Harker missed yesterday’s art lecture, so I agreed to catch him up. “It was about making use of dreams in your paintings,” I told him. “Dreams, daydreams, fantasy...”

“Don’t you do that all the time?” Harker suggested.

“Oh not me,” I protested. “I’m very firmly rooted in reality.”

Harker scoffed.

“For example,” I went on, “Thomas Hart Benton’s Persephone was presented as an example. In the Greek myth, her uncle abducted her, took her to hell, but each year she escaped, giving her an opportunity to bask in the sun. In Benton’s painting she’s sleeping beneath a gnarled old tree, probably having an erotic dream, and this gnarled old farmer is peering at her from behind the tree.”

“Lots of gnarled going on,” Harker commented.

Ignoring his obtuse remark, I said, “Of course for my version, I cast myself as the goddess. I was basking on a comfortable hammock, supported by two stout oak trees, with the sand below and the turquoise sea lapping peacefully in the near distance.”

“I suppose the oak trees were gnarly,” Harker said.

“Exceptionally gnarly,” I said, to appease him, I suppose.

“But oaks don’t grow near the sea,” Harker said.

“Says who?” I rebutted.

“Whatever,” Harker conceded. “So what else was in the picture?”

“Flopper, of course. He was snoozing in the shade of the hammock. I was stroking him, the dear dog.”

“Lucky pooch.”

“Yeah. What’s interesting is that Flopper felt a lot like a penis.”

“A penis! My goodness, don’t tell me you’ve turned your dog into a phallic symbol.”

“Flopper doesn’t mind. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s got some cocker spaniel blood in him.”

“More likely squirrel blood,” Harker said.

“Very funny.”

“So let’s see if I have this right,” Harker said. “Flopper was the gnarly old farmer in your version?”

“Oh no. The old farmer was in fact a young man, not at all gnarled. He had a magnificent body. An equally magnificent cock. And the more I caressed Flopper, the more magnificent his cock became.”

“And did you make him...? Did he, um, come?”

“Magnificently,” I said.

“And then what?”

“Then we went for a swim, and Flopper fell asleep on the hammock.”

“I guess I can picture it,” Harker said. “You, the dog, the guy, his erect cock.”

“Magnificently erect,” I corrected Harker. “But in my actual painting I felt it wouldn’t be fair not to show the underworld. Those magnificent oaks’ majestically phallic roots aching to fuck whatever goddess should dare descend.”