I am meeting/recognise my old school friend Gee Emm. He seems (in the dreamescape) to be working what is best described as a 'blue collar' job, some sort of (manly) manual work and I encounter him sitting, his back to a wall, legs outstretched, clad in his dusty blue overalls. He is on some sort of break/downtime between shifts and is surrounded by a line of his resting fellow workers. We get talking and he looks happy but unsettled. He comes over to join me and a look of concern crosses his face as he tells me there is an outbreak of AIDS among the workers. I gather it is only one or two (clusters?) and he doesn't seem highly concerned (although I sense he is rambling his way around to addressing a more serious point). He then, quite strained, says, “you know how it is... he said, 'I'll show you mine if you show me yours'...”-
(there's an abrupt dreamjump here almost as if I exit the scene to process what Gee has told me – that he has in fact been raped and contracted AIDS)
Gee and I, still chatting, are making our way up a very tight staircase, fashioned from white painted gloss timber, that twists and turns (on it's way to his 'digs'?). At one point Gee seems to lean back and stretch up to a (hidden) shelf, switching off a video camera recorder (that I can only assume he is using as a means of evidence/protection). Further up he does the same with a similarly secreted camera, setting off the shutter/flash as he does so. I vaguely hear him explaining something away - “aw, it's alright, it's just...” - to someone on the stairs behind us, the tight and steep environment making it impossible to see just who-
On reaching the top Gee finally breaks down in a distraught confession and is only stayed in his teary rambling by the appearance of his wife (at which point he quite capably pulls himself together). She is slim and blonde and somewhat arch. She is framed not by some cramped, basic accommodation, but instead emerges from an open double doorway into a vast church-like room, the back wall of which has some sort of quasi-religious display of candles, illuminated and actually quite transcendent. I marvel at this – it it near Christmas? Gee's wife sits herself on a bench in this epic ante-room and begins, to my surprise, to quiz him (on more innocent matters) with more than just a hint of disdain and, given his very real situation, a total lack of sympathy or understanding-
