I'm with some other people - friends, I'm not sure who, but they were like MT, maybe even my brother, and even Don and Lauren or somebody, and we were going to look at a house. This house was on a residential street that had some very nice large houses on it. We were looking for a house that we might want to rent, and we first went past it to the end of the street, and we looked at the numbers and went back to it. The houses at the end of the street were extremely nice, and looked very expensive indeed, and when we backed up a bit to go back to the house we wanted, it seemed to be at least something less formal, and maybe more likely, but still an awfully nice house. We were surprised that the person we were thinking of renting it from lived there, because it was somebody more or less our age, like us, that wouldn't necessarily be able to afford a big house like that. So we went up to the door and knocked and looked at the outside. The person that answered was female, and she let us in and said she'd show us around, nice and friendly, and what we saw on the inside is not at all what we expected. There was this enormous room, broken up into areas, and it had another level to it as though it were a sunken living room. It was very open - there wasn't a whole lot of furniture. There were people around, and it looked very reminiscent of a "hippie pad" from the early 70's or 60's or more like a commune where a lot of people were living in the same place and just sort of having a good time, and not just being roommates or residents or something like that. And there seemed to be people having a good time around. The girl that was with us just took us on through into the living-room sort of area and straight across to a door that led into a small sort of shed, really, that you're meant to go through and you go outside from. Before we got there, I was looking outside through a plate glass window on the right and saw a kind of little patio or garden sort of thing, it wasn't real small, it had bushes and stuff in it. And there was a cat or two sitting out there [something happened about the cat but I don't quite remember] - it was large and black (if memory serves), and it kinda did something and left. Then we went into the shed and I was bringing up the rear. Everybody went back out again, but I was interested in something that was hanging in the shed. It was kind of like a potting shed, although they had ["been stuck" (?)] certain things as well as plants - it was maybe kind of a greenhouse, I guess, or something in between. I took whatever it was off the wall and went outside with it to have a better look at it. It seems to me that it was like, terracotta [and I don't remember what it was]. After I'd looked at it [and nobody else was ____?] I took it back in and hung it back up on the wall again. NEXT: I am on trial for something that I do not know exactly, but it surely would have had to do with something like embezzlement. What they were questioning was how I had so much money to spend, why I had such nice things. There were a whole lot of people there, it was more like an auditorium than a courtroom - there were people up on the sides, like bleachers or something, and the light in the courtroom was very bright. The prosecutor was very strong and powerful, he wasn't entirely angry - of course he wasn't supposed to be angry, but he was real determined that I should be - examined as thoroughly as possible, in case I had done this. (Whatever it was.) He would ask how I could afford to buy - like clothes, or something, how I could afford to have such nice things, on my salary. During the course of this trial, they had called for a physical examination of me, like an operation, even - they wanted to make cuts in my body to examine something - not going all the way inside to the organs, and so forth, but kinda superficial cuts where you cut the skin in long straight lines down the arms and down the torso. Maybe something to do with bacteria or something, I don't know. I was real concerned about that, but I was not real concerned about the trial in general. There was a place in the back of the courtroom - it was rather more like a dressing room, and I had, of course, my lawyer, and some other people helping me out - I guess they would be like people on my lawyer's staff or something - an older woman, blonde, professional-type woman; my lawyer was a man in a suit, you know, your basic sort of lawyer, certainly not a kid, but your basic yuppie professional. And they were, like, attending on me like I was - oh, dear, somebody like a TV star or something - I would be in the back, getting "dressed", getting my hair done, stuff like that, it wasn't very luxurious, but it was certainly not what you would expect of being in a courtroom. In fact, I wasn't even in the courtroom - I wasn't even paying attention to how the trial was going except for the sound of the prosecutor's voice. He was quite loud and determined - making a "show" for the audience - and most of 'em were my friends, and they didn't want to see me get into trouble. They were interested, certainly, but he was definitely going to have to prove what he alleged. And all of these questions seemed to me to be real obviously geared to getting me into trouble, because everything he was asking could be answered very simply, and he wasn't listening to what - well, it wasn't that he wasn't listening to what I had to say because I wasn't there for him to hear, but I was the one who could clear it up in the first place, and until he got me on the stand where I could tell him these things, it seemed like there wasn't much point in him even asking. Nobody else could tell him that I wouldn't buy anything very expensive unless it was on sale, and I charge things, and pay them out, and sometimes people take me to lunch or something, or I may buy myself meals and not get my hair cut, things like that. I certainly haven't stolen anything, and sometimes I do think I spend more than I need to - or, well, not more than I need to but more than I can afford to, but that's my problem, it's certainly not anybody else's money and I don't know why I should be on trial for it. But this physical examination thing concerned me quite a lot. There's kind of a conflict here. I have the impression that I have already had this examination, and it didn't really work the way they thought it was going to. But I think that isn't logical because that wouldn't have happened and there wouldn't have been any point in me being concerned about it further, but I was - I was concerned about having it done correctly, and fascinated with the procedure itself. And so there weren't actually any cuts on my body, it's as though they had tried to and it wouldn't do it. So I was interested in that, and I just decided I'd do it myself. I got something to cut with - you see, I'm not in the courtroom at the moment, and whoever has been with me in the "dressing room" area - what I mean by that, by the way, is that it's back off of the courtroom, assuredly, but it's not closed off from it - there's a place where you can go, like, to change clothes, but it's just a back room open to the courtroom, all the way in the back where nobody can turn around and look at you, or nobody's doing it, they're not - or, their attention is out in the middle of the court - anyway, so whoever has been with me back there has gone away so I'm alone, and I got something like a razor blade and started to make these cuts myself. [It surely would be awkward if you did that - lying down, and trying to even make the sort of cut I'm talking about with one arm, without looking at it, but it's as though I wasn't doing it that way, it's as though I was doing it from outside my body. And was a little bit ragged and awkward at it at first, but eventually I got the hang of it and - this is how it seemed awkward to me, as though I was doing it from right over my body, and - just like you would a doll, you know - straight down, and I discovered that it was awkward to do - the right-hand side of my body (lying on the ground), which seems to be the left-hand side from the position I'm actually cutting in. So, what I needed to do is to move around, so I moved down to where I was really facing the side of my body to do that. This is all very slow and awkward, but there wasn't any blood or anything. Well, I did that, and I don't know anything more about it - it obviously didn't hurt particularly, I know I kept expecting it to - I kept expecting it to feel at least, you know, like it does when you cut yourself, so I was a little bit surprised that it didn't bleed, but I wasn't worried about there being any real damage or anything because I knew I would heal up. And quite sure that I knew I'd heal up without scars, too. Just didn't seem that big a deal. But now I felt like I had done it, for them. That they would be happy now. It was like I have accomplished whatever it was they wanted me to do for them.