's fucked up that he didn't thank me on the mic when he thanked other people. No one seems to care, and since I don't want to sound bitter or weird, I shut up about it.

When the show is over, everybody's eating in this cafeteria. I can see Elizabeth and all of her friends a few tables in front of me. I am by myself. Tom S., the A&R guy who I haven't talked to in quite a while, sits down next to me and starts talking to me about some music plans. Then Kiley, who is eighteen, comes over and puts her arms around me. I ask Tom if he can hold one on second while I go take care of something else and he agrees, but tells me to be real quick because he doesn't have a lot of time. Then I pick up Kiley and put her on top of Tom, who is sitting with his back against the cafeteria table and leaning back, and whom I know is married, and she rests her head on his chest and closes her eyes. Tom doesn't freak out and I am relieved, so I leave.

I go to my house and my mom tells me that I didn't wrap up some Krispy Kreme donuts like she asked me to the night before. I get a little mad and ask her why that even needs to be done. She wants me to put saran wrap around each donut and put it in the freezer. She's got a headscarf on and she's cleaning the house intensely. I blow it off and go out the door to get my sister's car. The car is at a corner that doesn't exist in my neighborhood, and it is bigger now, and it's black. Tom is laying down in it with Kiley sleeping on his chest under a purple knit blanket. I don't know what to say to Tom and he disappears. I move the blanket and find that Kiley has no shirt on. I wake her up by pinching her and she tries to put her arms around my neck again. She says she wants to hang out, and I tell her that I have to do some dumb thing for my mom and probably can't be out of the house for too long, but that I will drive her home. She thinks that's an OK idea. I ask how long it takes to get to where she's staying and she says about an hour. I know she's probably giving me a way low estimate and feel stressed. I don't know if I can be gone for three hours. I try to hint that she should find a different way home but she makes it clear she doesn't know anybody here. I decide I will take her home, so I reverse the car back down the street, to the cul-de-sac at the end of Farmfield Court, down the driveway of the house the Alhuwalia's used to live in, which now connects to Stansbury side of Manor Road, where the roads are really steep and there are massively tall trees crowding the sides of the road. We reverse far enough and I try to put the brakes on but the car keeps going backwards. I am afraid another car will come around the corner and hit us. It is hard to keep the car on the road because I can barely see around the trees. I am really worried but I calmly explain to Kiley that this sometimes happens in this car. I change the car to Drive while it is still moving but we don't stop, and we're reversing up a hill now. There's a ton of mud all over the road just up the hill, more than enough to get stuck in. I put on the emergency brake and shift the car to Park and try to steer us up against the leaves and mud on the side of the road, but the car keeps moving, and to avoid going all the way off the road, I spin the wheel and the car spins and starts moving forwards up the hill, into the mud. Kiley is obviously freaked but is not wigging out yet. The car hits the mud and keeps going, up the hill, where the road narrows and the mud deepens.

It's Halloween, I'm in a large amusement park that's filled with mostly kids my age. I am looking for somebody but I am late for a show I need to play with Mark and Jason Nice Nice. It's late. I am walking through the crowded streets and eventually I get to the venue, which is a total college-rock venue--- big building, long bar at the back of the room, way-too-wide and way-too-deep chuch-hall-style stage with curtains. We get on stage and I start talking to the audience, and we start playing, when I realize I haven't hooked up any of my gear. I pick up my unplugged mixer and show it to Jason, who makes a face like, "Uh oh." I motion for them to keep playing and I begin to attempt to set up the mixer, which I am supposed to connect to a giant machine that is behind us. The machine is my instrument, and it looks kind of like the Art Factory guy's orgasm-having machine from THE HOLY MOUNTAIN. It makes a huge loud humming noise, and when my mixer is plugged into it, each channel on the mixer captures somebody's thought and loops it. I can bring up the fader on each channel to bring up the volume on each thought, but as the volume of each channel is raised, the machine emits a different hum, like the sound of a swarm of bees, or of a bunch of waves. I pull up the volume on a loop of a girl's voice talking about how much traffic there is.

I'm at a big party in a big, ultramodern dorm. Justin Timberlake and I have just met and are wandering around together when we walk through the open door to what is obviously some girl's room. We both casually, but somewhat awkwardly, make it clear that we're not going to let the other guy fuck us in the ass, then we start making out. I am surprised at how fun it is, and how Justin's back and ass feel kind of like a girl's, then I realize that's probably what I feel like to him, too. After a while this girl Liz, who I went to high school with, comes in. It turns out it is her room. She clearly wants to get in on the action but acts like she doesn't. She says she is going to go find her friend Diana and come back, obviously trying to make sure we stay in the room without making it look like she cares too much. After she exits, Justin and I leave the room, too. When we come back, Liz and Diana are embracing and completely spazzing out. I tell Justin that since I can't do it to him I am going to do it to these girls. I try to bite their thighs but they both have jeans on. I take off one of the girls' jeans and find that her vagina is an unusually long and slim opening and also off-center on her abdomen. I go down on her anyway.

In at least 3 different scenarios, Elizabeth tells me she's sleeping with a guy named Greg. I wake up after each one and try to go back to sleep to have a different dream so I can write about that instead. At one point, I'm in a school that is also a mall, and I'm not sure if I'm going to graduate with everyone else. I sneak out of an assembly of some kind and spot Geoff, and I tail him to a cramped boutique where he disappears behind the counter. I figure that he works there, and am disappointed. I don't get a chance to say anything to him. I make my way to the food court, which is full of people coming and going, all of them students. I see Elizabeth, with her hair dyed dark black, and extra makeup on, sitting at a table in a little mall sushi restaurant, facing the food court. The restaurant is elevated above the area that I am walking. Some big dude is sitting with her and his back is to me. I walk around and try to catch her eye, but for some reason I do not ascend the ramp and go talk to her directly. I can't tell if she sees me or not. I go back to the store where Geoff works and sneak into the back room. I call Elizabeth on my cell phone over and over but she doesn't answer.

The current Sike Trike is doing a stage play, directed by Kevin. I'm in the audience, and the playhouse is very small and very dark and hardly anyone is there. To my surprise, Kevin is barely in the play. His main role seems to be facilitating the shitty special effects, which entail him, dressed in dark colors, hanging from the rafters with one hand while dangling props on strings down in front of the actors. After the play is over, I feel angry. The entire audience and cast, including me, gets on a school bus. I sit in the back and try to tell Kevin the play was horrible, but we are both too distracted by the few badass young girls that were forced to go to the play for school and are riding this bus to their homes in rural Phoenix, MD.