By all measures, it was going to be a prodigious weekend. GOS was throwing a party in the mountains, and I was invited. Those GOS girls can be much fun at a party. Meanwhile, I had been invited, improbably enough, back to hiGhSCHOOL prom by a girl I talked to during spring break. Really, all of it was Cibo Matto’s fault. Specifically, lead singer Miho Hatori.

I’m at a dance, a prom, and the theme is “Under a Carolina Moon.” I’m sitting out with a girl, my date(?), and the frogs around the lake croak in chorus. I think of Basho, “Furui ke ya, Kawazu tobikomu, Mizu no oto.” I put my hand on her bejeweled waist, and we kiss. Going back inside, my brother asks where we went. Just walking, I lie.

Probably, many of my nightmares involve my family showing up in the wrong places with me. Nothing against them. Just the opposite, in fact. I’m just trying to preserve my family’s opinion of me, whatever it may be.

It’s before, and I’m at the mountain party, and the theme is “A Shot in the Dark.” My friends are late, so I amuse myself by reading Basho by the flowing creek, “Shizukasa ya, Iwa ni shimiiru, Semi no koe.” I participate in a drinking game to pass time, drinking French Kiss according to the shufflings of the cards. “Ah, the silence! Into the rocks piercing, A cricket’s chirp.”

So, how I showed up at prom is this: during spring break, I talked and was goofy and sang a song or two by Cibo Matto. “Who?” asks this chick, let’s toss out the name Ruth Koyamada. So in the weeks that follow, we throw back and forth some emails and IMs for bit afterwards, until she asks me to prom. How odd, ne? But I’m a sucker for hiGhSCHOOL prom. I had noticed her, or maybe it was her anyway, in some of my other trips back, mostly ‘coz she was pretty intent on meeting and idolizing graduates of my august alma mater. During spring break, it was so easy to be weird and funny and do yo-yo tricks. I was a Tyler Durden, exactly as weird and funny as I dream I am.

I wonder if what Lao Tzu said is true. Maybe we’re just butterflies dreaming of being men. Or maybe I am really my dreams. Maybe I’m romantically fulfilled and happy and the world is brightly colored by girls in skirts and stockings and cute kerchiefs. Amanda likes this poem that asks, “How do I get there ... Where the one I’m after is after me?” Maybe it’s not that I’m there in my dreams; maybe this life is the illusion. After all, the density of irony being what it is...

It’s the mountain party, and I’m drinking Midori sours, because I’m intrigued by the name. Midori means green in Japanese, and it’s an accurate description of the drink. Amanda is there and depressed, because Hampton failed his mission--keep Amanda from drinking to the point of depression. I’m worried ‘coz Amanda is sad and lonely and self-effacing, and I’m afraid that I’m going to go ahead and hook up with her out of a mixture of lust and alcohol and desire to see her cheered up.

What I learned from the weekend is that drunk or sober, I am the exact same kind of person, and that if given a chance to take Fight Club up a notch with a girl I find cool and attractive, I will do so, no matter what the obvious repercussions.

Before the prom, Ruth had been bugging me about every little detail of the prom experience. I told her, it was her prom, she could do as she pleased, and I was more than willing to accept things as they came. For some reason, we ended up agreeing to eat before prom at the nearest Waffle House. I was more than happy with that arrangement.

I’m driving down the highway, and about a gajillion miles of interstate are stretched before me. I’m racing from the mountains of the Less Southernly Located Carolina to Hartsville, smack in the center of nowhere. I love Hartsville, buckets and cups. I stop off at a Waffle House for lunch, and it was just a wonderfully beautiful experience. The staff was friendly, my quarter plate was delicious, and the restaurant was brimming with cute kids. Suddenly, some Back-In-Sink-Guys song comes on over the loud speakers. I groan at first, but turning around, I see that an incredibly cute kid is busting a move to the beat. ‘Twas D e l i g h t f u l.

I’m driving to the mountain party, and I end up wasting time driving back and forth around the Nantahala Outdoor Center (site of many a childhood rafting trip) ‘coz I don’t have a navigator to read directions. In the other car, all of my friends are going together in the wrong direction ‘coz they believed the misprinted directions.

Ruth and I are driving towards Bishopville for the pre-prom meal. I’m worried that things are becoming awkward. The conversation is sparse. Oh well, I think, at least, it’ll be fun to dance later, and I got to trade some music with my brother. Before, she was doing hair stuff with and to people, so I slipped out and played some Smash Brothers. Now, we chat about her life and plans and whatnot. A car passes on a double yellow. In a display of mock testosterone, I make chase once the opportunity presents itself. Mika Bomb punk rocks from inside the tape deck.

