Western Flyer

Here I am in another house, dark, nondescript (meaning I'm so visually inert I cannot describe it, so my mind turns the lights down low, less for romantic effect than seeing and remembering defect), and of course I'm undressed. I'm undressed unaccountably a lot in my dreams, sometimes in public, when I'm much less embarrassed than I should be.

Okay, I better dress, because someone is here. I'm in a den of shadows and up front someone is knocking about. I think it's all right.

It's his house, after all. I must pass him to leave.

I say, when I do (he is not surprised I am there, nor annoyed, that I can tell), "I lived here when I was five. This was my grandmother's house. We called her `Mawya.' She was surly sometimes, but she had a real inferiority complex." It's okay to do something if you did it when you were five. If you're potty trained, I guess, and weaned.

I am now out front on the lawn, moving away from grandma's old house. But wait!

Where's the bicycle I rode in on? It was right there in grandma's den. Now it's gone. I remember not seeing it. Niki J is sure gonna be upset. It's her clunker, a white job with fenders, maybe even tassels out the handlebars. When I was young, I had a bike called a Western Flyer. It was from the Western Auto store on the north side of the square. It was one smooth ride, the Cadillac of two-wheelers, with even leg guards for rear riders. Niki J's dream bike, it had to be designed with the Western Flyer in mind.

I didn't move it from the den. Someone did.

That's as far as I can take this line of reasoning.