Goin' to Dreamland

A Nocturnal Confrontation

Mar 24, 2025

It only took him two Goddamn days to show up in my dream. Yes, I said “dream” and not “nightmare,” because when I awoke at 3AM on January 22, 2025, still fuzzy from my trip back to reality, I felt neither scared nor relieved. Instead, I flung myself out of bed, made my way to my desk, and scribbled all the details I could remember.

The dream began with me standing alone in what can only be described as a snowy wood. It was so perfect it was almost unremarkable, like a Thomas Kinkade painting, or a puzzle I once put together when I was a kid. I could practically hear Robert Frost waxing rhapsodic, confusing the hell out of his horse:

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

Like the narrator in the poem, I had no idea where I was despite the woods’ familiarity. I hoped it wasn’t Massachusetts. I was in no mood for Massachusetts. Ooh ooh, look at me! I’m at Hahhhvahhhd! My similarly cutthroat classmates and I are going to rule the country because our weird dads got us into Hahhhvahhhd!

I looked at a map: a physical, hand-drawn paper map that unrolled like a scroll. Great news: I wasn’t in Massachusetts; I was in Memphis. “Whose woods these are I think I know,” baby.

Christmas Service, by Thomas Kinkade Studios

My mother appeared next to me in that weird dream way where details shuffle in a millisecond, and your dream self has no choice but to keep up. I could have sworn I was alone, but I wasn’t. I had Mom.

“We can get to Tupelo from here,” I told her, “But we can also try Graceland.”

Graceland sounded better to Mom, and just like that, we were standing outside of the mansion speaking to two or three gray-haired women who worked there. They all had perms and cardigans and looked and sounded quite upset.

“We’re closed today,” said one old lady.

“The president is here,” said another.

“The current president?” we asked.

“Yes.”

Mom and I looked at each other. Gentle flakes of falling snow landed on the hood of her black parka. “Whose woods these are” I thought I knew, but now I was scared they’d been taken over. Hypothetically, this might have been the time to turn my confused horse around.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The women explained that the president was treated to a private tour that morning, which included seeing the rooms upstairs that were traditionally closed to the public. One of the rooms was set up with a display of antique McDonald’s toys that used to belong to one of Elvis’ cousins.

(Now, in real life, Elvis’ cousins did live at Graceland, but McDonald’s didn’t offer Happy Meals until two years after Elvis’ death in 1979. To my knowledge, there are no McDonald’s toy displays at Graceland, but with McDonald’s being as emblematic of our great nation as Elvis, well, I can see what my brain did there.)

(Anyway, back to Dreamland.)

“When the president walked into the room,” said one old lady who was literally clutching her pearls, “he kicked the toys! They flew everywhere! And then he stomped all over the carpet where no one is allowed to stand!”

Oh, hell no.

Oh, not today.

Fury simmered in my stomach, popping and bubbling like a pot of Chunky Soup on a hot ass stove. Here I was with my sweet mother on a girls’ trip to Graceland—on a Robert Frost poem of a day, no less!—and the most repugnant man in America was stinkin’ up Elvis’ bedroom and kicking over the McDonald’s toys. Call the Navy SEALS. Call Liz Warren! Tell her to shotgun a Michelob Ultra and grab a baseball bat!

“He can’t do that,” I said.

“But he’s the president,” said the old ladies.

“It doesn’t matter that he’s the president,” I said. “This is Graceland.”

If only the Memphis Mafia were around, I thought. If only Red and Sonny West, Elvis’ broey bodyguards, were young, strong, and amped up on enough of the King’s finest amphetamines to drag that motherfucker—uh, the president—by his feet and shove his face in Elvis’ gold toilet. Alas, no strong men were coming to save Graceland. Even the people who currently worked there were too old and scared to protect it. To them, it was too late. To them, it had been conquered.

“Steffi,” said my mother, lowering her voice as if the old ladies weren’t standing a foot away and could totally hear us, “these women know who you are. I sent them one of the pieces you wrote about Graceland. I thought they might hire you as a tour guide.”

I didn’t love hearing this. I had shared that essay with my mother in confidence, and I wasn’t ready for the good employees of Graceland to read it. But since they had…what’d they think?

“Do they have a job for me or not?” I asked.

“They don’t have any openings, but they loved what you wrote.”

Well, gee, I thought. I needed money more than approval, but only slightly.

I looked at the scared old ladies.

“Let me talk to him,” I said.

They led me to a gift shop that looked like an empty art supply store. Not a single stuffed or ceramic Elvis lined the shelves. Instead, I saw rows of blank canvases, tubes of paint, and charcoal pencils. Over in one corner, where the Elvis keychains and magnets should have been, was a giant drawing easel.

One of the women leaned in close to me.

“He’s over there,” she whispered.

I saw the president standing by himself wearing his usual ill-fitting black suit and too-long red tie. His expression was placid, I suppose, but while I wouldn’t call it “kind,” he at least wasn’t yelling at anyone as he leafed through a pile of notebooks. When I got closer to him, I noticed that the notebooks were all three or four feet long, and something told me he wasn’t going to use all that paper to wipe his ass. These notebooks were for writing. For rewriting. For carte blanche.

“Hi Donald,” I said in a gentle voice I might use around a shy child. “Can I look at notebooks with you?”

He nodded “yes” and stepped slightly to the left so that I had room to stand next to him. Interesting. I had a little bit of power.

I spoke again.

“I heard you did something to some toys that belonged to Elvis’ cousin,” I said. “Will you show me what you did?”

Without looking at my face, he stepped away from the notebooks and wordlessly kicked his feet to reenact what he had done. They were little kicks—tiny and tantrummy—but powerful enough to send antique toys flying.

“Why did you do that, Donald?” I asked.

He looked at the floor. He shrugged.

“Ya know, sometimes we do mean things because we’re hurt,” I said. “Can you show me where it hurts?”

Still looking at the floor, he gently touched his heart (the presence of which is debatable, I know), and then his stomach, and then his head. I cared about his pain, but only enough to encourage him to stop kicking things.

“Thank you for telling me,” I said. “Maybe next time you feel that way, you won’t kick someone else’s toys.”

Donald shrugged again, and then, when I walked away, he followed me—not in a threatening way, but in a sort of, “I’m the only kid at a party and I at least recognize this adult” way.

We wound up in front of a bookshelf, where I noticed a slim, worn biography of Governor Gavin Newsom. His smiling face appeared on the bent cover, and his teeth were as glaringly white as the sun shining on the fallen snow outside. I braced myself for Donald to react to the sight of his slick nemesis, but he didn’t.

I don’t like that I can’t see Elvis anywhere, I thought. That feels like a bad sign. Like, I’m at Graceland. I don’t want a book on Gavin Newsom. I want Elvis pouting on a coffee mug, and I want this motherf—the president—out of here. Those sweet old ladies must have known there would be trouble from the moment they got the call from the White House saying that man was on his way, and yet they didn’t lock up the McDonald’s toys. They didn’t section off the upstairs. They let him step inside this hallowed place—this living testament to the American dream—and start messing shit up. They just…let him in.

They let him in.

And now, I have to save Graceland.

And then, I woke up.