Louise
02-21-98
Maria and Arnold live across the street from me. Maria suspects that I have nude photos of Arnold (with a woman?). I come home and as I pull into the driveway, I see Maria and a friend sitting on her stoop, lit by the front light. Nude photos of Arnold just appeared in a magazine I had in my hand. I thought she would scream.

Louise
03-26-98
Maria Shriver was trying to seduce me but she thought I was a man. Everytime she would try to get me down on the bed, someone would go by, usually a maid in bikini underwear. At the end, some elderly Jewish folks and their families, carrying plastic machine guns, showed up.

Michael
07-??-98
My brother has gotten a job overseas and calls me from the plane. He tells me, in a stupid-sounding German accent, "I'll be a Bavarian!" I then hear choking sounds and somehow I know that Arnold was on the plane and overheard my brother and is now choking the life out of him.

Michael
08-17-98
I am writing a letter to "Countess Ogelthorpe" with an elaborate quill pen. I realize I don't have a clue about how to properly dip the pen in ink nor how to write without smudging the paper up. I recall, vaguely, that people are supposed to use blotting paper so I ball up some paper towel and begin blotting my letter, smearing it entirely. Now I am in a panic because the letter contains "my best essence" (the phrase comes to me as I stare, panic-struck, at the paper). It occurs to me to try to rinse away some of the ink which I start to do at the sink. I overhear a television in another room (I am in some sort of motel/efficiency). "Ethan Rhapsode" is interviewing a comedian who can imitate Arnold Schwarzenegger. I go out into the hallway and knock on the door of the room with the TV. A woman answers the door as if she is expecting me and greets me with a huge, sisterly sort of hug. I go in and the table is set for a dinner entirely of corn muffins—dozens of them. On the TV, the comedian (who looks like an old Chasidic Jewish rabbi) is doing a terrible imitation of Arnold. Suddenly, Ethan Rhapsode laughs and says, "Here's the real thing!" and out comes Arnold, wearing an all white suit. He tweaks the comic's sidelocks and makes some crude motions which I realize are his imitation of a circumcision.

Michael
08-23-98
The book I am reading is a gift from my cousin Eric. I have evidently read it so many times, I've worn the cover off and much of the text is also faded. I have no idea what the book is about, nor why I enjoy it so much, or even IF I have enjoyed it. My bookmark is a picture of Arnold Schwarzenegger's left bicep which has, I notice for the first time, a tattoo of a woman who looks like my ex-girlfriend, Paula.

Louise
08-26-98
I am at Arnold’s office. He lays on the floor between some furniture and I go to kiss him. I am giving him a long intimate kiss but it tastes bitter. I don’t realize that he is actually making me kiss his hand until he says while I am kissing him, “Ohhh, ahhh, that is so good.” I get angry that he has fooled me. I confront him and say, “Have you been watching me?” Then I say, “I have been watching you.” He starts to get nervous. “I know all about you, “ I say, “What you eat, what you do.” I am about to say, “Who you sleep with,” but a nurse comes in the door with Arnold’s black teenage son. He has a drug problem and there have to be two nurses with him at all times. Two old nurses come in to stay with him. They pop open a mobile and hang it over his bed. This is a routine they have done many times before. Arnold makes me drag over to his son a present. It is a wool and leather shirt. As I pull it out of the box I think it is wrong to reward his son for such behavior. Then I realize I am a black girl.

Michael
09-21-98
I have been hired to repair the president's helicopter—I assume it is the president of some company that deals with John Jay College and one of my colleagues has told the company that I'm handy. I arrive at the downtown Manhattan heliport and it is surrounded by Secret Service. I immediately realized what's going on. The helicopter is actually in the water and is positioned as though it is an ailing dolphin or small whale. I say, only half-kidding, to the Secret Service agent who escorts me to the water's edge, "That chopper is sick!" He laughs and then stops himself, as it is against regulations to laugh. I look down into the chopper and see that there is a woman in it, evidently trapped. She is topless and has very large and ridiculously "stiff" breasts. The absurd thought crosses my mind that if they are silicon jobs, I might be able to use some of the silicon to relubricate the engine parts. I immediately feel guilty and cruel for seeing the woman as an "object". There is a medical tray set up to my right with huge polished steel tools laid out like surgical instruments. The chopper isn't sinking; it's just bobbing on the water and I notice that the woman is smiling and waving to me. There is a Navy Seal in the water keeping the chopper from drifting away from the dock, and he waves to me. Apparently, I'm a highly regarded member of this "team" and the expectation is that I will not only fix the chopper but that I will also be discrete. I wave back to the Seal who lifts his mask to spit some water. I notice, unsurprised for some reason, that it's Arnold Schwarzenegger. His face is incredibly tan and despite the rubber wet-suit, I also notice that he has lost a lot of weight. He grins again and points to the chopper as though to say "don't forget why you are here." I grin back at him and jump into the water and start to paddle over to the engine.

