I went to an Alanis Morissette concert with my roommate Laura. She recently bought Alanis's Unplugged CD and has been listening to it almost nonstop. In the dream, she was extremely excited about going to the concert. I was fairly nonplussed, having lost some of my Alanis enthusiasm since the "You Oughta Know" days. I also felt the need to continually point out to Laura that I had been to an Alanis concert six years ago.
The concert was at the Fox Theater in Atlanta. It was not well attended. Almost all the seats in the front rows were vacant. Laura and I had seats in the balcony. People from the upper rows were moving down to the front rows since it seemed that none of those seats had been purchased. Laura eagerly headed down front just as Alanis came onstage. A few people clapped as she began singing "You Learn." Two girls in front of me stood up and started dancing, but when they saw that no one else was standing, they sat down again.
I was beginning to follow Laura when I was accosted by a group of thugs. They came out of nowhere and started asking me to give them my money.
"I only have two dollars in cash," I said.
The thugs consisted of three girls and a guy. The guy stuck his hands in the front pockets of my corduroys, while the girls held my feet. For some reason, I didn't really panic. I figured I could get out of the situation somehow. I was less worried about my health and safety than about what one of the girl thugs pulled out of my purse: a receipt for gas and a receipt from my psychiatrist's office.
"I really need those," I said. "I haven't written them down in my checkbook yet. I need to figure my bank balance."
I was able to wriggle free of the thugs' grip; I'm not sure if they got my two dollars or my receipts. However, I seemed fairly unscathed when I joined Laura in the front section of the theater. She had saved a seat for me. She had also become friends with all the other people sitting in the front, convincing them not only that she was a hardcore Alanis fan but also that her real name was Laura Alanis.
Onstage, Alanis Morissette had gotten tired and had Bonnie Raitt take over for her.
I noticed at this point that Laura looked different. She had long dark brown hair instead of short light brown hair, and she was wearing a blue dress I'd bought at The Limited when I was fourteen.
Suddenly, the lights went out. It was intermission. When the lights came back on, Laura looked like Laura again, and she, like many others, was wearing an Alanis t-shirt. The front of the shirt had a sketch of Alanis Morissette in pastel colors, and the back said "Daydreams Tour 2001." There were only five cities on the tour: Atlanta, Tallahassee, Charleston, and two others I've forgotten.
Before the concert ended, my friend Emily and her sister Christina joined us in the front rows.
"We got in for free after the show started since so few people actually bought tickets," Emily explained.
With no graceful segue, I found myself back at my apartment after the concert. Emily, Christina, and their mom sat with me in the living room, while Laura retreated to her bedroom. The apartment had much higher ceilings than usual, and it also had a large entryway. Emily had decorated the entryway with a wipe-off board. On it, she had written her name next to a smiley face.
"I want everyone to indicate their mood on this board with either a smiley or frowny face," Emily said.
Emily's mom protested that she didn't feel particularly happy OR sad, and hoped that she could make some sort of mutant smiley/frowny face.
Laura then appeared from her room wearing a scarf and said that she was going to Taco Mac to meet a friend of hers from high school.
I said, "But it's past midnight."
Emily's family and I agreed that we would go with her. It was, in fact, two-thirty in the morning when we got in the car. And the sun was out. Apparently this was some once-in-a-lifetime natural phenomenon that everyone but us had known about. We were all in Laura's car, driving on a rural road just past our apartment complex, and we saw groups of people sitting in the fields, gazing at the sky.
"They're hippies!" Laura said happily.
"No, they're just using this as an excuse to drink," Christina said. Her theory was proven when we passed a group of middle-aged yuppies sitting by a pond. They were having a barbecue and drinking beer.
Another ungraceful segue.
I was back at the apartment, which looked normal again. No one was there but me, and, inexplicably, Tricia (my wonderful little sister) and Chris (my ex-boyfriend who is ignoring my existence).
Tricia was sitting on the living room couch. Chris and I were standing in the kitchen. I was sipping fruit punch. Chris was writing on the kitchen table with a red marker. He scrawled, "I promise we'll get back together someday, Laurie!"
I relied on my voice rather than on Crayola to respond. "Someday? That doesn't matter. I'm still completely miserable now. You really don't get what you've done to me, do you?"
Chris put the marker down. "Look, I just need to be apart from you for now. I've done some stupid things lately."
"Did one of those things happen around December tenth?" I asked.
"Yes," he said. We had moved out of the kitchen by that point and were standing in the living room. Tricia was watching us argue.
"I did something awful when I read about your drunken escapade and saw your webcam picture," I said.
He suddenly grabbed both my arms. "You didn't, Laurie! You promised you wouldn't!"
"You promised a lot of things too," I sneered.
"I bet you slit your wrists!" he yelled. "Let me see it, Laurie! Pull up your sleeves!"
I started crying. He was still holding my arms. I didn't mind him seeing the scars; I just didn't want Tricia to see what I had done to myself.
