Last night I dreamt I was one of the Bush girls. Not the blonde one, of course. The brunette, Lauren? No, that’s the cousin. Barbara. That’s her. Anyway, I was the brown haired one. And I was getting in to it with George over the inauguration. See, my best friend was that terrible entertainment reporter that looks like a frog, what the hell is his name? He’s on the Entertainment Tonight, I think, he’s blonde and very skinny and often in leather pants and has scarecrow hair, you know the one. Anyway, he’s as “gay as Christmas†(a turn of phrase I have always enjoyed) and I was getting in to it with George over gay rights.
Why this issue? Probably because – in my waking life as ME – when I think about gay rights, I think about very specific people in my life, fine, fine humans and good friends, who are being denied adoption rights or domestic partner rights or marriage rights based on the fact that their hearts have landed on a true love of the same sex. I think about real live people who I adore when I think about gay rights, so it sort of sits at the front of my consciousness – or indeed, my subconscious, it appears.
So, in my dream, I was supposed to give a little speech at the inauguration, but because I (as Barbara Bush Jr.) was fighting with George about gay rights, I was being prevented from attending the party. See, George was afraid I was going to use my time on the podium to bring up the issue of gay rights, when he really wanted me be sucking up to his family values and imperialism spreading inauguration donors. And I, Barbara Bush Jr., the uppity one, supposedly the smart one, was a liability. I was being confined to a rather ill-lit wing of the White House.
But my friend, the guy from Entertainment Tonight, the blonde guy who sort of looks like Steven Tyler, what IS his name already, was there with me. And I was sobbing on to his shoulder about how ashamed I was of my Presidential Parentage. And he was saying, as he stood there, reassuring me while wearing leather pants, that I shouldn’t be, that one doesn’t choose their parents, and that just having my voice in George’s ear could potentially make the tiniest difference for his civil rights going forward.
However, plot twist, A-HA! Later, from the dreamer’s all knowing point of view, I observed George meeting with my Entertainment Tonight very best gay boyfriend, and they discussed whether or not their Evil Plan(TM) to subdue my left wing opinions was going well or not. And in the light of the tightly focused halogens, I could see that – bwa ha ha ha ha ha! – my Entertainment Tonight very best gay boyfriend in leather pants with scarecrow hair was nothing but a machine! The horrors! A machine built to service the needs of George to convince his family members that all was well, silencing their agendas and opinions in the service of greater conservatism! The horrors!
It is possible that I spend too much time obsessing about the Bush administration.
