The World's Greatest Bartender
When I look back on the many victories in my assorted lifetimes, nothing brings me more comfort and pleasure than the certain knowledge that I have been able to share my bounteous wisdom and so help my fellow man. Just as the dolphins who provided for me, seeing to both my physical and spiritual nourishment during the Years of Much Fish, shared all they possessed with me in a time of desperate need, so I have endeavored to do likewise. The means of accomplishing this charitable work, however, has taken many forms. Yet one particular instance even now inhabits the main vestibule of my mind.
   It was several decades ago that I was once again in the pleasant and verdant wine country of Northern California. I had been asked to teach a seminar on the reading and translation of dreams, an art I had spent many years mastering with wonderfully risible results. My small handful of students, unlearned in this specialty though they were, showed great promise and many hours we spent contemplating the jejune symbolism of doughnuts, trains entering railroad tunnels, enormous Italian salamis and the ever-popular "naked public speaking" dream. Though all these wistful tyros, naïfs though they were, were malleable to my superior will and instruction, none shone out as brightly as a young man from Ukiah named Jim.
   Jim was a handsome young lad, swarthy of hue and with shiny locks like burnished ebony. Instantly on first making his acquaintance I sensed a daunting and meaty portent in my scorpion. My spleen vibrated with foreboding at his innate and unctuous charisma. Here indeed was one worthy to be a disciple. Here was one who would master Solubility. Here was one the masses would follow like a corpse-light into a bog. This was verily a kindred spirit.
   Yet this remarkable young man had a great and acroamatic burden upon his youthful shoulders. He had been the recipient of a perpetually recurring dream that none had ever been able to decipher. Now my mastery of Solubility would come to the fore, I reasoned inwardly, and I would once and for all times relieve this unhappy youth of the dreadful onus he bore. "Pray, relate to me now this dream that will not suffer interpretation!" I cried.
   "It always starts the same way," he began, with a tremble in his voice. "I see myself on stage, surrounded by hundreds and hundreds of people. They applaud my every word. Some are black, some are white. The women are dancing, dancing for me. But I can't remember who I am. One minute I'm Jesus, the next Ikhnaton or Buddha or Lenin. Then I'm Father Divine. Sometimes I'm Andy Devine. They don't seem to notice this, however, and begin to all cry out that they're thirsty, very, very thirsty. They expect me to do something about it. I'm terribly nervous because I don't know what to do. There's nothing to drink. Magically, a large punch bowl appears and I begin to serve these hundreds of people grape Kool-Aid. Finally I shout, 'Hey Wild Bill, wait for me!' Then I wake up screaming. It's horrible!"
   I had listened in awe to this remarkable dream, the bile rising higher in my throat at every word. For some moments I reflected silently on the meaning of this riddle. My young friend sat rigidly staring at me with great expectation, his eyes like those of a frightened mullet who spies the hungry dolphin an instant too late. At last I spoke.
   "Your dream is one of great destiny," I said with due solemnity. "It foretells great things. You will be the leader of a wondrous new religious and social movement. The fleeceable and benighted will flock to your clarion call like lost and thirsty sheep to a shepherd. You will become the embodiment of all that is good, thus your visions of Jesus, Ikhnaton, Buddha, Lenin, Father Divine and the lovable and corpulent sidekick, Andy Devine. You will make more money than you ever thought possible. You will have the company of many nubile and beautiful women, all eager to please you in every way possible. It will be to them an act of religious devotion. The punch bowl sequence means that you will be an unending fountain of love and health to your followers."
   "But this is too wonderful Master! Are you absolutely sure of this interpretation?"
   "Of course. There is but one other and that is that you are predestined to be the world's greatest bartender. It is up to you to decide which is correct. I cannot influence you either way."
   I never saw my young friend, Jim, again. But he left my presence filled with a determination to see his mighty destiny through. I heard many years later from an associate that he had indeed followed his dream, became a leader of a new religious movement, eventually resettling with his followers in a remote place. I believe it was called Jonestown, in Guyana. Though I was happy to hear that all was well, I could not help but be somewhat saddened at his choice, for in my heart I knew the second interpretation of his puzzling dream to be the only correct one for him. He was destined, though he knew it not, to pour a really mean drink.

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