Louise
10-24-98
Arnold is my boyfriend. To prove myself, he asked me to edit a brochure. I am sure he designed it and I had to be careful not to insult him. It was a brochure for his brother-in-law's business. Maria Shriver came in and I had dropped the brochure on the floor. She picked it up from under a table. I noticed that they had cheap furniture. Arnold made some comment about how he had everything in the world. The brochure had black boxes, a hand drawn over and lots of text that I was supposed to edit. The phone rang and it was Arnold's Italian brother who talked to me. He was in another room and I hid the phone between my body and the wall. The phone turned to mush. He came into the room still talking to me but pretending he was not talking to me. I realized I was running in a race and had to get going. I have no shoes, I thought, but actually I had boots on. I got to the end of the race and saw lots of women finish and realized I had to go back to the place I left and it would take another four hours.

Louise
11-05-98
I am trying to get an interview with Arnold. I am outside his brownstone apartment. Maria comes rushing out, jumps into a big sports utility vehicle that has two steering wheels, and drives herself and the other surprised people inside away. Somehow I am then inside with Arnold. I just sit and he ignores me as I casually look at magazines and books that are about him. Then Maria sends up word that she will pick me up at four and gives back my bag which I throw into the SUV. Arnold says forget it, he can get me back if I come to the airport field tonight at 3:20. He will give me a ride in his private jet. I show up there and as we all walk up to the jet there is a small group of fans ready. Then we have to march first in a funeral procession around the field. I have to carry a big American flag. It gets tangled in my feet but finally I carry it correctly. Then it is over and everyone rushes to put their flags down but I can't put an American flag on the ground.

Louise
12-24-98
I bought a large frame on an old easel. The man moving it tells me that, by the way, it was used in a movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Lee Marvin. I was measuring it as we talked. I looked at the back which had very old crumbling paper. I was looking to see if there was money hidden there. Someone else had already looked. There was a recording of Arnold talking about the frame.

Louise
01-21?-99
I was pursuing Arnold. I wanted to have sex with him. At one point he agrees to have sex with me. I am performing oral sex on him and we are under a bridge on his estate. While we are laying there, one of his assistants comes up and talks to him but doesn't see me. This happens several times. We decide to go out of town. We have quick sex at some conference center but once again we are interrupted. I meet someone I know there and when Arnold walks in the room I give Arnold a very stilted greeting: "Good to see you again." Arnold and I walk out together. Someone has a baby and asks if it is mine. I say no, I left mine home. I walk out down a hall alone knowing Arnold knows I really like him. I wonder how I will act if I see him injecting steroids.

Louise
02-01-99
Arnold was going to give a talk in the film class I was teaching. I was getting dressed in my room when Arnold and some of his entourage come in. He tells me I am the most beautiful woman from the middle of my face up but below that I am the most ugly. We kiss and roll around while being watched by his friends. Arnold leaves and I realize I have to get to his house before the class. He lives just down the street. I put on tights and a short jacket. I can't find Arnold's house and it turns out that it is under construction. In the front yard there is a tent sale of old Volkwagen vans. I leave and going back to my house I see another woman also wearing tights and a short jacket. She says, " I want orange juice from that fitness guy, Charles Schwarzenegger." I hurry past her.

Michael
03-25?-99
I had a dream that Louise sent me the "Arnie Chip," a computer chip that would put an Arnold screen saver onto a television set. I tried to call Louise to ask her where she'd gotten it, but my phone was full of some kind of scratchy material that was hurting my hand. I also could not get the Arnie chip to work and felt troubled that Louise had once again sent me something technological that I did not know how to use properly.

Michael
04-01-99
I am loading dishes into the new dishwasher and Mozelle is tossing me the drinking glasses from across the room. I am surprised at both her good aim and her willingness to risk breaking these "Gotham Marquis" glasses. We have just finished a huge meal and all of our guests are packed into the living room, waiting for us to show slides of my "out-takes" from a conference I've been to. I am dreading this because I am afraid my slide-projector's bulb will not last for the entire show and I was hoping not to have to replace the bulb. My "cousin," whose name is apparently "Feelo," (Philo-??) calls to me from the living room and says, "Did Arnold Schwarzenegger really sign your wall?" I laugh, thinking it's a joke about my interest in Arnold. Mozelle peaks into the living room and makes a little sound of surprise, dropping the glass (just like someone would do in a TV-show, wide-eyed, mouth open). I look at her and then follow her eyes to the living room. On the wall above the long couch is Arnold's signature in black paint. The letters are around 10" high and the signature extends the length of the couch. My first concern is that he dripped paint onto the couch when he did this. Then I realize that Arnold must have been in the house to do this! I tell my cousin, "I suppose he did!" But I am disturbed about this intrusion. Mozelle puts her arms around me as though I am in mourning and tells me, "You couldn't have known." I am trying to figure out if I am supposed to be concluding something even worse about all this. All the guests look stricken, as does Mozelle, but all I can think about is the fact that Arnold had come into the house and "given" his autograph. I also wonder whether I will be able to cut away this 7 foot section of wall without collapsing the living room.

