As Usual

by Pete McArdle

In my dream, I'm running down Main Street on fire and sporting, as usual, a huge erection. I'm making excellent time when I notice my feet have turned into roller skates, and I jettison the silverware since I rarely entertain.

     Careening around the corner, I nearly collide with an archbishop carrying a donkey, and someone yells, “Will you look at the ass on that priest!”

I turn into a bird and fly languidly over the local piazza, so graceful yet . . . looking down, I realize that I'm still bowlegged.

Spying a lake up ahead, I land. Gazing wistfully into the deep, pellucid blue, I feel a sense of karmic bliss---like nothing I've ever felt before.

     But from the depths springs a creature with the body of a wallaby and the head of my high school football coach. He rakes me with his prehensile tail and harsh words, but I ignore him since his fur is kitten-soft and his vocabulary stunted.

     A woman calls out to me and I answer, “It won't happen again.”

     But it does.

     And I awaken, as usual, sporting a huge erection.

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