{ My Actual Dreams in the Twenty-First Century So Far: Celebrity Edition }
David V. Matthews
illustration by Sharon "Mama" Spell

jesus steeler - sharon 'mama' spell12 December 12 2000
I watch Saturday Night Live, which opens with a clip from a past episode. Werner "Colonel Klink" Klemperer (who died in real life a few days earlier) sits at a desk and introduces some sketch. After the clip ends, Michael McKean appears on-screen in a tight close-up. He says we've just seen Werner Klemperer, then sobs with grief for a full minute. I feel embarrassed for McKean.

14 January 2001
Peter Gabriel (in the form of a tall, fat hunchback with brown curly hair and a black turtleneck) gives autographs from a booth in front of my bookcase. The booth resembles Lucy's psychiatry booth from Peanuts. A large crowd of fans surrounds him. He signs my green autograph book with marks like those found in the Peanuts character Woodstock's word balloons. As I complain, his marks transform into "FOR DAVE—Peter Gabriel".

29 April 2001
A snowy day at a playground. Eastern European villagers drag Brendan Fraser away, thinking he's the Frankenstein monster. "They're going to hang me," Fraser says.
   "Goodbye, Fraser," I say, sitting in a swing. "You were always annoying."

3 August 2001
I lick the front of a sheet of LSD-laced stamps depicting Jesus. For five seconds I see a swirling purple vortex and hear loud distorted guitar.
   I scream, "I think I've just had an acid trip!" Then I see Jesus wearing a Steelers sweatshirt.
   "So, Jesus, why are people always stealing, torturing, and killing in your name?" I ask.
   He shrugs his shoulders.

6 October 2001
In my kitchen, Orson Welles gives an oversized cup of coffee to an annoying woman. I know he's inadvertently brewed it from the ashes of the dead husband she's been praising, and that the dream copies an episode of Night Court. I wipe a huge wet pile of ashes from the counter with a paper towel.

30 October 2001
Courtney Love floats above the stage during a concert on TV.
   She tells her audience, "Getting my diploma was the most difficult decision I ever had to make, because I fuck, I like to fuck." She doesn't specify which diploma she'd earned.

7 November 2001
A Rob Schneider movie. He and a light-haired woman share a seat outdoors. He undresses her and sees a patch of undulating black hair on her back.
   "I'm going to shave them tomorrow," she says, "But for now I want to feel them float in the breeze."

29 November 2001
At a Blockbuster Video, I notice a display asking customers to vote for Most Vacuous Film; the nominees include Rob Schneider's The Animal and an Adam Sandler movie. I visit the bathroom and see Emilio Estevez washing his hands. He makes some cracks about my sexual promiscuity.
   "Your family has scored quite a bit," I retort with his brother Charlie Sheen in mind.
   Estevez smiles and walks away.

22 December 2001
I meet Gwyneth Paltrow. She turns into a brownish-blackish cat. I chase her around downtown Pittsburgh's overpasses. I step into the Monongahela River, where she swims doggie-style in the distance.
   Next scene, indoors: some film society has caged her and plans to sell or kill her.
   "That's Gwyneth Paltrow, and she's turned into a cat," I explain with some panic to the director, trying to convince him to release her.

31 March 2002
I'm the young Keanu Reeves in a teen movie. I stand in profile facing my girlfriend, the young Demi Moore, on her porch, which resembles my real-life porch. Her bald, rich, snobbish father stands in the door between us and wants to know why he should let me date her.
   I tell him, "It's a perfect match: her big boobs, your money."
   "I can see you're not going no place," he says, quoting an earlier line of mine. He slams the door.

6 April 2002
Former Saturday Night Live cast member Terry Sweeney, the show's first openly gay cast member, starts stalking me—following me, touching me, etc. I elude him.
   As I walk down a wide alley I tell someone, "Terry Sweeney is harassing me. I don't want to sound anti-gay. Could this mean I'm gay?"
   Then I see, on a small portable black-and-white television with no sound, a live car commercial: a blonde woman in a Fifties-style dark gown sings something, then a pan to Terry Sweeney unexpectedly sitting in an open convertible. The singer looks shocked. Sweeney pulls out a black assault rifle. Before he can do anything, plainclothes cops with their guns drawn encircle him and drag him away as he mouths something I just know is devotion to me.

6 September 2002
I crawl around through the dirt behind a run-down house. From my worm's-eye view I see Debra Wilson, a cast member from the Fox show Mad TV, lying in a ditch, only the top right of her head visible. She pokes her head out of the ditch, and we kiss for a few moments.
   "Well, at least I'm kissing a black woman," I think.

13 September 2002
While the pop ballad "Ordinary Day" by Vanessa Carlton plays, a corporate representative with short blond hair enthusiastically describes in close-up the ways the company encourages adulterous affairs between its employees: "When the opportunity comes, and a woman falls in love with a man, why do you think we have a corn-dog night?"

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