Bollywood | The Dreamweaver

I met two Indian students on Devon Avenue who asked me if I could take them to the Bollywood-style theater downtown.

As there were only two bikes left in the rental rack, I decided to take the California Avenue bus and meet the young men downtown.

Once on the bus, the driver got off for a toilet break but the bus drove off unattended without him.

Seeing this as an opportunity to get to theater quicker, I opened the window and using the auxiliary brake and steering wheel I managed to safely maneuver the bus into the left turning lane and safely onto Peterson Avenue, arriving downtown shortly after, ditching the bus into a gravel path at the side of the road.

As I was alighting the bus, a derelict Indian man grabbed hold of my shirt sleeve and hounded me for fifty cents, saying he'd snapped a photo of my on his phone and would turn it over to the police if I didn't meet his demand. I took out a roll of quarters I had in my pocket, tore it open and spilled two quarters in the man's hand and he let me go with a sinnister smirk on his face.

I met up with the two young men outside the theater and we went in only to discover we didn’t have enough money to buy tickets––that we were fifty cents short!

We came up with a scheme to pretend to kidnap the ticket girl who would find our little rouse amusing and let us in for free, but that only made the theater manager angry and he threw us out.

Forlorn, the two Indians decided to head back to school in Madison, but I was determined to get in and see the show seeing how I'd gone to great lengths to be there in the first place.

Sneaking back in at an opportune moment when the ticket girl went on a toilet break, I stole a fruit covered cookie from a box on the ticket counter and snuck into the theater.

I crawled on all fours down the center aisle and laid down on floor in the front row out of sight.

I fell asleep and had some beautiful dreams before being woken up by the ticket girl who recognized me and, taking pity knowing what would happen if the manager saw me, quickly escorted me out of the theater.

Once I was outside, I realized I must have been robbed while I was sleeping and had no shoes, wallet, keys or phone.

Saddest of all twas having lost my wallet with its irreplaceable nostalgic contents, I started walking home, barefoot and demoralized .

After sundown, I arrived at a town where I walked uphill along a sandy trail trying to find a place to spend the night.

I came upon what looked like a row of abandoned stables and went inside the first one and fell asleep on a bale of hay.

Then I woke up.