I woke up in an apartment. It was supposed to be Ecuador, I think; but I realize it’s Cuba. I’m scruffy and tired. It’s hot. Very hot. But there’s a cooling breeze. There’s no air conditioning. All the windows are open. I must have slept three or four days because I understand that I’ve already been there that long. I wander around the house. The kitchen was much like my kitchen in Korea. Big enough. Linoleum floors. A tiny fridge. All the work of the kitchen — the fridge, the sink, the stove —, are along one wall. There’s a small but functional table along the other wall. It’s a traveler’s kitchen. My roommates. A spunky kid. He looks like 18 or 19 but he’s playing 13 or 14 acting like he’s 18 or 19. He’s alone. He’s rough around the edges but he puts on a very brave, adult front. Without introducing himself to me, he tells me how he’s going to go score some girls. Meanwhile, I’m struggling with my insulin. For some reason it looks like an IV bag attached to a long bendable pole. I can’t work it out. I keep breaking the needles. Eventually I break the bag. By now the bag is huge, bigger than a bag of milk and it’s leaking insulin. I don’t know how hard it is to buy insulin where I am and I’m nervous about having to find and buy some more. Another roommate stumbles out and says something about food. Perhaps he suggests he will make dinner. But then he disappears.

I wander around the house some more. There’s a back bedroom. I find the man. He looks, perhaps, like a young John Lennon. Or Shaggy from Scooby Doo. He’s the kind of guy that says “man” a lot. You know just by looking at him. When I stumble upon him he’s with his wife. He’s really with his wife. There’s also an infant in the room. I keep walking through. It’s the sort of room that has two doors. I feel horrible for interrupting. Although there was no indication that they had noticed me.

I don’t know where I am or what I am doing there. But it’s fun to be some place new. I go back to my room and look through my stuff. Perhaps for clues for what I am supposed to be doing here. I find some random books. Big textbooks from University that I don’t even read anymore. It’s as if I were blind or drunk when I had packed. There’s a paperback of the movie Lost Boys. Which in real life I don’t have and I don’t think exists. There are some pornographic magazines too.

I go back to the kitchen where I am shortly joined by another roommate, a very friendly plump girl. It occurs to me, and it stirs an instant panic, that I haven’t updated SnappedShots in four days and that I don’t want people to know I’m in Cuba or wherever I am. “Is there an Internet café around here?” I ask. She tells me there’s one just down the street – here she points to the back of the kitchen – on Dufresne. I don’t know where my brain came up with that word, Dufresne. I don’t think it’s a name or a word that I’ve ever heard. I jot down the word. I imagine that I’m writing down the Anglicized version of the word because I haven’t been acclimatized yet. The John Lennon guy comes out and starts to make dinner. I’m not sure I should eat it because I’ve ruined my insulin.

Hhm? Nobody asked me my name. And I didn’t know what I was really doing there. Funny that I should send myself some place exotic in my dream and experience the whole thing inside an apartment. Or perhaps not that funny.

SS