★★★★ Rich early sunlight made something Impressionist of the fog lying in billows over the Hudson. Above and away from the riparian mists, a lighter, aerial haze glowed. The atmosphere was tropical, but the angle of the sun was subarctic, sending rays under the branches along the eastern edge of the Park. Someone had brought a baby in a full pink snowsuit in a stroller on the train, amid the coatless passengers old enough to dress themselves. The downtown sky left a lovely reflection in a puddle of mop water. Head-on, it was blown-out white, blasting the edges off the forms of oncoming pedestrians. Tall maples in the shelter of the churchyard dropped their leaves over the walls; traffic sifted them out of the middle of the street, till the gutters were broad, yellow ribbons.

Are you having the sort of day that can only be redeemed by watching a man attempt to negotiate an escalator which is escalating in the other direction? Good news!

by Sara Polsky

As National Novel Writing Month slogs on, here’s the next in our series about the novels that we started writing but, for whatever reason, never finished.

My first serious attempt to write a novel was, somewhat unfortunately, inspired by The Da Vinci Code. I was a college sophomore when I decided to try NaNoWriMo, and a few months into a busy school year, The Da Vinci Code and its cousin The Rule of Four were probably the last books I had read for fun. I was a medieval history and literature major particularly obsessed with England, and my moment of book inspiration came while thinking about the 12th-century murder of Thomas Becket: then archbishop of Canterbury, soon-to-be saint, and obviously the perfect fulcrum for a novel.

While wandering through the history section of Barnes & Noble, I had seen a book called The Quest for Becket’s Bones: The Mystery of the Relics of St. Thomas Becket of Canterbury. I hadn’t read it, but a mystery about a saint’s bones — a saint killed violently after a king’s tantrum about him — seemed (probably only to me) like a perfect seed for a modern mystery with medieval parallels. So I ordered the book and, without reading it, began planning my own. The King’s Evil, the title I gave my novel, was actually a phrase used to describe scrofula, a kind of tuberculosis, and had nothing to do with Becket or anyone connected to his story. I just liked the way it sounded.

When that November started, I had an outline for a prologue and two chapters, and a vague idea of the overarching mystery: the present-day murder victim was the last living protector of Becket’s bones. He had been part of a secret order formed in the sixteenth century, after England’s monasteries were dissolved and Becket’s Canterbury shrine destroyed. Though the victim in my novel was killed by four men, paralleling Becket’s murder, the ultimate mastermind behind the crime would have been, according to my outline, “a private collector/museum director/auctioneer” who wanted Becket’s bones for himself. Basically, it was The Da Vinci Code without any of the juicy religious conspiracy elements that made people unable to stop reading The Da Vinci Code. Fan fiction with the serial numbers sort of filed off. I’m not sure whether it’s better or worse that I didn’t realize this then.

I also didn’t spend much time thinking about the middle of the book, or about the clues that would lead my protagonist — a medievalist whose theories were seen as “controversial” within academia — to the murderer. But the Internet told me to fill out character worksheets, so I spent a few hours answering questions like “How did the pet once save the character’s life?” (My answer began, “She has never had her life literally saved by a pet.”) I named my main character Katherine, a name with suitably medieval English overtones. Her partner in investigation, and eventual love interest, would be an old acquaintance, or perhaps an ex-boyfriend, who happened to be a detective. There were bits of, well, me in there, too: Katherine’s hobbies, as per the worksheets, included watching romantic comedies and visiting open houses for fun, and she’d “dabbled in archaeology.” She’d worked in publishing for a few years before returning to academia, which, at the time, was one possible future I imagined for myself.

Somehow, with this vague premise, I managed to write about 30 thinly plotted pages of the book during that NaNoWriMo. In one particularly ridiculous scene, the murder victim just happened to have left a post-it note on his computer monitor listing the time and place of a meeting on the night of his death. Another note on the back of that same post-it mentioned Becket’s bones, handily revealing to Katherine and the detective a possible motive for the murder. Convenient!

Working on the book was weirdly energizing, considering that it involved the same things — reading, research, writing, and hunching over my laptop in a beanbag chair — that I already did all day. It was a secret joy, maybe because I had no idea how to do it. I didn’t feel any need to write in order, so I jumped from scene to scene as I thought of them, letting myself write the fun scenes — romance, murder, and a few interludes from the point of view of an angry Henry II — first. Somehow, I trusted that I would eventually be able to fill in everything else.