Michael
04-01-99
Louise has sent me some artwork in a large manilla envelope. I can't remember if this is the thing I am supposed to soak in water before opening (evidently, Louise had told me I would be receiving such a thing). I am worried that I might soak the wrong thing, and I start to call her on the phone. I notice that on the back of the hand-set there is a "dymo-label" with a 1-800 number which I assume to be the phone company or an emergency number. I reach Louise's answering machine where she has left me a personal message to check out a particular web-site which she says (in the voice recording) "is too cool to be real!" I am suddenly at my computer, logged on and searching for this URL unsuccessfully. Then I realize that the URL was not a "www" address but a string of numbers which I type in. I am suddenly horrified as I realize that the web-site is a list of 1-800 numbers that allow people to call into the "interstellar paradox." I want to call a number but am afraid it will be traced back to me (i.e. through interstellar caller-i.d.) and I'm not sure this will be safe for my house. As I am wondering about this, I notice that the number on my phone handset is one of the numbers on the web-site. I figure that I must have put it on my phone because it is a number I have dialed before, though I don't recall doing so. I try dialing this number but get the sound of fax machine signal. I cannot stop myself from dialing the other numbers and each gives the same sound. I figure that these numbers must be dialing into phone exchanges on other planets where the languages would not be English, anyway. While I am thinking this, I actually connect with one of the numbers and I hear a voice say, "You have dialed this number in violation of your zoning laws." Then I hear a lot of clicking and a live person comes on and says, "If you are trying to call Mr. Schwarzenegger, he is not accepting calls on this line any more." The voice sounds very angry and I notice it sounds Germanic, too. The person does not hang up, and is evidently awaiting some kind of response. I say "you sound like Arnold Schwarzenegger" and the voice starts stammering, apparently unable to think up another bluff. I think to myself that this is another example of Arnold's woodenness; he can't even come up with a follow-up bluff. I say something like "why don't we talk about your next movie" but he hangs up abruptly. I am anxious to call Louise to tell her that the reason we've never been able to interview Arnold is because he can only think a few sentences at a time and also that he doesn't really live in our solar system.

Michael
04-03-99
Maria Shriver was at the next table in a fancy restaurant. I was with Mozelle, but soon Jani Dirks came to the table with her "new husband" who was a muscle-head. She was fawning over him and he was striking ridiculous poses while trying to appear as though he was not flexing. Mozelle was trying not to laugh. Maria Shriver was drinking wine from an enormous glass (the kind used in ads for resorts where they serve giant fruity cocktails) and was clearly sloshed. She leaned toward me and said, very loud, "He's a lot bigger than MY husband...EVERYONE'S bigger than MY husband." Mozelle said something like, "But isn't your husband Arnold Schwarzenegger?" Maria laughed and said, "he USED to be Arnold Schwarzenegger!" Jani had taken out her notepad and was taking "field notes" while her husband was helping himself to the food on Maria's plate now that he knew he did not have to worry about Arnold. Mozelle was eating a big slab of matzoh and Jani's husband was glancing at her suspiciously. I realized that he was a Nazi and felt I had to get Mozelle to safety and also to warn Jani that she was with a Nazi husband. Then I wondered whether Jani already knew this because I realized that she was completely bald.

Michael
05-08-99
Someone named Wilfredo has come to my classroom to give me a message. He is wearing a black beret and looks angry. My students watch me expectantly as I hold the note. Wilfredo taps his watch which I understand to mean that I have to hurry up and read the note and then write out a reply.

A female student named January loans me her reading glasses which are tinted. The note is written in blue and red ink (though I don't remember how I know this). The tint of the glasses eliminates all the letters that are the same color as the tint so I can see a hidden message which reads "You can stop worrying. Arnold has agreed to loan you the money." I take the glasses off and see that the note says the same thing even with all the other letters I had not been able to see with the glasses on. I can't figure this out and take a long time to think about it. I realize that Arnold must know about my vision problem and was merely trying to assist my reading process. January has come up and put her arms around me, impressed that I know Arnold Schwarzenegger. Wilfredo hands me a jar of ink. I say "What am I supposed to do with this?" He makes a gesure that I understand to mean I should pour the ink onto the note, blotting out the letters I don't need and leaving the letters that will spell my reply. This seems impossible and pretty stupid, and January has become very affectionate. She is either murmurring into my ear or using her tongue.

I open the ink jar and start spilling it onto the note. All the "blue" letters soak up the ink and now I see that the "red" letters spell Arnold's names over and over. January claps her hands and my students yell, "Surprise!" Wilfredo has put on a cowboy hat and is dancing some kind of weird cowboy dance.

Arnold opens the classroom door and steps in with very long strides as though his legs are much longer than they seem. I sense he is playing a role I should recognize but I don't. He strides over to January and reaches into her shirt. I feel vaguely irritated that he thinks stardom permits him to do this. She appears bored—I'm uncertain if I am supposed to be her boyfriend—as Arnold removes a scroll from her bra. He starts to read a proclamation in German. The class is fascinated and I am able to catch portions of his phrases. He is announcing a list of "advisories for wonder." January and I exchange knowing looks, though I am still not sure if she is my girlfriend. Arnold is walking up and down the aisles, reading my students' class-notes. He looks up, suddenly, and says, "I hear you are a martial artist!" He flings a CD-Rom disk at me which I can see has been altered to be razor sharp. I block it easily and kick a book from my table so that it flies and hits Arnold in his face. I am shocked at how quickly he drops, unconscious. January starts packing her backpack quickly and the other students start to leave. I am suddenly very thirsty and consider stealing one of my student's water-bottles. I am also concerned that the next class will find Arnold on the floor and know that I was the culprit. I am irritated that I will now have to drag him out of the room and into the elevator.

