centre of the universe - the dreaming: Assets my ass.

12/31/2004: "Assets my ass." After much repositioning, tossing, turning, and general rummaging about in bed with nothing to do with sexual activity, I dreamt of a breast reduction. Other people dream of a fancy house, a flashy car, a woman with big boobs, and me, I dream of being a small breasted woman. Try this: take two loaves of stale bread, duct tape them to your chest at about nipple height, and try to sleep. Better yet, get a couple of inner tubes, cut some ovoid shapes from them about 20 - 30cm in diameter, and using rubber cement, seal them into spheres, leaving only enough room in the seam to fill them. Then, fill them with sand or water (depending on the consistency you want; sand would give you more realistic milk-filled breasts; water will give you the squishy fleshy boob), duct tape them to your chest at nipple height, and try to sleep. Then, don't take them off. Wander around with 2 - 5kg of weight hanging from your chest all day.

Uh, all of this is presupposing you are a man or a small-breasted woman. If you're well-endowed, you know what I'm talking about already. Spare yourself the duct tape.

I can't remember the last time I could comfortably sleep on my stomach, except at the beach (I dig little boob holes in the sand) or on our couch from time to time (I can sometimes pit the twins in between cushions). Even getting a massage is painful without the 'maternity cushion', and believe me, I had many massages before I knew that thing existed. Ouch.

Granted, I have no idea what it feels like to sit on a nut wrong or have bits of my gender caught up in zippers, in vagrant elastics from worn out underpants, or in the jaws of weasels. However, rather than being a searing pain as I would imagine those sorts of things to be, this is more of a dull ache, a solid pressure - a very uncomfortable protrubance.

It's kind of like when you're wearing a helmet that's too tight on your ears, or seventies jeans that smoosh everything together in a most unflattering Star Trek sort of way. I don't know what the equivalent discomfort rating in gents would be; the only thing I can think of is something like what happened to my great uncle, as told me by my mother, who was fortunate enough to accompany him to the doctor.

My great uncle was incredibly deaf. Or, if you prefer, "deef". One had to shout intolerably loud in order to have him hear anything, and then one was never sure if he actually did hear, because he'd just smile and nod and chortle and offer up some incredibly funny non-sequitir.

After having examined my great uncle, the doctor returned to the waiting room, where my mother was waiting amid dozens of other patients and their families. "ONE OF YOUR UNCLE'S TESTICLES," the doctor shouted at my mother, "IS SWOLLEN TO THE SIZE OF A GRAPEFRUIT." No amount of urging on my mother's part could convince the doctor that she herself had perfect hearing. And just to be sure she did understand him, the doctor also used rudimentary sign language, holding an imaginary grapefruit in one hand at about crotch level. "I THINK IT'S PROBABLY AN OLD SPORTS INJURY, BUT WE SHOULD HAVE HIM BACK TO MAKE SURE THERE'S NO PUS OR INFECTION."

My mother thanked the doctor quietly, collected Uncle Gil, who was standing in the doorway grinning (as I mentioned before, we can never be sure just what the man *did* hear), and slunk away.

The moral of that story was that I can't imagine having to toddle around with a grapefruit-sized testicle, but on the other hand, I have chest bumps larger than that, so there it is.

Last night I dreamt of getting a breast reduction.

"why is it that..." "The Second? Or Third?"

distractions