Nor did I notice the mediocrity of the prose. For example, one line of dialogue from a murder scene went, “Give us the box.”

“No,” replied another character (the murder victim). “I thought we were here to negotiate.”

Not good writing — but competent enough in an action-movie way that it was easy to power onward.

I also connected with some fellow NaNo-ers online, and when we weren’t giving each other encouragement on our plot summaries or passing around useful character worksheets, we made mock-ups of our novel covers. My fake cover image seems to be the one file connected to this project that I didn’t save, but I remember it: it was dark red (to represent blood?), the title in white in a medieval font, with a manuscript illumination of Becket’s murder between the title and my name.

But by the middle of the month, I had fallen behind on the daily NaNo wordcounts, mostly because I had no idea how to plot a mystery novel, and it isn’t the ideal genre to tackle with only a three-chapter outline. Eventually, I realized I could just as easily find ways to read my research books about Thomas Becket, Henry II, and medieval saints for school — I didn’t need to use my novel as an excuse.

I also realized that, while I very much wanted to write a book someday, I didn’t want to write this book. I wasn’t ready for the logistical challenges of writing a mystery: I had no idea how to seed the book with convincing red herrings or develop intriguing parallels between Becket’s murder and the modern-day one in the story. I’d begun the project with vague plans to set some scenes in the 12th century, but one thing studying history had taught me was how hard it would be to write believable historical fiction; in the end, I didn’t want to take on the challenge. Basically, the premise gave me a way to read more about some subjects I loved, but the actual work of writing a history-inspired thriller never appealed to me at all.

Looking back at my notes for The King’s Evil now, I can see which aspect of the story did intrigue me: the idea of a romance between Katherine, my protagonist, and the British detective she worked with on the case. My notes are full of questions and speculations about the two characters and their history, and their interactions fill the scenes I managed to write that November.

So it isn’t surprising that, three years later, the next time I made a serious attempt at writing a novel, it was a relationship — the friendship and then estrangement of two teenage cousins — that made the new idea spark for me. As I wrote and rewrote and revised, the characters’ interactions and personalities and histories were what compelled me to return to the story. I saw all of the character connections in the novel as a web, and whenever I thought about that web, I wanted to write.

It wasn’t suddenly easy for me to finish a novel once I’d figured out what excited me as a writer. In fact, I almost wish I’d forced myself to write more of The King’s Evil as an exercise in plot and structure. But it was that later manuscript, the character- and relationship-driven one, that I finally finished, submitted, and sold. (It will be published next fall.) And now, when I’m weighing whether to spend several years with a particular idea, what I look for is that emotional click, those messy spaces between characters where a story might bloom.

Previously in series: For Those Who Have Asked Politely About My “Novel”

Sara Polsky is a writer and editor at Curbed. Her first novel, This Is How I Find Her, will be published by Albert Whitman in fall 2013. Sometimes she tweets.

It’s very easy to kill your household animals in a hurricane. The easiest way is to suddenly panic and have to leave your house and lock your animals in it. Or, if you live in Red Hook, perhaps you will lock your chickens in their coop and then leave the neighborhood, forcing your neighbors to risk their lives in chest-deep water to save them. In other parts of town, people locked up or tied up dogs and cats, because they didn’t know what to do, and left birds in cages — and abandoned them. These things happen! Most of us would agree that it is better to save yourself first when things suddenly go south. (I say “most” because Morrissey would definitely not agree.) The good news, at least, is: it’s really hard to kill cats, even if you lock them in a house when an enormous storm surge is coming. They will get out, they will swim and climb trees. They will use dogs as floatation devices. They will DEAL WITH IT. And then they will scratch your face off when you come back. Reasonable.

As always, the tip to not killing animals is: preparation.

In the tri-state area, we’ve all learned a little — or possibly quite a lot — about hurricane preparedness this month. My top three hurricane priorities are now:

1. Having cash on hand before the storm for when credit card readers and cash registers and ATMs no longer work, and also for when we become a post-apocalyptic society overnight (also this is when you buy “cigarettes” and “ground coffee” and “bread”);

2. Having water in the house, so, filling up bathtubs and sinks;

3. And getting the pet carriers out and putting them by the door, well before the storm comes. And “having a plan” about where to take them. So that way, even if I lose everything I own and feel terrible and become destitute, at least I haven’t killed these particular animals too!