In the bathroom at the mountain party, I put my finger down my throat, so as to get the Midori out of my system before it can do serious harm to my liver. It’s the first through third times I’ve ever thrown up while drinking. To my relief Amanda has crashed on the couch without me adding any more heartache to her life. Our friend came out as bisexual during a ruthless alcoholic version of “Never Have I Ever.” Sketchiness is assembling in the jacuzzi on the other side of the cabin. I collapse onto my bed, clothes still on. Mission: Complete...

In my dreams, I have on occasion, been a hopeless romantic in the Keatsian sense of the term. I’ve wanted someone to praise my posters and my CD collection and cuddle with me as I slip loose from consciousness’s grasp. I’ve wanted someone with whom to take romantic walks. Someone to help me get kicked off of Bob Jones’ campus. Someone for laughing and flowers and mix tapes and finger painting. Someone to love Cibo Matto and Buffalo Daughter and Dan the Automator along with me. God said, “It is not good for man to be alone.” Sure, but much like pimping, it may sometimes be necessary.

So, things had been going OK, as far as it went, but now suddenly it was all coming together, here in the Bishopville Waffle House. Of course, things hadn’t gone completely smoothly beforehand. We had been pulled over for speeding in the municipality of Bishopville, after casually catching up with the speeding car as it waited at a stop sign. Fifty in a thirty. For shizel! Of course, he cut me a “deal,” so... Anyhow, all that is behind us. Things are warming up. I’m clever; I’m funny; I’m philosophical; it’s wonderful. And Ruth, she’s no slouch herself, choosing to play Patsy Cline on the jukebox, noticing the handscar and its implications by her lonesome, laughing with me and my grits sandwich. She spills some water as I’m about to dash to the car and grab my camera, ruining conversation preserving napkin. But it’s all cool. Life in Waffle House is a wood grain dream. Try the pie, encourages the menu. We share a chocolate one.

Earlier, the morning of that day, I survey the devastation of that party behind me and think, that went about as well as it could have. I gather up my things and slip into my car and onto the winding highways stretched out endlessly before me. Ah! the interstate, Before my eyes unfolding, Green covered mountains.

I’m driving down past Oswego Highway with Ruth because we believe misprinted directions. But we eventually find our way, and Stereolab plays its space classical aluminum tunes while the country roads unfold out our windows. It was romantic and exciting to be racing through the darkness. Slowly but surely, I let the barrier between my life and my dreams slip away.

Why is it that we believe what we see? Sure, sometimes it works, past experience predicts future outcomes. Like I told Ruth, every other time, it’s been Señora Jackie’s Casa De Waffle Sauce, and even without seeing the label, I can guess that it still is, but... In dreams, we believe what we see, and the results are hilarious—I mean really, how often have you been naked in public?—but we accept them.

OK, I’m no Encyclopedia Brown, when it comes to human emotions, but I can get the gist of a thing sometimes, I think. After Waffle House, we play around in the town cemetery and courthouse, pimp at Sonic, and sit on a playground slide, while little pink hearts are flying through the air like it was the Melee intro FMV for the Ice Climbers. So, during the slow dances, on I’m on full alert. I’m looking for the signal. And it comes. The googly-eyed look from too close in. Really, putting human heads closer than a certain distance, X, together is just a recipe for disaster. So, what the hell, I kissed her, and that was that.

Before all this, my brother is looking at my laptop, and the wallpaper is my last crush. He’s saying, “Well, do you love her?” I respond that I like her, but she doesn’t seem to be responding. He was talking about the computer. Oh, right. Yeah, I love the laptop.

As we listen in the car driving her back to school, she praises “Li303ve” of her own accord. And yeah, “Li303ve” is Buffalo Daughter’s sonic triumph, perhaps the greatest song of all time. So, by now, I’m pretty confused. The night before, sleeping side by side in separate sleeping bags, my arm stretched around her waist, and our dreams intermingled. In that space between awake and asleep, it all made sense. This was it. Everything I was looking for, just thrown in my lap, out of nowhere. My thoughts faded in and out. The world was bright and beautiful. Leibniz was right. It is Señora Jackie’s Casa de Waffle, and it always will be. I accepted the dream.

The next day, I woke up.