Adams, Don

English

University of Kentucky

disClosure: A Journal of Social Theory Volume 21 Self/Story Article 7 2012 SELF-PORTRAIT # 3: A DREAM Don Adams Florida Atlantic University DOI: https://doi.org/10.13023/disclosure.21.07 Follow this and additional works at: https://uknowledge.uky.edu/disclosure  Part of the English Language and Literature Commons This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License. Recommended Citation Adams, Don (2012) "SELF-PORTRAIT # 3: A DREAM," disClosure: A Journal of Social Theory: Vol. 21 , Article 7. DOI: https://doi.org/10.13023/disclosure.21.07 Available at: https://uknowledge.uky.edu/disclosure/vol21/iss1/7 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by disClosure: A Journal of Social Theory. Questions about the journal can be sent to disclosurejournal@gmail.com wanted him to. When I'd called Lois, months before, and told her I was pregnant, she asked if I was crazy. "D idn't the doctors say you might not be able to have kids?" she'd reminded me. I hated her for being so practical and reasonable. ow, I felt glorious and triumphant. Nothing I had done in my life to that point compared with the experience. I know thar's 1950's housewifey of me to say, but I really felt that. I wondered how j oe felt. I wanted to call Lois and gloat. When I woke up, I asked joe, "D o you think you'll love the baby better than your novel?" He didn't answer. I thought it was because he couldn't decide. Later, I realized that it was because he was recording it. I was helping him write his next novel. I would be in it. My character, wearing her halter tops and building igloos out of ice cubes, would come off as a little crazy. When Lois called and asked if any of that were true, I totally lied. "This one's a little less autobiographical," I told her. She sounded doubtful. I could tell that even over the phone. But I didn't care. joe's new novel was a bestseller. H e had stopped speaking in bad Shakespearean English, and I was hugely pregnant again. This time, I was having a girl. joe would write about it, I knew, but it wouldn't bother me because I was happy. joe was happy too. You could tell that, despite the male character's cynicism, if you read his last book carefully. - 75 -SELF-PORTRAIT # 3: A DREAM -Don Adams It's like this: I was in the store one day, poking around, as it were, when I grabbed a package of panty hose and walked smack out the door, only to be nabbed by the establishment's crack security, who turned me over (naturally) to the state. So that I was in prison, then, along with all of myoId friends (acquaintances, really) from school. So this is lvhere y ou were all those years. They did not seem at all surprised to see me, but were rather amused (mildly) that I - the great one - should end up, after all, like them. I thought, ''When I stole the panty hose, it was as in a dream, and dream-logic demanded that I be landed here, with Clay Copeland, Pat O'Brien, Gary McCarver and the rest, where I am to be made to feel a bit awkward, it would seem, at first." Later it was brought home to me that my mother's son is in the clink; my throat clenched as I stared at the bars. Then I concocted a plea for mercy, like a threat, or poem, addressed, dear reader, to you. - 76 -

SELF-PORTRAIT # 3: A DREAM

https://uknowledge.uky.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1006&amp;context=disclosure

SELF-PORTRAIT # 3: A DREAM

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University of Kentucky