Feminist Acres.

My recurring anxiety dreams match up with a lot of peoples, I think. I've run frantically around my old college campus, ten minutes before I have to take an exam for a class I'd forgotten I'd signed up for. I've been informed the actor playing the title role in Cinderella has suddenly come down with laryngitis and I have to take her place at the last minute, causing me to bumble helplessly on stage not knowing the correct lines, song lyrics or melodies, or the blocking. I bump into other actors, who are furious with me, and the audience wants a refund. I've walked through literally hundreds of empty apartments and houses, looking for something I never find.

About three years ago, I had my one and only feminist anxiety dream. Every feminist that I've shared this dream with has laughed hysterically and told me I need to write it down. I kind of think I do, too, even though doing so poses a small problem.

There are two things I never read on other people's blogs: 1.) memes, and 2.) dreams they've had. Why would I inflict something on others that I don't want inflicted on me? Because I’m a big fat hypocrite, evidently. Today I am presenting you with Feminist Acres, what I think could easily become the quintessential feminist anxiety dream. If you aren't a feminist, or you haven't spent time and money actively doing paid or volunteer work that primarily benefits women, you may not understand how funny this dream is, so you might want to tune in tomorrow. But if you have, well, take some grim enjoyment from this dark little nugget of joy that popped out of my subconscious.

I'm walking alone in an unfamiliar residential neighborhood. The sterile sidewalk stretches out in front of
me in clean, white, unbroken squares of concrete. There is no grass poking up between the deep cracks between the slabs. The road is freshly paved and painted with a bright yellow dashed divider. Traffic is light, and when the late model cars do beetle down the street, the driver sticks his hand out the window in a friendly wave. On both sides of the street there are huge wooden Victorian houses, dappled with the colors of twilight. The owners of the houses are in front of all their homes, leaning on their low fences, chatting with their neighbors, washing their cars, or simply standing still, looking out onto the street. The owners are all white men in their late fifties or early sixties. They look friendly enough.

"These are such beautiful houses," I think. "I would love to buy a house here."

And then my mind mulls over how much houses like these are probably worth, and how much the mortgage and property taxes must be, and I realize buying one of these gorgeous homes isn't an option, so I immediately begin wound-licking, thinking I probably wouldn't like it, anyway.

I'm reaching the end of the street, and when I turn my attention to the upcoming intersection, my heart leaps. The road dead ends at an enormous gold gate, so metallic and clean it is emitting a soft warm yellow glow. It looks like one would imagine the gates of heaven, they are so large and perfect. Engraved across the gates are the words "FEMINIST ACRES."

I can't believe what I’m seeing! Finally! It's what I’ve been looking for all my life! An entire community of feminists, right in front of me! I'm home! I'm home! After looking for so long, I have finally found a place where I can be surrounded by my own people! We will have universal health care and birth control will be free! Our leaders will be wise women, who will never let a child go hungry or a family become homeless! Our literacy rate will be one hundred percent, and a feminist child will defeat the Christian homeschoolers in the national spelling bee every year! Every family will get season passes to the WNBA! I am running to you, O womyn, running as if with the wolves!

The gates are opened just wide enough for me to slip through, and I do. I am inside the gates of Feminist Acres. I look around to see if there's a Chamber of Commerce, or a Realtor. Who will help me get started in my new Utopian life?

Then I calm down a minute and take a look at what I'm seeing. Feminist Acres looks like a trailer park after a tornado whirled through. The roads are not paved, the houses are upended. Nobody has running water. A rusted public toilet, fetid and overflowing, collapses up against a damp, moldy concrete wall.

A white woman, about forty, wearing shorts and a striped tank top that looks exactly like Mo's from Dykes to Watch Out For, walks out of her trailer. I hesitantly approach her, to ask what happened.

"What do you mean, 'What happened?'" she snarls. "Maybe the problem is that you're a fucking tool." She goes back inside, leaving me standing there, alone.

I look back at the gates. They are magnificent. Through the slight opening in them, I can see the big Victorian houses in what remains of the day. In the fading light, they are all a gentle blue.

I sit down on a rotting piece of timber from a destroyed house. I want to stay. I want to go. I want things to be different. I don’t know what to do. I don’t feel welcome here. I think about going leaving, and wonder what the real price of living in those blue houses would be.

I sit. I stay. It is night.