Michael
05-16-99
I have taken Daina and Cory to a carnival but it turns out to be some sort of intellectual circus. In one section, nerdy looking kids are squeezed together inside a hoola-hoop and are reciting "math facts" at the top of their lungs. Daina wanders off to a shooting gallery where the object is to shoot a check-mark next to the names of "great German philosophers." Cory wants to do this, too, but the guy at the concession tells him he's too short. He is pouting and I buy him a pair of binoculars to keep him busy. Daina has apparently had great success and has shot checkmarks next to all the philosophers. The guy hands her a prize but it is not the biggest one and Daina objects. The guy tells her, "You hit a frenchie." We examine the target-card he hands us and see a pellet-hole through the name "Georges Bataille". I also notice that the German names are "Hegel," "Steinmetz," "Goebels," and "Schwarzenegger" (there were others but I don't recall them). I feel horrified but reluctant to make a scene with a guy who obviously doesn't know anything about philosophers. At the same time, I feel I will betray Daina if I don't point out that only Hegel should be in the group of "great German philosophers." I say something lame like "these names are pretty questionable." The guy says something like "I suppose there's someone more influential than Schwarzenegger!" I notice that the guy has had plastic surgery so that his jaw is identical to Arnold's. Daina and Cory have already wandered off to a fish-bowl concession, and I want to go over to them, but the guy has grabbed me in a choke-hold and is crooning nonsense (in German!) into my ear. At one point I realize he is telling me that my children are pigs (dein kinder ist schveinhuntz—or something like that) and I reach behind me and extricate myself. I am unable to control my anger and kick my knee into his crotch. When he doubles over, Daina and Cory come back over to me and are watching. I realize I will have to snap the guy's neck in such a way that the kids will not notice. Suddenly, we are at a different part of the carnival where there are exotic animals and Cory is riding a dinosaur of some sort. He looks ecstatic and Daina is holding my hand. I am enormously relieved that they do not seem to realize that I have just killed a man.

Louise
05-20-99
I had an assignment to hand in before I went on a trip. The project was about Arnold Schwarzenegger. I was going to mail it in on a postcard. I found some huge postage stamps that had Linda Hamilton on them. She was in her T2 garb and was drinking cans of Coke. I tore two stamps as I removed them from the big sheet. The stamps are so big that if I put them on they would almost completely covere the address area. I do nothing.

Louise
09-02-99
Arnold Schwarzenegger is going to be going by my house and my father has to convinvce him to come sit with me inside on the couch. First we have to finish showing an earthquake disaster film. When it is over a whole bunch of people come to breakfast including some Asian teenagers. Finally Arnold arrives and we sit together and kiss. The next day he comes back and we kiss some more. My mother is sitting on the chair next to the couch. Arnold is playful and lifys me up in the air on his feet. He strains under my weight. I am embarassed that during all this I am wearing ugly flannel pajamas. Arnold is trying to convince me to let him arrange to take care of my dissertation committee and other things so that I won't have to deal with "912 poverty." I don't want to be under his control. While we are on the couch he shouts to people (at my encouragement) out the window behind us. An old woman, who at first we thought was a boy, comes over and is delighted it is Arnold Schwarzenegger. "Do you have a girlfriend in there," she asks. "Yes," he says, "Camille." I hide my head. He does the same thing to a little kid who is wearing old-fashioned clothes.

Michael
09-23-99
I am waiting in line at a book-signing. Charles Dickens has been successfully "cloned" and is signing the reissued edition of "A Tale of Two Cities." The guy in line in front of me is bragging that he has a copy of the original edition by the "original Dickens." His friend is an old man with terrible breath who keeps coughing to the side which happens to be where I am standing. I say to him, "Cover your mouth when you cough!" and he looks at me with annoyance. His younger friend looks at me and says, "That's how you talk to Walter Benjamin?" I am shocked to find that Walter Benjamin is still alive and catch myself as I almost say so. The young friend is waiting for me to say something, but Benjamin starts to collapse. His friend can't lift him, and I try to help but Benjamin is incredibly heavy. I wonder if his having lived so long has increased his "governing gravity". The friend and I are sort of holding Benjamin up by his armpits, but he is slipping out of our grasp. His shirt is very sweaty and I am worried that I will not be able to find a place in Manhattan to wash my hands. The Dickens clone stands up to see what is going on at the back of his book-signing line, and I see that he has Charles Dickens body but Arnold Schwarzenegger's face. Walter Benjamin's friend notices me staring at Dickens/Arnold Schwarzenegger and says, "They all look like that." I realize he means that all the human clones have turned out looking like Schwarzenegger. I suddenly "remember" that there is a black clone of me living in Rwanda. I try to remember if he has Arnold's face, as well.