Here is a video from the Humane Society! On the bright side, a lot of animals probably didn’t die in Sandy because the City repeated very loudly that emergency centers were pet-friendly, and because a lot of people were prepared. So now we are ready for the next hurricane, which will be in approximately seven months, because, “climate change.” This time, take your iguanas with you.

English stabbies are so bored with their usual bedlam that they’ve begun robbing famous prisons. The Tower of London, the British Empire’s beloved historical place to torture its political dissidents, was the target of a bold thief who stole the Tower’s keys on Guy Fawkes Night. The keys open not only the locks on the drawbridges, but also the doors to the tourist restaurant and a conference room — perhaps the very conference room where Henry VIII had Anne Boleyn executed in 1536.

Stealing a set of keys may sound “stupid” to Yank ears, but the ancient Tower of London is well known for the daily “Ceremony of the Keys,” which is some kind of bizarre ritual performed daily by the “beefeaters,” a group of historically costumed security guards who are, of course, prohibited from going after thieves “as strict rules mean they cannot leave their post to give chase.”

But rest assured, the thief who walked off with the unholy keys did not molest the feared and horrible Crown Jewels, which include the demonic 105-carat Koh-i-Nur diamond. The Tower of London and what remains of the British Empire will fall when the six resident ravens leave the cursed place. Until then, the sinister corvids are each fed “170 grams of raw meat a day, plus bird biscuits soaked in blood.”

What Was Your Weirdest Celebrity Sex Dream?

You can’t really control what you dream about. And of course, you can’t control who you have dream sex with, either. If I could, then my dreams would feature nothing but Michael Fassbender and Ryan Gosling, together. Yes. But the subconscious has its own ways, and sometimes the most random person will pop into our dreams for an intimate encounter. We asked these people to share the sordid details of their weirdest celebrity sex dream with us.

Alex Balk

I don’t know how “embarrassing” this registers as, but I did recently have a sex dream about Angelina Jolie. And it was one of those dreams where you’re actually somehow aware that you’re dreaming and you kind of make judgments about it while it occurs. (This happens to other people too, right?) Anyway, I remember being very ashamed of myself in the dream, like, “Really? This is who you’re having a sex dream about? The most famous actress in the world? Who you’re not even particularly attracted to? And while Krysten Ritter exists?” As for the sex itself it was pretty unmemorable, although I’m sure that’s my fault and in no way a reflection on the abilities of Ms. Jolie.

Jim Behrle

I mean, for me, celebrities are fine for the occasional sexual daydream. But for the hardcore sex dream? My subconscious doesn’t work that way. I have sex dreams usually about people at work, people who work at coffee shops. Poets. Librarians. ATF agents. Great, very satisfying not-at-all-embarrassing sex dreams. What makes for an embarrassing sex dream? I dreamt I had sex in the middle of the pitcher’s mound at the old Shea Stadium. Or on a floating, melting polar icecap. I can’t think of anything embarrassing. Embarrassing sex acts? Or that my performance wasn’t so great? Hey, in dreams I will knock your socks off, believe me. Even though I keep my socks on. I have sex dreams about Ann Coulter. She’s sexy and funny. She’s not really a Republican, she’s a comedian. It’s her gig. Is that what you mean? I should be embarrassed by the celebrity? Or the situation? All I remember was that it was hot, she was so gentle and so giving, and I would dream about her again, snobs. It used to be that Socialists and Republicans would fuck the shit out of each other in this country and that’s what made us stronger. Steamy, slap-your-sweaty-hand-on-the-car-door Stronger. For America. Now all we do is fuck people who agree with us all the time and then fall asleep in the middle then break up.

Sam Biddle

After 9/11 I didn’t jack off for like two weeks, mostly out of guilt. I was 14. I’m not sure why, but it felt fucked up to masturbate in the wake of horror, like it was inappropriate, or disrespectful, or would generate bad karma from the people who died. The only things on TV were death and explosion replays, and I only had dial-up internet. But then one afternoon I fell asleep on the couch and had a sex dream about Britney Spears — I don’t remember much about it at all, but when I woke up I knew it was OK again.

