CEX SUB CON

I join this band. Zach Hill has apparently moved to Baltimore and plays drums for these other kids, one of them looks a lot like Steve Malkmus. I'm gonna play guitar in this band. We play a show at a bowling alley/arcade where the celing is really, really low. It's dark inside, smoky-- I think I've seen this exact venue in a different dream, but never in real in life. We're playing this show but I've never rehearsed with them. I'm confident about it anyway. We start playing this song when for some reason everyone else in the band stops and starts playing something doofy-- like "Happy Birthday," but not exactly "Happy Birthday," but like that. I get bummed out. After the show I get on this ride with some girl, a little car that goes really fast down this long lane in the arcade-- really long, way too long to be in a building--- and you hold a little plastic gun and shoot different faces and targets that are against the left wall. When you hit the faces in the right places, little plastic eggs full of candy or toys come out of one of those hen coin-op machines at the end of the lane. The girl and I ---something about her reminds me of Janis from MEAN GIRLS--- grab as many eggs as we can hold in our hands after getting off the ridiculously long ride. I see some of the band kids cleaning up their equipment and decide that I've made up my mind to quit the band.

Somehow, the back patio of my parents' house is right outside of this venue, and all the band kids are sitting there. I tell them I'm not going to play with them anymore, and start walking up towards my parents' garage. One dude, who reminds me of my old friend Kevin, is really nice to me about it, calling out to me, saying something that I don't really acknowledge.

I go back to the front of the venue somehow. I'm standing there, talking with that girl I shot the plastic gun with and her friend. Suddenly I'm aware that Mr. Kachurak, my eleventh-grade Spanish teacher who kind of resembeled The Penguin, is looking for me. I open up the door that I am leaning on, the door to a NYC-style walk-up apartment building, and I duck in the tiny lobby of the building. He starts opening the door so I book up the stairs. The staircase is really narrow and I'm sure there's not going to be another way out up here, and he's not going to just stop pursuing me.