Michael
11-10-99
There is "strontium 99" all over the floor in my study. I know it is from a nuclear plant accident on Long Island and the fall-out dust has come through the hot-air ducts. The floor is an inch thick with the stuff, and I run out to find the kids and Mozelle. I realize I am tracking deadly atoms all over the house, but I am in too much of a panic to stop. Daina and Cory are on the front porch, drawing a mural of "Ivory Coast." Mozelle is sitting in the car in the driveway, talking on the cell phone. She gestures to me in what I think is a panic and I figure she is trying to locate Celine and Rene. As I start to tell Daina and Cory to get into the car where there it will be less toxic, Celine and Rene come riding up on their bikes. I am confused about why no one seems alarmed, and I see that Mozelle is now laughing in the conversation she having on the phone. I go to the car, careful not to drop strontium dust onto the mural. As I open the passenger door, I see that Arnold Schwarzenegger and Douglas Hofstadter are sitting in the rear seat. (I should add, as an aside, that I have no idea what Hofstadter actually looks like nor how I knew, in the dream, that the man beside Arnold was Hofstadter.) Mozelle, as it turns out, is not actually on the phone but is trying to program it by listening to automated directions that Arnold is actually ventriloquizing "into" the phone. Everyone is laughing. I assume Hofstadter has done the calculations for programming the phone, but otherwise, I'm puzzled about why he is there. I try to remember whether I actually know him while Mozelle starts to rub my thigh, absent-mindedly. Arnold is now using a falsetto and I realize that Mozelle knows it is his voice she hears "in" the hand-set, and that this is her way of flirting with him. For some reason I am not annoyed. I turn to see what Douglas Hofstadter is doing and he is now wearing a Marilyn Monroe wig and lipstick. The fact that he is a cross-dresser doesn't phase anyone else, but I am more stunned than I would be in real life. My reactions seem exaggerated and obnoxious. I order him out of the car and tell him "you can go clean up all that Strontium in my study. Everyone bursts out laughing again. study and then running out in the panic. I don't understand why this "joke" has been played on me. I say, "so what is all that powder on my floor?" Arnold says, "It really IS Strontium 99!" I start to panic again, but Hofstadter says, "Stop it, Shotzy!" and to me he says, "It's just gypsum!" I am upset with Mozelle for going along with all of this, but I also feel stupid.

Louise
02-05-00
I was at Universal Studios for some important project. I watched Arnold make a milk commercial where he ended up with a milk moustache. I thought this indicated that he had reached a low point in his career. Then he went on to do another ad where he teased some guy, saying, “I don’t do ladders.” He still had on his milk moustache which I licked off during it. I thought it would have been a better ad if I had been in it gently wiping off the milk moustache. I checked out the mascara on my left eye which was on very thick.

Michael
02-29-00
Louise and I were in the audience at the opening of a gallery show. The artist was an NBA player, some incredibly tall white dude whom I knew was a rotten player. Louise sort of flirted with him from our front row seats. She started to take a picture of him with her white camera, but he reached over and took it from her and opened it up. A coin fell out, and Louise looked embarrassed. I picked up the coin and on one side was a picture of Arnold's Humvee; on the back of the coin was a picture of Jack Palance. When I looked at Louise, she was now standing with the NBA guy, having her "official picture" taken by Dick Clark who looked much older than I'd imagined. Then I saw that everyone in the audience was holding the same kind of coin that I had.

Louise
04-07-00
Richard was on the phone talking to one of my doctors. He imitates Arnold Schwarzenegger and says in a rough German voice something about me. I am upset because it makes me look unprofessional. I then talk to my mother who reveals that the whole family is moving away. She won't tell me where. I say, "Then I won't see you on Memorial Day?" No, because my sister was moving away too. I was in great despair, especially when I found out that Richard also took Drew with him. Later, I checked a message on my answering machine. It was a patchy message from Richard who said I could leave messages for him at the General Nutrition Center and that he moved my whole family to Dayton, Ohio so that he and Drew's babysitter could get tenure track positions.