Shirley Braha

Before I met A$AP Rocky I didn’t think I would like him, but that was a really dumb thing to think. To call him swag seems disparaging. His vibes are on a magical level that has permeated my subconsciousness. I had a dream that we saw each other at an after-party to my college reunion, even though that’s an unlikely scenario since I went to an all-women’s college. A$AP Rocky & I were talking and things were going well and I was thinking maybe we could go back to my hotel room, but then I remembered that earlier that day I had met the Kardashian sisters and they needed a place to stay during the reunion, and even though they were kind of annoying and I didn’t have anything in common with them because they are total lamestreamers, they were still nice and I wanted to be nice too so I told them they should stay with me. Stupid Kardashians ruined everything. The end.

Alexander Chee

All of my dreams about celebs are nonsexual. The closest I came was, I had a dream that I was driving Britney Spears around New York at night in a Volkswagon Bug with her on a swingset mounted to the roof, swinging back and forth and chatting with me as we drove up Park Avenue. It was a beautiful warm night and I don’t remember a thing she said, but it was like I was in one of her videos.

That is probably a metaphor for sex, but a deeply buried one, in which we are inaccessible to each other.

I still remember it very clearly.

Ben Choi

I am not typically embarrassed by my celebrity sex dreams, but I probably should be. Mine are not heroic dreams. You will not be turned on during following. Herr Sandman ist kinky.

First of all, I rarely get past second base, and I’m usually not the instigator. I should say, then, that celebrities rarely get past second base with me. Only they’re not really celebrities. They’re c-list celebrities, and they’re definitely not the ones being spied on with telephoto lenses by page-two paparazzi.

In dreams, I’ve been french-kissed by sardonic newswoman Linda Ellerbee, been felt up by Jill Clayburgh and Stockard Channing (working together) and been invited to watch Linda Ronstadt “love [her]self as a woman” (Mexican-folk-music-era Ronstadt, not satin-jacket-and-rollerskates-era Ronstadt).

I don’t know what this all means. A part of me just wants to go back to old trusty Lynda Carter/Wonder Woman and Julie Newmarr/Catwoman dreams before I wind up in a threeway with Florence Henderson and F. Murray Abraham.

Nicole Cliffe

Ugh, totally. It was James Gandolfini, during the run of “The Sopranos,” and I thought he was really sexy, and I dreamt that he (as Tony, I think?) propositioned me in that office (was it at a car place?) and I said no, because I had a boyfriend. So, obviously, when I woke up I was really mad all day, because I could have had dream-sex with Tony Soprano instead of being dream-faithful to some guy I probably couldn’t pick out of a police lineup now. No! I remember, I was dating this guy, [redacted], and he was a lot of fun. Still, should have dream-cheated with Tony Soprano, though. It was before he killed Adriana.

Jacob Clifton

Last month I dreamed I was in a long-term relationship with Deepak Chopra. We had a fight, one of those stupid fights you can’t even remember what started it, and then we made up and apologized, and then had sex. It was your standard base-running sequence, nothing too advanced. He was a very mindful lover. I actually woke up feeling pretty great about life. The next night, I had essentially the same dream but with the demon guy from that movie Legend. It was a less tender experience, but it got the job done.

Tyler Coates

I’ve only had one real celebrity sex dream (the closest to having a second one involved me settling a fight with “Real Housewives of New York” cast member Bethenny Frankel by shouting, “Yeah, well, I’ve fucked Jon Hamm!” despite not actually having sex with Jon Hamm in the dream). It happened in junior year of high school, I think, and all I remember about it was that I was having sex with Pierce Brosnan in a hot tub. Except that he had a vagina. This is a pretty cut-and-dry case of my sexual confusion in my high-school years, but it’s particularly confusing because I have never cared much for Pierce Brosnan.

