It's a gift shop or a toy store or something. I'm walking around in it with my mother -- we're buying gifts for someone. But -- it's more like a party than a gift store, and people are hanging out all over the place. I see Sarah (old lust from Middle School) sitting in the corner, and this really trips me out. I walk over to say hello. She says hello back. I tell her this is really wierd, because I'd just been dreaming about her. As I talk to Sarah and all these other past acquaintances I lose track of my mother. Well, good, I think, and latch onto a group of friends. Sarah tells me she's going to a party, will I come along? Well, even though it's the middle of Los Angeles and I don't know what hotel my parents are staying in, I say okay, because I want an adventure, not another damn number of days ruined by my family. So I go with Sarah to this party in an apartment building. I keep hearing this jazz music. We go into the room and it's Thelonius Monk playing the piano! He's got a lunatic eight or nine-string upright bass, and he's trying to play with this amateur bassist, to show him a few things. I think, if he'll put up with that guy, maybe he won't mind if I noodle around a little on his piano. So I walk over to the shiny black grand piano and play a little bluesy ditty -- immediately I hear shouts coming from inside the piano. I get up and distance myself from it. Two groggy, angry skinheads crawl out and collapse on the floor, bleeding. They nurse the wounds I accidentally gave them and I join Monk at the piano. He shows me a melody and I improvise, but it's clear he wants me to go away, so I drift into conversation. I begin talking to two middle-aged black men. One is very lanky and shirtless, and has this wierd yellow fungus growing all over him. Vaguely as we talk I wonder if it's contagious. He has a very 'gay' manner.  "You know who the French are erecting a national *monument* to?"  "Who?" says the other.  "James *Baldwin*, if you can believe that."  "I know him," I say. "When I was younger, I read 'Another Country' straight through."  It seems they didn't actually *like* James Baldwin, though, because I was then immediately excluded from the conversation. Baldwin, to them, was a fundamental issue.  So Brad comes along and we go to a party outside, on the hill, on the grass. Charles Bukowski is there with his girlfriend -- they're both young. It's a very warm night. Bukowski recites a few poems and everyone claps. I start to 'thank' him for one of his books, but then I remember his comment about that [in a book I had just flipped through] and forget it. I just talk to him and his girlfriend. But soon, Bukowski has to leave to do a poetry reading tour. So he gets in his huge armored car with his entourage and they dash off. His girlfriend is standing there, crying. Sarah puts her arm around her neck and I rub her back and hug her. I feel sorry for her that Bukowski has to leave so often, but at the same time I sense sexual possiblities between us. (Boy am I sensitive!) Then we come back to the plot of grass in Los Angeles. We look into the sky and every constellation is crammed into this absurd tiny space of sky. The rest of the sky was pitch black. I think "I didn't know you could see the stars in L.A." Somebody points out one constellation I've never seen before, a bird made of green stars with a glowing vibrant blue star for an eye. Everyone points the bird out. When I look back down to the plot, I realize Brad is gone.  "Well, shit," I think to myself.  "Your ride's gone," says Bukowski's girlfriend.  "That's alright. I don't even know what my parents' hotel was. I'll just catch a bus home later."  As we walk away from the place, I wonder who would be more likely to sleep with me, Sarah or Bukowski's girlfriend, and I decide on the latter, since she's lonely now.