Michael
05-12-00
My neighbor's Corvette is in my driveway for some reason. I come home from work and Mozelle rushes out the door to say hello to me. I ask, "Why is Russell's car in our driveway?" Mozelle starts to laugh at the expression on my face. She refuses to answer my question but stands there, waiting until I look in the car. I do, and Arnold is at the wheel, pretending, like a child, that he is driving. He is making exaggerated "turns" of the steering wheel and has a sinister smile on his face. He is saying "vroom vroom" like a kid and doesn't notice me. I want to ask Mozelle what Arnold is doing in the car, but she points to the front door, to indicate that I should come in to see something. I walk up to the door, noticing that the grass is burnt as though there has been a brush fire. In my living room, on my couch, is another Arnold. I feel panic as I guess that he has been cloned. He stands very politely to shake my hand and says in a strange English accent, "So very good of you to invite me." I ask him if he is a clone, and he says, "Well if I am, I'm a good one!" Mozelle explains to me that THIS Arnold is the "original" Arnold Schwarzenegger and that the "one hundred angry Arnolds" are all clones. Arnold explains to me that all over the world, there are "angry Arnolds" being used in film and other publicity events. He says, "I've never had to work a day in my life except to give them my DNA." I still am not sure if this is a joke. Mozelle seems so thrilled that this is happening in our house. I tell Arnold that I want to call my friend Louise to see if she can come to NY. He says he can stay as long as we like, but that, "Louise will have to mind her manners." He is smiling when he says this, but I can tell he is annoyed at something I don't know about. I go to call Louise but Richard tells me she is doing fieldwork in Hamburg. On a hunch, I ask Richard if he knows what she's doing there. He tells me she has been keeping Arnold up all night with "her incessant microphones." I realize that the Arnold-original meant that Louise has been conducting very personal interviews with Arnold clones that she believes are the real Arnold. I ask him how he knows what's going on with his other clones all over the world. He says, "Same way I know that the Arnold in the Corvette is an idiot!" He is angry, and suddenly I doubt he is the original after all. I want him to say something else to see if his British accent has disappeared, but he is obviously not going to talk any more. I realize he is on to me.

Louise
06-06-00
Arnold is at a vacation house we own. I decide after several days to show him the scrapbooks I have made about him. I say, "Arnold, it is time." I go upstairs to get them, afraid he will leave. When I get back I sit next to him on a couch/bed. We are watching some runner on TV who happened to be my date at the house earlier in the week. Arnold says, "How did he get to be here?" He was screwing the Warden's daughter and one day decided to enter the race we were watching him in and which he won. All this time, Arnold is holding my breast. He asks if I mind. I say, "No." He asks if I find it unusual. I say, "No."

Louise
10-19-00
Arnold was my body guard. He was protecting me and Drew from something evil outside our house. The problem was that none of the doors were locked and the house had a lot of windows. We went into one room and a huge window was broken. I foolishly put my head through the hole. I was counting on Arnold to protect us. He was very grim and serious about it. I was falling in love...

Louise
10-23-00
I had a manilla envelope that had information on Arnold Schwarzenegger. People who worked for him were trying to get it. At one point I stashed it in a pile of stuff in a cutout in a wall. Arnold and I talked about it. I think I lied to him.

Louise
10-27-00
Arnold and I are sitting on a bed in a room. It is not a bedroom but a medical facility. We look at some kind of newspaper article. As we get friendlier, Arnold decides to take off his sweater. He really has on at least 5 layers of clothes and I help him pull all off except a t-shirt. We talk about going out. Arnold suddenly says, "I never met anyone who slurped before." He says he likes it but never met anyone who did it. I replied that it is the gum I am chewing that is making me slurp and I usually don't chew gum. I take it out. The woman who is in the room with us suggests that next Tuesday we can all go to the movies together because she has a babysitter that costs $20. Who's your babysitter, I ask. She says "Linda Fioro," and I say I don't know her. Arnold and I try to brush her off so we can be alone.

Louise
06-14-01
I had gotten into Arnold's office (with someone that may or may not have been Michael) and we stole some newspapers that featured Arnold in photographs on the first page. As we were leaving we got stopped by Arnold's guards. They checked everything we were carrying but didn't seem to be interested in the newspapers I was holding (and which seemed to have grown very large). They even checked a pack of 24 rolls of toilet paper that we were apparently also carrying. We realized what they were looking for when I saw a fish tank with sand in it. Buried in the sand were stolen archaeological artifacts. The guards pulled guns on us. I pulled out a cell phone and pretended to call backups, announcing to the guards that I recognize one of the artifacts as stolen Chinese pieces. We look out the window and I point out that our backups are here by showing all the people driving and talking into cell phones at that moment but they are strangers who just happen to be on their phones at the same time. We get away and it is 10:30 at night. I decided I have to call Michael to tell him that Arnold is a "sheba." At that moment a robotic but colorfully painted Arnold comes in the door and tries to stop me. I just manage to get into the next room and turn and old lock on the door when I wake up.

