I am at a conference, only it's in my living room. A woman comes from California and teaches. We'd had one last night and now I wake up on the couch and it's time for another one. The women come in and I sit up. The instructor is in the kitchen taking the dishes out of the dishwasher from last night as I hadn't gotten up and done them. I apologize to her, saying she doesn't have to do that. The dishes are white glass with gold trim on the edges. Bonnie had put them in because they'd been in my cupboard for so long and needed washing, from all the accumulated dust. A woman like Kathleen from poetry group sits on my right. I am telling them how the first time I used the word "abuse" to describe my upbringing felt so shocking, because it wasn't physical abuse, but emotional abuse. They were good people, but didn't know how to express themselves. Kathleen encourages me to keep calling it abuse and not cave in to society's ways of denial. I agree that I will persevere. I get up and say I need to pee and brush my teeth. There is a tiny alcove next to the living room, with a curtain as a door. I sit on a tall white bucket which sits on a toilet. I balance precariously. I pee a torrent of urine. It all rushes out of me at once. I know it can be heard by the women. Then the one man participant arrives. I immediately spill urine on the floor, it splatters from the rushing torrent. I am embarrassed. The topic f the conference is Men's Issues. I don't really want to be there, but I need the credits. [BL]