Brent Cox

Tough one. The dreams I remember are chock full of celebrities real (1997: Ric Ocasek and I fight an alien invasion of Earth in a flying car) and imagined (roughly half of the NY Media Scene have appeared in a dream or two, none of whom have I met IRL), and I certainly have dreams in which I am having sex, but rarely am I having sex with the celebrity. (I say rarely because who can count the number of dreams I’ve forgotten, and I’d like to say that a number of those had Very Special Guest Stars, if you know what I mean.) The one that does come to mind was from about the same time as Ocasek and I saved the planet, and it involved Brooke Shields. Not child celebrity Brooke Shields, but contemporaneously-aged Brooke Shields, the one on “Suddenly Susan.” I’ve never had a crush on Brooke Shields, by the way, but in dreams you don’t get to pick. So in this dream, Brooke and I were just matter-of-fact seeing each other, in that way of dreams where the context gets zapped into your head and mutates throughout without you noticing. We had a residence that resembled a clubhouse (frequent dream feature) that you had to had to climb through a passageway and squeeze through a nearly-too-small tunnel to get into (another frequent feature, and, yeah, I know). And there was a whole bunch of stuff going on that I don’t remember — other characters, a storyline — but Brooke and I Did It, in a bed of some sort, and when we were done Doing It the bed transmogrified into an open drawer of a chest-of-drawers. Weird! Sorry that I can’t remember the more sordid details, but generally my dream-trysts are foreplay heavy followed by a jump-cut — my subconscious is a prude.

Mike Dang

Do people really dream about having sex with celebrities? I’m sure it is a very common thing! But it is a thing I’ve yet to experience. This is probably no surprise to anyone who knows me, but my dreams tend to be PG — maybe PG-13. When I do dream about famous people, it’s usually under non-romantic circumstances, for example, I have a reoccurring dream where I solve mysteries with Madeleine Albright. Those dreams were so vivid that I spent a weekend coming up with a children series called Madeleine Albright, Girl Detective. I am not kidding, though I probably should be.

Jen Doll

I did have a dream in which George Burns lived in my closet and wore my shoes and also doled out an array of advice and helped me pick out the day’s outfits, so that’s… maybe… a kind of a sex dream, at least, if Freud were to interpret it?

Elisabeth Donnelly

The one that sticks out in my brain for the sheer oddness of it is a dream featuring the rapper Everlast from House of Pain (or, if you remember, the solo song “What It’s Like,” by Everlast). It felt like the boys of my youth were haunting me — I went to a Catholic high school south of Boston, where you get in the habit of saying everybody’s full name because there were eight Erins, five Mikes, and three Siobhans in your class. Four of them had the name Erin O’Connor and two of them were named Mike Kelly. I spent my time crushing on worldlier men, obviously: Adam Horovitz from the Beastie Boys. So when, years after leaving these Irish-y boys behind who never even liked me in the first place, for the guy from the white rap band that had a video for their one song that had a quick shot of Gaelic on the side of a a church from Southie (in 2012 Boston, this church is now a condo) to pop up in my subconscious, it was very weird. Anyways. Everlast was a great kisser and tenderly held me in his giant, Popeye-post-spinach arms. That is all that I remember.

More recently, I had a dream where a mumblecore director was promising me a big role in his movie if I’d take my top off, and I was genuinely torn about this proposition, but my subconscious replaced him with Emmy-winning Damian Lewis, so I was almost about to say yes. Then I woke up.

Bobby Finger

The most embarrassing thing about my celebrity sex dreams is that I don’t have them. My sex dreams involve people I know personally — so if I’m dreaming about a celebrity, we’re certainly not having sex. We’re best friends. After seeing Easy A, Emma Stone was my dream best friend for a number of weeks. We’d see movies together. Get drinks and gossip. I remember one dream where we just texted. She resurfaced as my best friend last fall after I saw The Help. An actual friend of mine once told me a story about meeting Andrew Garfield’s best friend, which meant Andrew Garfield and I were dream best friends for the following few nights. Again, there was texting. I ate with him. I drank with him. I showed him off to my friends at a party that we were probably the life of. Recently I had a dream that Adele called me crying over something while I was out with my actual friends. I was like, “Sorry guys, Adele’s upset,” and left the table to console her, as if it were some normal thing. (Which it totally would be if I were best friends with Adele.)

Matthew Gallaway

I had many amazing sex dreams with Galen Tyrol (especially the bearded/revolutionary version), which was embarrassing when I learned that he was a CYLON. (I got over it, though.)

Emily Gould

Unfortunately I have never had a celebrity sex dream. I did have a dream where Hugh Jackman and I had to work together to violently murder George W. Bush, but that isn’t really related to what you asked at all. (Later it turned out that an X-Men movie billboard over the BQE was visible from my bedroom window. The subconscious works in totally opaque and unmysterious ways).

