I had the longest and most unpleasant dream last night, and I'm going to tell you ALLLL about it, because everyone loves hearing about other people's dreams, right? Especially when they involve people you don't know, and situations so mundane that you wonder what boring hell the person's waking life must be, that the best fantasy her brain can dream up is that she got a job at Kinko's, and none of the copiers worked.

My dream did not involve Kinko's or copying, but it was so awful and linear that when I woke up, I felt like I'd sat through a particularly terrible Stanley Kubrick film involving community theatre and car trouble.

There's something called "the actor's nightmare," where the dream involves being pushed onstage totally unprepared. When I acted, I used to have this dream frequently, usually when I was rehearsing a play. It's very common. There's even a play by Christopher Durang, entitled "The Actor's Nightmare" that accurately captures the experience. Once, I dreamt I was walking on a city street and a limousine pulled up next to me and its frantic passengers hustled me inside, asking where I'd been, as we headed off toward the theatre. I didn't know I was in a play, and I didn't have a costume, but one of the people unrolled several flowered paper towels from a roll and told me to make do. When we got to the theatre, I was pushed onstage and forced to perform a musical very similar to "Hair," or maybe it was "Godspell." One of those hippie musicals with no plot and a host of catchy, irritating songs. (My big song was "Oh, What a Night," by the Four Seasons, so you can see this play wasn't headed for a long run.)

Last night's dream was along those lines. I had been cast in the part of the Wicked Witch of the West in a musical adaptation of The Wizard of Oz. Owing to a busy schedule, I neglected to attend any rehearsals or memorize any lines. I was surpised with a phone call to show up for a performance, and when I arrived, I was fitted with a costume--a very attractive bronze satin ball gown and a little cap like an ice cream man. Or a meter maid. It had a little patent leather brim. I thought, Well, even if I don't know my lines, I'm still looking GREAT! Which goes to show what an evil and deceptive place the sleeping brain can be.

I waited offstage for my cue, which I didn't know, because I was unfamiliar with all the lines. So, to pass the time, I pawed through the script and searched for pages with my character's name. The play was performed in the courtyard of a large Victorian building, with the audience on all sides, so it was difficult to hide my script pages when I went out for my scene, but I did my best. I knew I was doing a terrible job, but I figured at least people would probalby hold their criticism until the end, when I could escape. (One great element of the Actor's Nightmare is that I never get to escape during the play--I always have to stick it out and hear how much I ruined the performance for everyone, etc., once the curtain has closed.)

So, there I was, backstage, trying to avoid the other actors while I searched for my script pages. "Haven't you memorized your lines?" asked one of them, a boy who strongly resembled a guest star in an episode of "Strangers with Candy." I admitted that I hadn't. He and a cast member, a girl, exchanged looks. "Don't you know the Aleph Binda Garson method?" I didn't know it. They explained a system of memorizing each line according to the first sounds of each word, which had a corresponding word in the Aleph Binda Garson method. If my line is "No more potatoes for me!" I could memorize it as "Non mosta potishti fe meesik." So now, in my dream, there was another reason to feel inferior. Not only did I not know my lines, I failed to see the sense in using a completely nonsensical language to assist as a memory aid. But I couldn't pay attention, because my big song was coming up. Which I also missed, because I couldn't find the script.

So, this went on and on, with the Strangers with Candy kid singing my song and dancing around in leotards like a weenie, and STILL looking more professional than I did, wearing my ball gown and ice cream man hat as I skulked in the parapet that shot up hydraulically from the floor for my final scene. You know, just like in The Wizard of Oz!

The real humiliation came when the play ended and the other actors carefully avoided looking at me. To amuse myself and feign lack of interest, I paged through the director's notes from the rehearsal period. There, I found myself listed under my nickname from high school, along with the accusation that I had borrowed a book from the director and not returned it, summed up by the assessment: CUNT.

Ouch. I grabbed a crayon (there was one there) and wrote her name, an equal sign and CUNT in big orange letters, then scribbled complaints against her all over the page, cementing the idea that I am not only a cunt, I am completely insane.

She caught up with me in the locker room. She hadn't seen her notes yet, but she wanted to deliver a message. "Well, Violet," she said, in a falsely casual way, "It was nice that when you couldn't show up, you had Harry Hood fill in for you." (Harry Hood, for those of you not familiar, is the cartoon milk truck driver for Hood dairy products on the East Coast.)

I'm going to stop the dream description right there, because it drags on into a heated argument, an escape in a malfunctioning car in the rain, a near traffic accident, and a creepy, bearded Mexican woman placidly allowing her baby to play in the bird bath at my aunt's house. Hey! Welcome to dream time theatre! You won't want to come back, but you will. You will.

Star of the day. . .Tom Verlaine