Dork Dance and (Not My) Wedding Anxiety

I am on vacation with my family, and my parents have decided that it would be beneficial to our cultural knowledge to visit a theme park. The theme park is located on a rocky cliff, and the manager directs our car into the cave so we can begin the ride. The whole thing is really sketchy and makes me really uncomfortable, like the bad circus, and I keep telling my mom that we should quit, "before it's too late." The path we drive down is very narrow, crumbling at the edges, where it drops down about five feet to moats of lava on either side. We proceed at a crawling pace in the Mini Cooper so as to avoid the campus squirrels and cardboard vampires that keep popping up. Finally my mom gets tired of waiting for the exciting part, so we reverse out of the cave, which is only about twenty feet long.

I return to my hotel room to make a flower arrangement, only to find the math team staying there. I happen to know one of the guys from somewhere random, so I decide I should chat with him so I don't appear unfriendly. While we are chatting awkwardly some music starts playing on the stereo, and I get really excited, thinking everyone is about to start dancing, and things will loosen up a bit. I exclaim, "Come on, we should dance!" and start grooving.
The guy just stares at me and goes, "Uhhh..."
"Come on, this is a great song!" He just looks around at his teammates, and I look at them too and see them all standing motionless, slouching and staring at me. I should have realized that of course the math team would never know how to dance, but I am the huge dork in this situation.

Later someone else has Garett's (my sister's fiance's) green bike, and they want to ride somewhere with me. In the gift shop of Fontainebleau I realize I'm supposed to be in love with this person. I decide I will act like I am for a while, because it must be part of the plan where we pretend like we're in love for a while. Then I realize I actually am in love with the person, and they are in love with me, but I feel terrible because I've only just now realized I really love them, so I must have been lying to them for a long time out of convenience. I want to tell them the truth, that I finally love them and only now found out, am too scared to say anything because they will probably hate me for lying for so long.

Global Warming

I am on vacation with my family and the Kolpacks. We stop and park our van behind a cedar-shingled house and one-by-one go inside. I think it must be a gift shop, because there are lots of distracting object hanging down at eye-level, making me repeatedly forget what my goal is.
Eventually I make it back out to the van, and now my mother is impatient because we are going to be late for Christmas. I remember that the reason I went in was to retrieve her.
We make it home in time, but I get impatient waiting for Christmas to get there, and all I want to do in the meantime is take a nap, but the door to the spare bedroom will not close.
I end up in the basement, sitting at a circular table next to the piano. Kris and a girl that resembles Beth, Sarah, and Deb from Napoleon Dynamite all at once sit across from me. We are having a conversation about my plans to rent a house with Kris and some roommates. We are all giddy. He is saying, "I just don't know why we have to live there as separate couples."
"What do you mean." I say.
"Well why couldn't we exist as one relationship? Because I love you-" At this point he leans across the table to kiss me, but I'm starting to feel less giddy."And there's no reason for you to be jealous, and I love her too."
"So what then, Kris? All I need to do is love her-"
"No!" he cuts in, as if that is the silliest thing, but what he is suggesting is not. "You just have to be okay with us. Look!" And he kisses her shiny pink gloss-coated lips tenderly. She giggles.
My reaction is the thought "Do it again". I'm not sure if this is because I don't know yet if I feel jealous; or if I mean it as a threat. He's watching my face, I'm watching her shiny pink lips. "Do it again, Kris." This time it's sounding more like a threat, but I almost say it as a request, when he leans in and kisses her again anyway.
I feel it physically that time, as if I'm swallowing vomit and getting the wind knocked out of me at the same time. I jump up, crying out, "I can't be in love with a boy who is in love with someone else!" and run away.

Now I am in the Art building, room 301. I am collecting my things now that the quarter is over. There are a few grad students there, doing self portraits, and the model Robert, just taking a nap, not wearing clothes. Lucas from my class comes up to him and examines his face as he sleeps. Robert wakes up and asks if he needs anything. I feel bad and want to tell Lucas that now that the quarter is over he's not modeling for drawings anymore. Lucas says, "Man, I need to work on facial features." He shows Robert his point drawing, and it's very good, so I don't feel as bad.
Joel is over on the other side of the room, curled up on a couch reading. Remembering what just happened with Kris, I go over and say, "Joel, I wonder if maybe you can help me understand something." He says sure, and I begin repeating the conversation with Kris word for word. As I repeat it, I begin to realize that when I said, "I can't be in love with a boy who is in love with someone else", that has and always will be true for me, no matter how hard I try to convince myself otherwise. I tell Joel and he nods, but then I wonder what "can't be in love" means. I'm still wondering that, actually.

