Dream: The Burns and Steins Movie Party

Dream 20030204, 6:00 AM:

This dream starts out with a long section at some sort of camp. It seems very frontier-like, although I don’t have a sense of it being long ago. Everything at the camp is old-fashioned and made by hand, and there are lots of people in semi-cowboy dress. For some reason, I need to leave, and although I’m not actually held prisoner here, I feel like I’m not allowed to leave. I want to take certain things with me, including a cast-iron griddle with a wrought-iron handle, and a big cast-iron pan that looks like a casserole dish or long cake pan. I wrap the griddle up in a blanket, and hide it under a bush near the edge of camp, then I somehow sneak the casserole dish out to another location at the edge of camp. When all is ready, a friend and I sneak out of camp, recover the two items, and are on our way. The place where I had hidden the griddle looks like a rural mailbox at the end of a long drive. The trees around here are scrubby and the ground is all gritty sand. It seems very dry, like Abilene.

The friend that has escaped with me is a woman, she reminds me of Julie M. We walk along, carrying our stuff, and we come to a place where there is a party just about to start. There is a large tent-like canopy, and underneath it a bunch of people are gathering to watch a movie. The back wall of the tent where the movie will be shown is set up like an Art Deco theater, with lots of bright colors (I remember purple and red) and bathrooms are on either side of the screen area. People are standing around the edges of the tent area, not seated inside. There are all women on one side, and all men on the other. After watching them for a minute, I realize that it’s all gays and Lesbians. There is a man who is selling tickets, and as each couple comes up, he points to the appropriate side, and says either “Burns” (for the men) or “Steins” (for the women.) I walk up with my friend, and the ticket-man rolls his eyes and says something about “mixed couples.” There is some conversation among people standing around, and we finally get shown to the end of the tent, where we are arranged so that I am standing toward the men’s side, and my friend is standing toward the women’s side. Someone is pointing out the setup for the show, and they show us where the bathrooms are. I notice that the sign looks wrong, and then realize that it’s spelled upside down – TELIOT. It’s like a porta-potty, but it has this fancy door built into the facade. They tell us about the movie that’s going to be shown, it’s some kind of black and white classic, but I don’t remember what. *end*