Going Inside

There’s a church before me with neon lights depicting what looks to be the actual birth of Jesus.  The flashing bulbs outline a child coming forth from a neon womb, with neon men gathered about it, receiving the child.

Where am I?

A priest approaches me and says excuse me, young lady, can I come inside?  He has a strange seediness about him, not to mention the traces of a questionable smile.  What does he mean?  He’s the priest.  Why is he asking me…

I want to come inside.

What the fuck, I think.  How young am I?

I stare him in the eye and eventually he proceeds into the church, under the neon scene and into big wooden doors.

I’m on my bike now, it seems.  The seat feels nice between my thighs—wait, that’s a euphemism.  The seat feels arousing rubbing up against my pussy.  Why did I phrase it like that?  This must be a dream.  But I can feel it…

I start riding away because I don’t want to go into that church.  There might be another church I could go into, but not that one.  Not with that man inside and the neon bulbs depicting Jesus’ birth.  Like some post-apocalyptic Christian diner.

I’m riding fast along a footpath, not on the road.  The seat is rubbing against me hard now; I think I’m pushing down on it, working out what feels best.  This is better than before.  I feel better, now, at this point in the dream—if that’s what it is—better than before, when I was regarding that church.  Come to think of it, it didn’t even look quite like a church.  Not the way I imagine a church.  Only the wooden doors, really, resembled a church.  It was made of red brick and had a roof that any old house might have.

How am I thinking, in a dream?

I ride faster and faster and once in a while I stand up and glide on the bike and the air resistance creeps up my legs and into my thighs and it feels like menthol on warm, wet skin and though my eyes are closed as I glide and moan I’m not scared because I cannot get hurt here.

I feel something like this during the daytime hours, too; I’m not going to die anytime soon, so it’s okay—I can take some risks.  I’m not sure how I know that.  Maybe I don’t’—but I feel it.  There’s things I need to do first.  Maybe this is a pivotal karma cycle or something; maybe I’ve been around and around for ages, learnt many things, but this cycle is where I become a Buddha.  Maybe I always was and this is just the end of a game.  Maybe, maybe, maybe.

Eventually I come to a school.  It’s empty and I see that it’s a girls’ school and realise, somehow, that it must be school holidays.  I’m disappointed because I want to see the girls in their uniforms, their little skirts and all that innocence that glows from them so exuberantly.  I feel hungry for something.

The school tells me that I can come inside, so I do.  I ride furiously about the grounds and all of a sudden there are people up against the fence that runs along the perimeter—lots of people.  I’m pedaling manically while they watch, amused; they’re like a rodeo crowd or something and although I’m conscious of them I’m not self-conscious of them; and in a way I enjoy having them there and go faster and faster, over the concrete basketball court, over the oval, around the portable classrooms—each place feels subtly different and I thrive off of the diversity of terrain.  Even the imperfections—especially the cracks and bumps in the concrete where tree roots are breaking through—send my body shivering.  I’m performing and it’s making me wetter for some reason.  But I can’t stop.  I have to keep going.

The crowd, I notice, have grown serious.  They are pensive, waiting.  Do they want to see me crash?  Should I have gone into the church?

Fuck it.  It’s too late now.  I can’t stop.  The seat feels like it’s drenched and what I’d normally experience as an uncomfortable wetness down my thighs I now find myself immersed in.  I think of wetting myself as a child and the distant feeling of not having to feel embarrassed for doing it; of almost finding a freedom in that feeling.  I think about waking up in a patch of cold, smelly urine, but dismiss the thought because it’s too late, I’ve already done it.  It drips away as I ride.  The people don’t react at all.

I imagine the girls coming back to school after holidays.  But they’re not learning, they’re not in classrooms.  They’re out at play, mingling and splitting into little groups.  The little chances they have between regimented institutional schedules, where what people call chemistry can flourish.  I was a girl like that, once.

I come to a stop in the middle of the school oval; I scream but nothing audible comes out.  I clutch the bike frame as it falls sideways and the both of us fall awkwardly to the grass, me clinging to it in ecstasy.  I am crying now, too.  I am neither happy nor sad; I am now dripping wet with tears and juices, but I desire nothing and have no fear of anything.

Even the man at from the church is a harmless memory.  Even his words: Can I come inside?

Maybe I’m understanding something.  Maybe I’m…

How lucid am I, really?

What is this?