It already is a shit day, starting with some epic nightmares that kept me solidly scared asleep, araid to wake up to this nightmare that felt too real, right up until 5:30. I had been hired to work on some sort of production or movie, I’m not sure what it was. My role in things was so small they didn’t even see need to explain the bigger picture to me. But I somehow screwed things up for everyone in a way that was undetectable, or untracable to me. The scene ended with the riling up of dozens of religious leaders and clerics, some of them 20 feet tall in height and carrying long, painful-looking canes that seemed designed to punish sinners and all those who laughed with them. Soeone threw down a concrete or marble religious statue. It shattered only a little bit but then started to bleed. THis was the miracle the clerics needed to turn this fantasy production set into a very real holy war. In the meantime I slipped into a very long bathtub with some horny naked women who played with me like a mannequin sex toy. There were also other naked dudes getting this treatment, I had no idea why we got this while others marched off to war. The landscape of this place was a mix of fear and fornication. Mirrors over the bathtubs allowed the women I fucked to comment on the flexing of my ass muscles that accompanied each thrust and penetration. A roar of blood from the battlefield gushed through, covering the floor and forcing our retreat from the bathtubs of debauchery. With blood-soaked feet and ankles we scrambled naked through thickts of very tall religious folks chanting in a spontaneously invented language even they barely understood, as it was presented to them for the first time on God’s teleprompter beamed telepathically into their saturated heads. The Lords or Clerics or whatever they were paid us little mind, ignoring us to a point where we felt threatened by the accidental pummeling of the canes or the mere footsteps of these giants.
The seemingly hours-long sequence of hellscapes started with a more mundane, more possible scenario. I was in the bathtub, as I typically am every morning. As I’ve no doubt mentionedelsewhere in these blips and bytes, I started the habit of sitting in the shower some years ago and it has been the best, most excellent fundamentl change I have ever made to my diurnal routines. Memories of standing in the shower now come back like mini nightmares. It seems unnatural and wrong and even dangerous. Sitting just feels safe, and sane, and for practical considerations it allows easier access to scrubbing pedal extremeties, which I found awkward to accomplish standing.
So the unsettling dream set in this happy place of mine had me unable to rise up from the tub, unable to lift my body up and out. I slipped and stumbled, which never happens in reality. The showerhead was way up on the hook near the ceiling, which it never is unless someone else needs to shower and chooses not to sit like I do. The showerhead up high is the more traditional format for American showering, even as most buildings in Astoria had to be retrofitted with shower equipment because most buildings had nothing but tubs. I don’t know when that changed but it would seem to indicate that bathing while sitting used to be more common, making me a time traveler of the daily bathing ablution.
The dream was scary, though. No excape from a space where there are no visible restrictions or constraints, except for unexplained slipping and sliding on a surface that in reality does not lend itself to those hazards. It felt too real, and maybe it has occurred without my memory if it happened that I showered intoxicated. That has happened rarely but never when I was blacked out drunk or falling down. I never get that far drunk anymore. But I would guess that getting lit in a bathtub under running water, even while in the relatively safe position of sitting, is not recommended by the American Alcoholics Board of Trustees or the neighborhood Bathroom Police who I often imagine listen in on my bathing and shitting habits, taking notes and compiling forensic analysis of one man’s time spent in pursuit of passable hygiene and something close to meditation.
Today’s commute was fucked up. I was fine with the N only going to Queensboro Plaza, since the 7 would get to Grand Central and there is an escalator to get upstairs to the 4/5 transfer. But no way. The fucking escalator was not working and I found myself laboring to make it up the steps. My bag was heavy with extra weight of breakfast and lunch, I had no expectastion of having to climb what was probably 3 or 4 stories worth of stairs. I felt like I’d let everyone else down if I complained or slowed down, and it felt like there was no turning back because I did not realize the escalators were not working until I was several steps upon the first set. It usddenly felt as if I had an important message to deliver to someone who would die before I could ever arrive in time.
I was breathing very heavy and my legs were getting rubberized when I finally reached the top, only to find I had to move as quickly as my giving-out legs could get me to the arriving 4 express train. I miraculously scored the only available seat, next to an older man sitting clamly and silently with a can in his right hand. I took a minute or two to catch my breath, imagining that instead of the day I face here at this office I would spend the 21st of September in the style of this man, who looked to me like he was just going to ride the fuck out of the subway all the livelong day. I wanted to bond with that dude but I sensed trouble. Troubles.
Any return to a peaceful state was vanquished abruptly while brossing Broadway where Dey Street becomes John. I came within 5 or 6 inches of being plowed down by a CitiBike rider who roared through the red light at what might have been in excess of 40mph. I have not gasped outloud so hard since the last time something like this happened, on Vesey Street, when an SUV came full tilt around a corner, ignoring a red light and coming within breathing distance of running me right down on to the pavement. I could smell the fumes from the vehicle’s engine, and I think I caught a slight nosrting sound made by the driver, who accelerated and left the scene only after I nearly fell over backwards to get out of his way. He was completely in the wrong and, as drivers and bbicyclists regularly do when they are wrong, he simply fled the scene. Of course I can’t say he “fled” since I was not struck, but the callousness of the escape only adds to the assholerly of the moment.
Gotta go.