Anna Holmes

At some point in 2010 I had a sex dream about Nick Denton. Nick, for those who do not already know, is the proprietor and self described “gossip merchant” behind Gawker Media. He was once my boss. He is also gay.

Nick’s sexuality is, of course, irrelevant, except for the fact that my sex dreams usually star heterosexual men. (Related: My subconscious has the really annoying habit of pulling the plug on nocturnal nookie before penetration occurs.) ANYWAY: Here’s what I remember. Nick was throwing a party in his fancy Spring Street loft. At some point, the party turned into an orgy, and I realized that I was one of the few (maybe only) females in the room. There were dozens of naked, tumescent men. On couches. On rugs. On paneled floors. On the kitchen counter, where the champagne flutes usually go. It was a sort of frenzy! (Not to mention decadent and ominous. Think Fritz Lang meets Ayn Rand meets Stanley Kubrick.) I mean, it was a fucking horror show.

Speaking of fucking: Somehow, I found myself having sex with Nick. (I realize that the phrase “found myself having sex” suggests that I lacked agency or purpose, and that is both true and untrue. You know how dreams are.) Words were not exchanged; glances not given. (Foreplay? Forget it.) One second Nick Denton was naked in front of me and the next, Nick Denton was naked inside of me.

Not only did I not wake up, I enjoyed it… as much as one can enjoy the missionary position with an emotionally unavailable, vagina-averse boss, that is. Then it ended. I don’t recall whether or not he climaxed. I’m pretty sure I didn’t. And no, I don’t remember how big his penis was or what it looked like. Just that it worked. That’s enough, right?

Right?

Cord Jefferson

Years ago I dreamed I was having sex with a beautiful woman who turned into John Waters. I have no idea how it happened — he just sort of materialized where the woman had been — but I do remember that it startled me far less than it probably should have considering that 1. I’m not gay, and 2. I don’t think I’d want to have sex with John Waters were I gay. Years later I read in a dream interpretation book that straight people who have dreams of gay sex should maybe see a therapist, but that seemed like some sex-negative, alarmist bullshit to me. I’ve never again dreamed of having sex with John Waters or any other man.

Rich Juzwiak

To preface: I rarely have sex dreams. The dreams I remember, in general, are usually bizarre in the blandest way possible.

That said, a few years ago, I dreamed that I was making out and getting into some intense body contact with Gene Siskel. It was years after he died.

Also, as an extremely confused gay pubescent Jersey boy, I once dreamed that Jon Bon Jovi walked up to me in a trench coat, opened it to reveal a woman’s body (and extremely hairy bush) and sang, “Lay your hands on me!” a few times. My mom’s friend had a similar haircut and I think I was conflating them in my head (in the way that you’ll have a dream where one person is meant to be another person and even though it makes no sense, you get the symbolism). I got the feeling that her bush was really hairy, too.

Julie Klausner

Jason Alexander. In a hot tub. I don’t want to talk about this any further. I’m hoping this was actually a dream about pretzels, considering he was the Rold Gold spokesperson at the time.

Thessaly La Force

I don’t like to kiss and tell, and I’m not saying things even got that hot and heavy, but let’s just say that I once dreamt that Captain Picard and I had a very intense evening where we drank some Château Margaux and ate foie gras and Brillat-Savarin via the replicator. We looked out at the stars of a new galaxy. And we read poetry to each other. (He is a big fan of Paul Celan.) And then Jean-Luc played his flute for me, and I played my viola for him…

Richard Lawson

Honestly, I don’t really tend to have sex dreams per se about celebrities, but I did have a dream recently that I was sitting on a picnic table bench with Amy Poehler, and I touched her leg and kissed her at one point. I think we were dating? It wasn’t entirely clear but there was definitely a more-than-friends intimacy in the air. It wasn’t erotic or anything; it just felt safe and comfortable and, y’know, affectionate. So that is a little strange, given my orientation. I’m pretty sure there was an honest-to-goodness Zac Efron sex dream at one point, where we’re at a party or something and suddenly hit it off and went upstairs to a bedroom. But that one is pretty fuzzy. What’s that thing about how we’re evolutionarily conditioned to hold on to painful memories more than to good ones? It’s probably the same with dreams. I remember lots of nightmares — having to escape my childhood home because of an intruder is a frequently recurring one — but very few pleasant dreams. I guess Amy and Zac were just that good.

