September 24, 2002 | 10:55 AM

So in the dream I�m at John�s family�s house, except his family are WASPs* and their house is this huge fancy mansion on Long Island. There�s some kind of a WASP cocktail party going on and there�s lots of All Ivy types getting sloshed on martinis. Everyone is impeccably dressed and ultra thin.

Except of course, me. I am at my heaviest weight and my hair is a mess. I am wearing the Red Dress�the one I wore for several months on end during the Dark Ages of my brief poverty stricken homeless existence when I was 19 (read The SAGA for details.) Everyone is attempting to be polite to me but it is obvious that I don�t belong there.

John and I are still broken up but I want to see him very badly. I have something urgent to tell him. I have a bouquet of dried flowers in my arms. I walk up a long spiral staircase to a bedroom. The door of the bedroom is shut, but I can hear whispering and laughing inside and I know that John is there.

I fling open the doors, and he is laying in bed, fully clothed with this girl I knew in high school (and whom I haven�t given a moment�s thought to since graduating) named Libby. Libby was (and is still in the dream) beautiful in a vacuous Seventeen Magazine way.

Libby and John are cuddling and snuggling, but it�s quite non-sexual.

John says hello and tells me he�s glad to see me. I start crying and yelling that he�s betraying me and how could he do that. He looks at me with puzzlement and reminds me we aren�t together anymore, and then he says,

We never really were together in the first place, you know. All I ever wanted was to be your pal.

Then Libby chimes in.

I really don�t want to hurt your feelings, Anna. I hope you don�t mind that I�m dating your ex-boyfriend. You can have any of my ex-boyfriends if you want.

This comment enrages me to the point that I cannot speak. I stalk out of the bedroom and stand outside the door listening. I can hear John and Libby having sex and I feel queasy. I run down the stairs and when I get to bottom, I notice that suddenly I am much thinner and don�t look very much like myself, or rather I look that way I would look if I were skinny and glamorous. And I am wearing a long white evening gown that looks like something an MGM starlet in the forties would wear.

The same party is still going on and no one notices that I look any different. People keep forcing martinis on me and the martinis smell terrible. The same song is playing over and over again on the stereo and it sounds like Nancy Sinatra but isn�t a song I recognize. I have a horrible urge to listen to the new Hives album and loudly proclaim this preference over and over again but no one notices.

Finally, I decide to leave the party, but when I go outside, there is nothing but highway and along the highway are all of these dead deer, just absolutely massacred. And it smells terrible. So I go back inside to look for John again, and suddenly I am back wearing the same red dress I was wearing in the beginning. Then I wake up.

This fast has stirred up all kinds a shit in my subconscious. I think I�m releasing psychic toxins while I sleep.