I've had vivid dreams before, but nothing that even approached this. It was lucid dreaming with every sense, it felt utterly utterly real. I'd woken up around 9am, didn't like the morning, and had tried drifting off to sleep again. I started to doze, phase in and out of consciousness, have disconnected dream-fragments, the usual half-asleep things. Then I found myself on the bridge over the Iowa River, behind the Iowa Memorial Union. It was early night, with a cool breeze, and I felt it. I started to run; I could feel muscles flexing and working, the wind battering my face, the shifting of my clothes, I heard my footsteps...I knew I was dreaming, but so lifelike was the sensation that I started to laugh with pleasure. I must've laughed in life, I heard it, felt it, felt my chest twitching with each laugh. There was only one thing I could do now, of course, and that was seek out ****...

I wound up in a room bustling with people, some of whom I recognised as friends of Richard's. The carpet was shaggy and red; the walls had a variety of desks and tables and things against them, and a closet off in the far corner, at roughly 30 degrees to me as I stood in the doorway. What was her name? Jesse's friend, the one that dressed up as Rosencrantz for Halloween. She was trying to bustle all the people in the room out. It was a study area or work room of some sort. There was one particularly impressive desk against the far wall, sort of a roll-top desk without the rolling top, but with a reddish blanket bundled up on top of it. Whenever Rosencrantz would hurry some people out (I think she was carrying a sausage-shaped balloon and wearing a round hat, not unlike a doughnut) someone else would come scampering in to try and get some work done. She was clearing the room for me, though she didn't know why. At last she had everyone removed, and was in the doorway, knob in hand, to close the door as she left, when she saw, as I did, that the blanket on the desk was rising and falling slightly, rhythmically, as if breathing. She was pointing, and about to ask, when I fobbed her off with some pathetic excuse, a trick of the light, too much cheese before bedtime, closed the door behind her and pressed the locking button in on the brass knob. I turned back. I knew **** was in the room, waiting for me to find him, and it was completely bloody obvious that he was hidden under the blanket on the desk, but I wanted to draw out the experience as long as I could. I scuffled through the shag carpet to the closet, which appeared to be my sister's closet from her bedroom in Council Bluffs. I stepped inside and peered into the dark recesses, a brief fantasy running through my mind of **** coming up behind me in the dark, my first clue being the feel of his body pressed against me, and I felt that, too, for a moment. I couldn't wait any longer; I stepped out of the closet (no jokes, please) and stood in front of the desk. I grasped the right side of the blanket (faintly plaid-patterned) and pulled it up and over; there, curled up on the desk, smiling angelically, was ****. 'It's about time,' he said, 'I thought you'd never make it.' I pushed the blanket aside, and he swung his legs off the desk and sat up. He was wearing a white shirt with puffy sleeves, Cossack style I believe it's called, and a black silk waistcoat, and friendly brown moleskin trousers. Same shaggy blond hair, very tidy now, shortish in the back, tapering almost, locks still dangling over his ears and forehead. And those lips. I put my hands on his waist and my head in his lap, as I levered myself up on the desk to sprawl across him...That was too much for me, and the shock woke me up.