Joe MacLeod

So there was this girl and we hit it off huge, getting all our own jokes and talking for hours and stuff but it didn’t go anywhere. For her, anyway. Me, I was in deep. She went on with her life and I was stuck. I started dreaming about her. Not dirty, just prosaic moments, like we’d go to the grocery store and buy broccoli, or we’d be driving in a car someplace. Then my dream-brain got bored. We were in a fancy health club, a gym, with glass panels and chrome and me and my non-girlfriend were gonna work out. We were wearing gym clothes like the ’80s, Olivia Newton-John and Jane Fonda, argh, headbands, like that movie Perfect with John Travolta and Jamie Lee Curtis? I never even saw that movie. Then my friend who was a girl stopped being herself and she was Susan Anton. I don’t even know what she was famous for. Susan fucking Anton, jeez. Anyway, we were perspiring heavily from being in my health-club dream and she was wearing a headband and pulled down my pants and I pushed on up into Susan Anton, somehow — I don’t remember dealing with the shiny fuchsia spandex — and I was steady smearing her sweaty Susan Anton ass all over one of the windows to the exercise rooms where rows of people were doing aerobics and then I lost it, big time, while looking at Susan Anton’s giant teeth and forehead and as I was coming down I noticed there was this giant face of the actor Martin Landau and he/it had been watching us the whole time. And yeah, no more dreams after that one.

Brian Moylan

The most ridiculous celebrity that I ever had sex with in a dream was Madonna. Now, it didn’t start out as a sex dream. As a homosexual of a certain age and persuasion, I often have dreams that I’m hanging out with Madonna, just being her friend or starring in her latest tour as a dancer (there are always astounding outfits involved) so that didn’t seem weird. But then one day I dreamed that we were backstage and hanging out and she was getting all up in my grill and I was like, “Wow, Madonna thinks I’m her best friend.” And then she got even closer and then I was like, “Damn, Madonna wants to have sex with me.” Now, as a homosexual of a certain age and persuasion, I can not say no to anything Madonna demands, so I did it. It wasn’t half bad. Though she looked like “Express Yourself” Madonna, not the grizzled pterodactly-hand Madonna that we see now.

Lindsay Robertson

So it’s me and Bruce Springsteen, whose music I’ve never really listened to much and who I’ve never thought of in a sexual way, driving around New Jersey in an old red pickup truck — he says he’s showing me “(His) New Jersey.” Then, we go to a bed and breakfast, the architectural details of which I remember to a personally disturbing degree, and do it. I won’t get into it, but it’s whatever my dream brain thought was “tantric.”

After, as I lie on a quaint yellow-and-white quilt, Naked Bruce Springsteen picks up a convenient guitar from his sudden perch on a nearby wooden chair, strums a bit, and asks: “Any requests?”

And I say: “Ummm, er, oh!: ‘Well we’re living here in Allen-townnnn.’”

Bruce stops me with his falling face, which falls with a complete disappointment I’ve never wanted to see in life, much less a celebrity sex dream.

“That’s…the other guy! That’s not me! That’s THE OTHER GUY!” Bruce sputters.

Me: “”Oh yes! The other guy! B-b-b-b-b- there’s also an ‘L’!”

Bruce (a.k.a. my brain): “Billy. Joel. It’s Billy Joel.”

And then Bruce is gone, but there are tickets to his show under the door. And that’s how the dream ended: With VIP tickets under the door. I don’t remember going. I guess I woke up. What a jealous motherfucker!

Choire Sicha

I’ve only really had one celebrity sex dream in my whole life, and to talk about it at length invites way too much speculation into my sad and pitiful psychological makeup. But I was young, and probably on drugs. So yes in this dream I was picked up by the Secret Service and taken to a terrible dark basement, where I had a nice chat with Ronald Reagan and then a few minutes of terrific sex. And it wasn’t like, young Reagan either; it was present-day Reagan. Wow, this says horrible things about me. I remember waking up shouting “WHAT THE HELL?” at my brain. Anyway this dream was so (reasonably!) scarring that 1. I can still remember it 25 years later and also 2. I haven’t had a sex dream about a person that I don’t know since.

