there had been a great flood the pool became the lake became a great murky sea; whitened trees were left some 60 feet up the opposite hillside after it receded later, i was childlike again but able to maintain a grip on my own authenticity and sexuality and just honest emotional presence, without succumbing to all the jealousy and macho bullshit--there was this girl named Lala (pronounced Layla) Bayaya (pronounced I don’t even know how)--and we had watched movies and exchanged post-it notes with our numbers, and I woke up the next morning in a hotel room where “house with people in it” was happening--whatever, there were a lot of details, but what I’m thinking now is if I could have been like that *back then* when I *was* a kid, who knows where and who and what I would be right now. So but in the middle—that’s the part I came here to tell you. Megan had decided to secretly go to the parking lot where the buses were leaving for the protest, because she knew I wasn’t going to give her permission. I caught up with her there, just as she was about to board, took her aside by the elbow, “we need to talk,” etc. Some organizers were there. Two black ladies and a white lady. I got into an argument with one of the black ladies about whether or not this (current situation) was like AIDS. She said it was. I said it wasn’t because you couldn’t get AIDS just by standing next to someone. But that’s not what she was talking about. She said it’s *exactly* like AIDS and she was talking about some other aspect of it. Then the white lady broke in, saying something about, “And if we want *people to support us* etc etc...” while casting a meaningful, warning glance at the black lady (because she didn’t want the black lady to be too mean or rude and thereby turn people (like me I guess) away from the cause), and she started telling me this whole long calm historical story about the background of why we were there in the parking at that time, and it went on and on and on and I wasn’t even listening anymore and at one point I finally just said, “I’m sorry, your story’s too long” and I turned back to deal with Megan, who was still insisting that she should get to go. I said no, and she started pushing past me with arms and legs, but I kept her there, and she turned into a black boy, with an earnest face and long lean body and questioning eyes, and in my dream-brain the change didn’t even register, and I was still resisting the arms and legs easily enough, holding her (him) down while saying, “How are you going to do this without endangering me and my children?” And I guess that’s the question, isn’t it? The as-yet unanswered question at the heart of a ton of this heartbreak. The answer should be obvious, but it isn’t.