Richard called while I was out with Mary Dougherty learning to drive, but my phone was at home, so I got this message:

"Hey, Mackenzie, this is your fake-dad calling. I am in Oregon, dancing away, contra and zydeco, and I've been dancing with this young woman, who is maybe, 1 or two years older than you, and I think you would totally fall in love with her if you had the chance to meet her. I told her the same about you. So, you can call me back if you want, and I can tell you more about her. Her name is Katie, she lives in Portland."

My order of thoughts went: 1) Why is he telling me this, this is so random, portland is far away. 2) Aww, thats sweet, he is actually acknowledging that I'm bi. That's kind of awesome. that makes him so much more worthy of fake fatherhood. 3) Why did I not know about this dance weekend? this sounds awesome! zydeco! 4) *visions of fun and dacing and zydeco.* It has been so long since I've been to a dace weekend.

I guess I might call him back. He might know what he is talking about. (I am reminded of cos)


IN OTHER NEWS:

Chapter 3: "Mackenzie drives on Sacramento" - Mary.
Mary has this habit of narrating when I do something awesome and new: Mackenzie drives stick shift and Mackenzie drives in third.

I drove home from North Berkeley Bart, and around in that neighborhood a bit, with signaling and shifting into 3rd a lot, and only turning on a windsheild wiper once, and stopping to find the horn to honk at a raven eating something out of the middle of the street (the raven, not me), and not hitting J-walking pedestrians, and giving ride of way and all sorts of nfty law-abiding. Stick-shift is a great way to be sure you are not exceeding the speed limit, to a degree.

I also did a smidgen of parallel parking, and actually did two three point turns on city streets.

I made one guys day by waiting for him to cross the parking lot before he even got out of a different crosswalk and over the barracade toward the next area. He was laughin up a storm quite amiably, and me, needing to respond somehow or another while sitting there, put my moose ear antlers up the apples of my cheeks and wiggled my fingers. He laughed harder, and said, "Thank you for making my day!" Mary and I were laghing up a storm too. She likes to laugh so we were laughing a lot of the time, at, things the WERE genuinely quite funny. Like honking at the raven. It didn't understand horn, mary said, maybe it understands car. It did. I inched up a foot and it fluttered away.

BUt hey, AWESOME!

p.s. the two of us are such nerds that we sing while we are driving. Mary matches the cars pitches, like a kid with a toy car (or she did when she was learning), and I make sound effects.

I've walked into a performance in a jym. I don't know what it is, but it is somehow related to my highschool, which I am still a part of. Just, generic school. I am dressed in all green, like a fairy, and like the rest of the performers. It is a fire performance so I tell them I'll do fire safety. I run around a lot, messing up the appearance of their performance, but no one cared anyways, or was watching cause it's school. Also, I don't think there was any fire. Then we were, as a class I guess- people I didn't know, in some other part of the same school. I think it was a middle school, but not our school, and far away, and a tornado was coming. I told every one we needed to get safe, but the people from the school didn't listen, or notice our existance except to complain that we weren't supposed to be there. The people from my school only partially listened, making a nominal effort but joking around a lot. I just headed down and down and down more and more stairs, hoping and swinging around corners, like controlled falling, but since it was a dream, it felt like falling, but there were windows every level down. somehow every room had windows. Robin was sitting on the couch in the basement, laughing and chilling with a friend, and there was a big window right above her, she didn't understand. I was going from room to room like a frightened rat trying to get out of a locked bedroom. Finaly I found a room , a little nook or cranny where I could even hold onto smoe supporting beams.
I must have fallen asleep there because I wake up in a rather mediocre car. It is raining hard and I am curled up in the front seat so all I can see at first in the curtains of rain slathered down the front wind sheild. Once I become oriented, I see that Mary Dougherty is driving. I'm angry, because we are driving through a possible tornado. I don't know the status of it becuase the radio is not on, but it is freaky, because earier when we were on the school bus on the way to somewhere, there were cats sitting /clinging to potted plants flying through the sky, and the driver almost couldn't keep the bus on the ground.

So we are in downtown oakland, at night, driving, hoping to become safe from the tornado somehow. In my dream logic, I suggest we go to my step fathers place. So thats where we are, somehow, we don't get caught on the way. Then the people left are mary and Jeff, cause I do't know what happened to the other people, who wouldn't listen, and Ialso don't know how Jeff showed up, but because he was so obvously there the whole time I didn't think of it.

Weare trying to hide in the besement, but it doesn't seem as safe as I though because it isn't a real basement, and the only think seperating it from the upstairs is some floor boards. It sound like a train outside, as if we lived half a block away, and the horn and wheels never stopped. Mary Jeff and i were clinged to a beam. Then I stopped my dream, and tryed out the rocks. I went through several dream senarios, trying to find the one least likeley to lead to death. I needed to find something that if I was holding on to Mary and jeff, it could hold all three. We werepushed far under the house, under the stairs, when the tornado took off the top of the house, and my bed room. My bedroom is right outside of the storage room. Its sort of a besement, but with windows, and not very tornado proof.the last remaining wall on the west side tears off, and mary starts to fly away. I grab her arm, and dg my nails in, and pull. The wind is strong and just keeps pulling . i don't wantto let go. At this point, i decide that I am hanging onto the water heater instead of the wood, so I can pull her in more easily. I don't remember whethr I saved her. there were so many scenarios, i some of them jeffery was flyingaway, and in some isboth, and i was determined tohold on always.

Fnally I just decided I wasdone with the drem. I got to the eye of he storm, which doesn't make sense in this context. in the dream i was urging people stay,because an eye doesn't last long. but I just woke up instead and determined that I would right it down today, somehow, somewhere.



I remember when I was younger, at the boys and girls club, a funnel was near by. Worse that a warning cause a funnel can juat touch down any minute. They had us crouch on our elbows and knees under benches in he game room. It wouldn't have helped much. I snuck outside when no one might notice me, and watched the tunnel, swirling clouds, and feeling the strong clod wind in my hair. there was a rainbow, and only a sprinkling of rain. Little drops felt sometimes like whips and sometimes like butterfly kisses on my bare face and arms.

I wasn't afraid because if I died I died, and that would be that. If it touched down, I wouldn't any more or less dead than the kids crouching for hours under light wooden benches. I could have run inside if I had needed to- I was only right outside the door way. It didn't touch down.

I did this on a few occaisions, and no funnel ever touched down under my watch. The other occaision happened to be in the same town, now that I think of it. Brandon and I were at our apartement with mom. I don't remember if Brandon was there actually. There were sirens, and in between sirens I went outside to play in the rain with neighborhood girls. They were all much older than me, which might be why my mom let me do it. We got cups and scooped water up off the ground or the runoff drain or the creek, which was overflowing almost up to the parking lot, and moving fast. We were all soaked. Then one of us saw the funnel in the sky. There had been sirens based on the weather, but there hadn't been a funnel before then. We stopped and stood there, and stared, out necks bent, our heads back, in awe. If we said anything, it was in a whisper. After watching it for a good long while, in the windand the rain, we decided we had best go in and get on dry clothes before the alarm sounded and our parents made us hide in the bathrooms or where ever seemed sort of a little bit safer.