Michael
09-18-01
In a hotel in "Namsville," I am jogging through hallways trying to find the conference room where I am to give a paper on "flotillas of death." I keep rehearsing my opening line as I run: "Every parade is a sign of denial." I realize I am running more gracefully than I ever have because this phrase is adjusting my cadence perfectly. Suddenly I am about to run directly into a revolving door and must put my arm out to stop myself from colliding with a couple who had somehow squeezed themselves together into one of the revolving door quadrants. They were wearing layers and layers of overcoats and looked like they were terrified of everything. I watched them scurry across the lobby and then turned to the revolving door, deciding (I guess) to go outside. I was wearing a suit and regretted how over-dressed I felt. Arnold Schwarzenegger was arriving by limo outside the hotel and gestured for me to grab his overnight bag. I was insulted that he thought I was a bellboy until he said, "There's the shit you wanted." The small duffel bag was very heavy and I didn't know whether I was supposed to check the contents or discretely take it back to my room and check it there. I also didn't know if I was supposed to wait for Arnold to join me. I wasn't even sure if we knew each other. He was not paying any attention to me, so I started to go back into the hotel. Arnold said, "Hey, where are you going with that?" I thought he was angry, but I saw that he just meant that it was funny to see me in such a hurry to go to my room with the bag. I was wondering if it was filled with money (in fact I was hoping it was) but now I really didn't know what to do. A woman got out of the limo and Arnold handed her a huge backpack. She had enormous breasts, like inflated balloons, and when she put the backpack on, her breasts stood out like a comic-book rendering. I laughed out loud and Arnold yelled, "Margie doesn't like when people laugh at her!" I stopped laughing and tried to remember if Louise had ever told me about a woman named Margie connected to Arnold. Margie stomped past me into the hotel and Arnold followed. He turned, quickly, and winked at me and I understood that he found her amusing, too, and his yelling at me was for her benefit. I nodded and said "got it." When we got into the lobby, Arnold suddenly threw off his "cloak" and it formed a large tent around us: Arnold, Margie and me. Margie immediately began changing out of her clothes and into a bathing suit. Her breasts came off in her sweater and I saw that she was actually a rather sinewy athlete. Arnold looked at me, indicating that I should open the bag he'd given me. I tried to unzip it, but the zipper had melted together. Arnold drew a switchblade and cut the bag open for me. Inside were thousands of plastic soldiers. I looked up at Arnold and he said, "That's just the packing material!" I dug around and found a heavy magnet around the size and shape of a hockey puck. Somehow I knew that I was now supposed to use the magnet to bulk-erase all of the surveillance tapes in the hotel so that Arnold and Margie could begin filming their "covert operation." I asked Arnold what the name of this film was. I couldn't wait to call Louise to tell her my 'scoop.' He said, "You'll find out soon enough." He marched over to the check-in counter and began handing out cigars. Margie leaned over to me and whispered, "The movie's called, 'Ben Gurion's Shoulder'" I was trying to figure out whether Arnold was going to play David ben Gurion or whether he played a character who somehow had to lean, or cry, on ben Gurion's shoulder. As I was thinking this, Margie whispered (I guess she was reading my mind!), "Oh, it's not about Jews. It's about cancer." Margie seemed to be waiting for me to kiss her, all of a sudden, so I did and she acted like it was the last kiss she'd ever have. I knew everyone was starting to watch and heard Arnold clapping derisively.

Michael
09-26-01
A man named "Litvash" had come to my house while I was eating dinner. Mozelle was annoyed because she thought the guy was from John Jay College and why couldn't the college leave me in peace when I was at home. I didn't know the guy and was stunned when he pushed one of my kids (Rene) out of her seat so he could sit down. Mozelle jumped up to help Rene and I leaped across the table to throttle the guy. Litvash ducked under the table and said, "I know you know krav maga. I'm not here to hurt you." Mozelle said, "Then why did you hurt my daughter!" He said that Rene wasn't our daughter, that she was a "composition model" and had been put here to "formulate the wires." This was so preposterous, Mozelle and both started to laugh. Litvash came out from under the table and said, "You tink dis iss funny?" I was stunned again because this was Arnold's voice. Litvash peeled his face off and it was Arnold's face but not his body. I said, "You're not Arnold Schwarzenegger, you just have his face." He left the dining room and went upstairs. I ran after him and found him pulling a ceiling light fixture out of the ceiling. I asked him what the hell he was doing, but he didn't answer. He pulled the fixture down until I could see that in the tangle of wires was a tiny, throbbing miniature of Rene! He said, "Deez are all over da place!" He ran into one of the bedrooms and tore down the ceiling fan and there were several miniature Rene's, all of them pulsating as though they were breathing very hard. I found all of this terrifying. Mozelle started to come up the stairs, but I stopped her from seeing the little Rene's. She said, "Don't bother, Michael. I've been finding them for months." She went over to the linen closet and opened the door. There were hundreds of these Rene's, all still pulsing. I didn't know what to do or say except, "What do you feed them?" Litvash and Mozelle looked at me like I was nuts. Then Mozelle coughed in a weird, phoney-sounding way and her face popped off! Underneath was a kind of femmy looking Arnold Schwarzenegger face. Litvash started laughing and said, "So THAT'S what I did with you!" I realized he had been looking for his partner and had forgotten where he'd put her. I tried to remember if I'd had any clues that Mozelle was not who I'd thought she was. All of the Rene's in the linen closet started to tumble out onto the carpet. Litvash pounced on them and began grinding them under his heels. I panicked, thinking that they would all "die," but they weren't alive. They were just programmed to throb. When they were crushed, they turned into dull grey concrete dust. I asked Litvash, "What does this have to do with the World Trade Center?" He said, "Ask your 'wife'" and started to laugh again. His laugh sounded like huge pieces of steel groaning under terrible weight. Then I understood that both he and "Mozelle" were made of the rubble from the collapsed twin towers. I also understood that the real Mozelle had moved out because she did not think NY was safe any more. I couldn't remember if she had told me she was moving out. I also could not remember where my children were. It dawned on me that this was now the end of the world and I was going to be alone with the miniature Rene's and the two creatures made of World Trade Center debris. I woke up drenched in sweat, holding the copy of Don Byrd's The Poetics of the Common Knowledge that I had been reading earlier when I first went to bed.

