The Swingers's BBQ (5 of several): Dark side of swingers.

At some point during the night, my friend was passing by the swinger lady and someone came up to her and was like, "So where's Maria?", and the swinger lady was like, "She wasn't invited. She broke the rules, she got too emotionally attached."

The Swingers's BBQ (4 of several): Entrance, completed.

I forgot -

When I entered and got my wristband, the swinger lady looked at me and was like, "Did you bike up here?", and when I said yes, she was like, "You're all sweaty, it's perfect."

Then, when I went to go to the bathroom, I was waiting forever, and then the bleached blonde rough-looking lady in the latex came out, and she saw me there waiting and apologized for being in there so long, "But I was freshening up," she said.

"I should probably freshen up too," I was like, "I biked up here and got all sweaty. When [the hostess] saw me, she was like, 'Perfect!'"

"Take a shower, champ," she said, and she lightly patted my ass as she went to go by me in the hallway.

The Swingers's BBQ (3 of several): Entrance, continued again.

After that, I start talking with the swinger guy, and I pull the jug of sangria I had made up out of my backpack, and he says to go put it on the deck table or in the kitchen, and I follow some people up the deck to go inside, and throw it on the table and then go inside to see what it's like, and also to find the bathroom since I need to piss.

Inside, there's this giant swing set with a harness on it, and blue and red tinsel boas draped atmospherically down the side of the room, and to the side of the door right when you enter there's a bowl of condoms, with a cartoon condom with a crazy happy toothy smile behind it to draw your attention to the bowl.

Also, on the counter opposite the swing, there's a small black and white tv set, and though I couldn't see a camera anywhere, it was facing the swing set and showed the swing set, so people in it could watch themselves.

"I haven't seen that swing in months!", someone ahead of me says.

I then asked someone where the bathroom was, and they said 2 doors down on the left, but that was a room the entire floor of which was covered in air mattresses, and the door to the right was the same, so I backtracked to the 1st door on the left, which was the bathroom.

The Swingers's BBQ (2 of several): Entrance, continued.

When I went into the yard, the swinger lady puts a black wristband on me.

"Is this so I'm over 21 so I can drink?"

"No," she was like, "It's because someone here knows you."

The Swingers's BBQ (1 of several): Entrance.

So, on Saturday night I went to the swingers's barbecue.

It was like 8pm at night and I rode my bike up there and locked it out front, and as I was doing this, I see this one heavier mid-30s nerdy black guy who I recognize from the film series in black jean shorts and a black collared shirt walking up to the metal door-grate thing between buildings that goes back to the backyard (he's more BDSM than swinger), and with him are a mid-40s white couple who look a lot older since they're so rough, and they're both in latex; she in this tied-up leather top thing with fat hanging out (including a roll on her lower back where a tattoo is), which makes her bleached blonde hair stand out, and him in this rubber wifebeater top thing that makes his gut stick out, and he has this long brownish-auburn frazzled ponytail hanging midway down his back.

For some reason, though, they couldn't open the door, so while I was locking my bike up they went around to the back ally, and as I finished locking up my bike, the swinger lady comes out from the grate-door thing in a short black cocktail dress and was like, "Who was that?", and I was like, "Some guy from the movie series and this couple I don't know," and I told her they went around back, and she was like, "Oh, okay," and turned and went inside, and then I got the lock on and followed her in...

Story from my one friend.

So, my one friend who works at the rape crisis hotline who I sometimes go to those sex documentary movies with was born in Russia and her mother lives there part-time and sometimes here with her, and the other day she was saying when we were hanging out that her mother likes her current boyfriend a lot, even though she's never liked any of them in the past at all, and that in the past they've had this conversation a lot:

The Mom: "Why aren't you dating someone?"

My friend: "But Mom, I have a boyfriend."

The Mom: "I know, why aren't you dating someone?"

Banana / Video Game Dreams.

I had bought a ton of over-ripe loose bananas from the store like I do every week - they're 20 cents less a pound that way - and kept them on my kitchen table like always, and then the other day I noticed a puddle around one. As it turns out, it was so ripe that the juice inside decomposed and spread out on the table as this thick, rotting banana syrup, so I picked it up to throw it out, and as it squished open, the inside of the banana was kind of dry and mummified.

The other day I was thinking how I would buy a video game set before a tv, and how much I used to enjoy playing video games, when all of a sudden a recurring dream struck me: I was playing a Zelda game like on Super Nintendo, and there was this one field area deep in the forest where I knew there was a treasure hidden, and if you fell down a pit in the field you were in this really difficult cave-maze labyrinth thing that was like 7 levels and suspended in mid-air in darkness, and I could never find the treasure.

Thinking about this - for some reason it's been in the back of my mind for the past year, but I'd never really stopped to think and realize that it was a dream, and not a real video game - I also remembered that once I had a Mario Brothers dream, and there was this giant multi-colored pink and orange whale where there were levels extending out of its side and you had to hop up and down them as it rocked and went up and down in the water.