I stand on a beach with many of my friends, I think it is graduation. I am skipping stones. Then: some powerful figure ( possible my geology prof) has declared that there is no possible way to stop Global Warming. I watch that shoreline and think, "Well then if we can't stop it, why can't we at least stop it from dragging out so long and get it over with? We could all use a little adventure."
The air warms, the alpine glaciers melt, and the sea lazily rises. We all skip up to the parking lot where are two orange VW camper vans are waiting for us, ready to transform into houseboats. The water is rising more quickly now, and we all pile on top of the vans. Matt gets annoyed with Kellen or something and decides he doesn't want to be a part of our van, so he jumps off, but I grab him before he can float away, because we had a deal: I need him to tend to the sails.
We've got quite an assortment my friends on the boat. No one over twenty, all vaguely acquainted. When the water stops rising we float around, observing the new landscape. No one knows who exactly survived, if our families survived.
Some people who formerly lived on a cliff in Normandy park now have a volleyball net set up where people on jet skis joyfully play a game in the "yard". Even though there is a potential for tragedy, starvation, and suffering, everyone shares the air of giddiness, and we soon discover that oral sex is actually the best way of sustaining ourselves. No, really.

Black Onions

I can't stop my teeth from chattering as I sleep. I think it must be strange to do that, but I'm having a good time with it. (Actually, I'm not sure if this is a dream).

My mother comes and gets me to take me to Subway. I don't want to eat, but I finally see that all of the ingredients look delicious. There are onions, similar to red onions, but shiny and black. As I am about to order she turns to me and says sternly, "What did you do with the couch?"
I reply, "I don't have a couch! Do you think I could fit one in my apartment?"
She looks annoyed and says, "There was a couch outside Jenny, and you know it."
I am silent. I know nothing about any couch.
She takes me into a nearby Bartell's and I wander the aisles, wondering what I'm supposed to be buying. In one aisle, a man is looking at plastic cases of some sort. The packaging says, "Perfect aesthetic for artists!" Curious, I look closer and see that it is some sort of lunch box. No, it is a camera case, and it comes in all different shapes for different cameras. All are very attractive shiny white plastic with black detailing.

Back at home I find a note in my bed from the boy who was there. It is divided into three sections. The first is addressed to Kathryn, which is surprising. It says he's sorry for falling in love, but he's had to leave on a mission, and something about the Palestinians. The second part is addressed to the Palestinians. It seems to be some kind of directions, but I skip over it, eager to see what he wrote to me, because I think he was supposedly in love with me. It begins "Dear Jenny," and I concentrate very hard on every word after that so I will be sure to understand what it says.
"I... hope... haven't" I can't make any sense out of the individual words, because they don't seem to be in the right order. It says, "I hope that I haven't you caused to have -"
Even with the terrible grammar, I almost manage to make sense of it, but wake up before I see the rest of the sentence.

Not-so-Secret Spy Mission

Once we realized the fleas were spying on us for them, we sat very quietly staring at the wall behind the futon, waiting for them to emerge. Then the wall blew up and we made our way through the tunnel behind it to the burrow. The six or so of us huddled in the dirt, peering out the window overlooking the majestic valley interrupted by their giant machines and evil operations. Our leader determined at last that the plates were coated, and that any food we prepared from home grown produce would also be contaminated. He marched us to the stairwell where he made their henchmen bring us clean plates. We divided up and locked ourselves in the two hall bathrooms. I ended up alone with the leader. We began to fill the bathtub so we could sleep safely. He insisted on doing everything facing the mirror.

We were interrupted by a request to report. The wall opened like french doors, the bathtub splitting in half. We entered a room filled with aquariums and women, scantily clad in tight leather and spandex, many wearing capes or masks. At the signal, all knelt down in front of the throne in the corner (with much difficulty in tight gold spandex miniskirts). I was standing behind it, so I never got to see the boss, but an old woman's voice asked the leader of my group to report. He replied, "I have done everything you suggested. I became friends with the curly brown-haired one."
"Good," the woman replied.
"...Things also progressed from there. I didn't expect to fall in love with her."