Louise
10-30-01
News had leaked out that Bill Gates had been killed by terrorists. But the story never appeared in any newspaper. I was in San Francisco to check it out. There was a crowd of people and all of a sudden the Arabs in white robes and turbans filtered out of the crowd and surrounded everyone. I escaped and came upon a little boy lost in the desert. We could see a humvee approaching from far away. It turned out to be Arnold. He opens the door for us to get in but he doesn't stop. I shove the little boy in and jump in myself as the car drives by. Arnold knows who I am.

Louise
11-02-01
I was in a class and we had to find a quote and illustrate it. I decided I would use Arnold saying, "I'll be back." I illustrated it with three photographs from his movies.

Michael
04-23-02
I had gone to Staples to buy some "ceramic tape" and was asking the clerk where it was kept in the store. She knew what it was but could not find it. We walked up and down every aisle, and I found out that Staples stocks stuff I never knew about. In one aisle there were piles of turkey feathers, and on a big display at the end of another aisle were neatly stacked cans of "snake meat." We didn't find the ceramic tape and the clerk got angry with the store manager, muttering, "He thinks we can just walk around all day with customers …such an asshole." When we rounded the next aisle, the manager was standing there in a "Mr. Clean" pose: arms crossed, bald, and wearing white scrub pants and a while muscle t-shirt. I started to laugh, but the clerk seemed frightened. She 'shushed' me and whispered, "He thinks he's Arnold Schwarzenegger!" I couldn't resist teasing him and said, in Arnold's accent, "Are you the Terminator?" He winked at me and then turned to the side and lifted up a bookcase filled with computer equipment and threw it at me. I realized I would be crushed, and put my arms up to try to save my head. I was amazed when I actually caught the bookcase with everything in it! It was as light as a feather. The manager was staring at me and said, "Maybe YOU'RE the Terminator!" He said this as though he though it might really be true. I laughed and was upset that my laughter sounded like Arnold's. Then I could not stop sounding like him. I threw the bookcase aside, not thinking about what I was doing, and I heard the sound of several people "oomphing" like they'd been partially crushed in the next aisle. The store clerk ran over to see what I'd done and the manager turned and 'pranced' away in an exaggerated dancer's manner. I found that I could not walk well because my thighs had gotten enormously muscular. I found all of this alarming but mostly because I knew that I would need to get all new pants. I also could not remember where I'd parked my bicycle outside the store and wasn't even sure if I could still ride it with my new thighs. I asked one of the stock-boys on my way out of the store if he'd seen my red bike …but my voice came out sounding like, "Haff yooo seen a red buyk?" I knew Mozelle would hate my new accent and I would now have to take "de-accenting" lessons before I returned to work.

Michael
07-07-02
I dreamed that I had just gotten the first minted Arnold pennies. I had sent away for them and they arrived in plastic envelopes. Arnold's face was on one side and a huge bicep was on the other. I was surprised that Arnold has successfully eliminated the "in god we trust" phrase from the coin. I could't read the words that were on the coin, but I figured out that they were German. I couldn't wait to call Louise, but I was worried that Richard would answer and would somehow already know about the coins and would tell me that they were worth less than face value.

Louise
09-22-02
Michael and I are in Las Vegas playing slot machines. The machines are not close together but about 2 feet apart. Both our machines break and Arnold Schwarzenegger comes over to fix them. He opens Michael’s machine and presses a button so he gets free games which start spinning with the machine cover open. We understand that we will not be able to win money in these free games, but just will be able to watch. On my machine Arnold opens the cover and takes out grapes which he pops into my mouth. Michael looks over at me and gives me a funny look.

Louise
10-07-02
I was at a voting place. There was a list on the wall. Arnold came up to look at it and walked away looking forlorn and kind of hunched over. I said to him, "That's okay because we are cousins."

Louise
02-19-03
Arnold was shopping with his "Finesse" credit card which apparently is a very elite card. He was trying to show up some general he just met so he spent $15,000. A clerk at the store said, "People with the Finesse card do that!"

Louise
07-19-03
There had been a nuclear war and we wanted to see if Arnold had survived. We drove to his fancy neighborhood in Greenwich. Michael went up to the back door of Arnold’s house and opened it despite my concern that we would get caught. We heard the sound of a children’s birthday party so we knew they were there. Arnold came out and I saw that he had a hole burned all the way through his bare foot. The inside of his foot was hollow. We followed him to a local store and he looked at us but didn’t seem to know who we were.

Louise
?
Maria is trying to catch Arnold in an affair. There is a big dinner party. Billy Crystal is being schizo and wants to sit on both sides of the table. I am placed outside the square so I could see Arnold and videotape him.

Louise
?
Arnold is talking to me. I ask a professor if Arnold was ever in a theatre class because I would like to sit in.

Louise
?
Arnold has spent the night with me. We are testing out some ideas. All my friends and family are around and no one is surprised Arnold is here. Eventually he has to go and I go brush my teeth and put on makeup to say goodbye.

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