Last night, my subconscious staged a farce: I was back on my old college campus, nervously ordering textbooks for my freshman comp classes—because that’s how my brain parties at night. After hours in the academic underworld of ISBNs and course numbers, I stumbled home under a moonless sky only to be seized by a grim realization: I forgot to order a crucial book.
Panic.
In this emergency, I reached not for Xanax, but a dark green landline phone, the color of envy or perhaps bureaucratic despair. I called the English Chair. Except in dream logic, the English Chair was not the overworked academic I know—but Scott Galloway, the sarcastic podcaster and economics professor.
I told him he had to submit the textbook order by midnight.
True to form, he lobbed verbal grenades at me. Taunts, jabs, snide remarks. His voice had that tone—the kind that leaves you wondering if you’re being insulted or inducted into a secret society of useful idiots.
I said, “Don’t joke over the phone. Only mock me in person.”
He replied, “Fine. Come over. I’m having a dinner party.”
Naturally.
So, in the witching hour, I opened my front door—expecting a miles-long slog up a mountain—and instead, in the way only dreams and luxury real estate can allow, I was already at Casa Galloway, perched perilously on stilts over a cliff like some Bond villain’s hideout with a podcast studio.
He was charming in person—gregarious, warm, practically glowing with hospitality. He led me into a dimly lit dining room where guests laughed and angel hair pasta sat arranged like delicate tumbleweeds on silver trays. White sauce shimmered like divine lubrication.
“Take as much as you like,” he said, arms open.
I hesitated. Did he make enough? Should I pretend restraint for the optics? Was this a test of my caloric discipline?
I took a tiny, tragic portion.
He raised an eyebrow. I mumbled something about “leaving enough for everyone,” which seemed to impress him. He praised my selflessness, as if I’d just refused seconds at a famine relief banquet.
After eating my guilt-ridden noodle clump and participating in some effervescent dinner chatter, I left and returned home to my modest flat at the bottom of the hill. But before I could nestle into my bed of neuroses, it hit me: Galloway might be short on paper towels after his soirée.
And I had a Costco-sized case.
I threw the rolls under my arm and charged up the mountain like a sentient Amazon Prime delivery. My quads flexed with purpose. I was the Paper Towel Man, delivering absorbency and justice. I swung the rolls from hand to hand like batons of competence.
I found him on the front porch—a cliffside slab barely larger than a yoga mat, with a waterfall crashing nearby like some sort of capitalist Shangri-La.
“I’ve brought reinforcements,” I said, brandishing the paper towels like sacred scrolls.
He smiled, then warned me: “The last fifty feet are treacherous.”
Of course they were. The final ascent required mountaineering skills I didn’t have—jagged rocks, sudden drops, the kind of climb you’d expect in a spiritual thriller set in Tibet.
But I was determined. Galloway had ordered my textbook and served me pasta. Reciprocity was sacred. I would reach that porch if it killed me.
And then I woke up. Standing in my kitchen. Brewing coffee. Scribbling this fever dream into a notebook, trying to decide if it meant anything—or just meant I shouldn’t eat carbs after 9 p.m.
Cinemorphosis 