Lizzie Skurnick

[Lizzie’s answer is from a poem in her book, Check-In]

You and Rick Ocasek

Rick agrees to pay Paulina $12,500 dollars to go to bed
with me. “That’s what I’m worth?” I joke, but I’m not offended.

Who knows what such an amount that signifies to them?
Apparently, they do this kind of thing often

In my dream, yes. I didn’t want to bore you before commencing
With my series of And Then, And Then, And Thens.

And then I am set to perform in a film. I am to be
Ethel Kennedy. Or is it Mary Jo Kopechne?

In black bombazine and starched white, a woman and nurse approach
With carriage. I have forgotten my costume. That’s JFK in the coach

And me in a bikini, onscreen, whirling a typewriter cartridge
Right and left before hurling it aside, as if over a bridge.

I had no idea I was so thin, I think. “I have no memory of this at all!”
I announce. “It isn’t you,” a woman in front hisses. To my left a tall

Girl smiles sheepishly — Paulina, at half-mast.
Rick takes my hand and we pass

You in the hall. You had already found me to say
You hadn’t called because you’d only arrived today

And then you had given me a letter of explanation
So long it curled like a scroll. It was done

In something like calligraphy, an oval
As beautiful as it was unreadable.

You must have fetched up in the food court
With our 500 varieties of molten potato, hurt,

Baffled, still at fault. I’m sure
You’ve never seen a food court in your

Life. “It’s our Agora,” I would have said.
I would have defended us until I was dead

But we’re passing you by. I grip Rick’s hand tightly.
“Who’s that guy?” he asks. “You and me

In a few years, with any luck,” I say. I turn and stop.
“What are we doing?” I say. Then I wake up.

Natasha Vargas-Cooper

I had a really involved, overly long, haggling-for-sex dream about Matt Damon that ended in me convincing the Oscar winner to be on the receiving end of half-hearted hand job. Then another time there was some butt stuff with a former child actor that I’m not emotionally prepared to discuss.

Related: What TV Character Have You Wanted To Be?

Nadia Chaudhury may or may not have had a dream about Ted Danson as his character George Christopher from “Bored to Death.” Photo of Nick Denton by Dave Winer; photo of Bruce Springsteen by Bill Ebbesen.

“Over the last few decades, popular songs have switched from major to minor keys: In the 1960s, 85 percent of the songs were written in a major key, compared with only about 40 percent of them now. Broadly speaking, the sound has shifted from bright and happy to something more complicated.”
 — Researchers E. Glenn Schellenberg and Christian von Scheve studied songs from the past fifty years of Billboard’s Hot 100 charts and have determined that we’re growing ever more miserable as a society. (Or not. I could easily believe that an affinity for sad songs indicates a happier state of mind. And I think comparative analysis of something as vague and wide-ranging societal happiness at different times in history is specious to begin with. But fun to think about!)

Johnny Marr, “The Messenger”

The first time you hear the title track from Johnny Marr’s forthcoming debut solo album, you’re like, “Huh, he just rewrote ‘What Difference Does It Make?’ Just like John Fogerty rewrote ‘Run Through the Jungle’ as ‘The Old Man Down the Road.’” (I hope he doesn’t get sued for copyright infringing himself!) But then you’re like, “Shut up. He’s Johnny Marr. He can do whatever he wants.”

David Petraeus is snide gnome with a toupée hairstyle, and he is not even very good at winning wars — his military career can be accurately described as a draw in Iraq and total defeat in Afghanistan. As his personal scandal of marital infidelity involves ever more civilian women, shirtless FBI agents sexting those women, fellow commanders in Afghanistan, and the entire state of Florida, perhaps we will take a pause in our race for additional sleazy details to ask additional, important questions that are also about as sexy as a 60-year-old man with his pants off.

1. Why are we still fighting a war in Afghanistan that we apparently lost more than a decade ago, at Tora Bora?

2. Why do we only hear anything about this failed imperial war when U.S. troops are urinating on the dead, or burning Qurans, or when the previous commander is insulting the vice president in the presence of a Rolling Stone reporter, or when it is the war’s “10th birthday”?

3. Is Elmo the Muppet a legitimate player in this tawdry Floridian affair?

Actor Joseph Anthony Mantegna, Jr., probably America’s greatest interpreter of the works of David Mamet, and a man who was present at the creation of one of the early nineties’ most irritating catch-phrases, turns 65 today. Also, Fat Tony.