Out of my dreams, into my bathroom

(February 25, 2006)

So yeah. Where was I before I was interrupted by five months of total lack-of-interest in anything at all, including you people.

Oh right,I was about to reveal the tale of the nightmare that came true on October 25th (see previous entry entitled "Shit.") Realized nightmares? Scary. Imagine finding yourself naked at school and you CAN'T wake up because it's happening. Well this particular realized nightmare was workplace related and has, yes, recurred.

Well there's nightmares and then there's nightmares. I, for example, am typing this entry at work, but after hours. It's 6:03pm, and I have gloves on because the boss is hot. My co-worker and I are not, we are freezing our fucking attitudes off. But that's only minor in terms of workplace nightmares.

Okay, enough stalling. Here it is.

I have had this same dream, in many different formats, for years and years.

In it, I have to use the bathroom. Most of the time I have to take a dump. I mean, my stomach is killing me and the need to relieve the pressure is palpable. Often I have to pee, sometimes both.

I then start to hunt for a bathroom and I can't find a clean one. This is where the dream varies.

Sometimes it takes place in my parents house, only it is a dream-version of their house and so nothing is where it should be and there are secret rooms and extra floors and stuff. In that one the toilets are either disconnected, occupied or out in the middle of a room with no walls so I'd be squatting basically in public.

Most of the time this dream takes place in my high school, where there were two locker rooms, and each locker room had two halves. In it, I'm going through each half of each locker room and I'm finding only toilets overflowing with shit, shit and pee on the floor, wadded toilet paper and just indescribable terribleness. This happens stall after stall and I can never find a useable bathroom.

Sometimes it takes place in a strange place, like a stadium, but the hunting for a useable bowl is the same agonzining, disgusting jaunt through piles and piles of shit. A few times I ended up finding a relatively clean set, only they were part of stalls that came only half-height or less. Like low cube walls in an office, so when seated everyone could see in and I could see out.

Disgusted enough? Yeah? Well THAT'S WHAT HAPPENED ON OCTOBER 25TH. I mean in REAL LIFE.

Okay, it's an old building and it's in the warehouse district, sometimes referred to as the arts district. This part of town is a cluster of big old drafty, labyrinthian buildings with miles of uneven floors and exposed pipes and painted-over-and-over fixtures. Single lightbulbs hang, elaborate wrought iron adorns some windows. Take a walk down the hall and upstairs and you'll find the flooring changes from painted cement to indoor/outdoor carpet to tile to hardwood. You know the type of place, like old schools filled with corridors and shadows and smelling of radiator dust and concrete. This part of town contains such buildings, that contain Pan 9 and several rehearsal studios and recording studios and many designers, craftspeople and visual artists. Their washed out paintbrushes are in the bathrooms, their piano tuning tinkles through the halls. It's almost a commune, really.

But holy god.

Nothing makes you crave the crisp and lifeless sterility of a corporate building, with an actual cleaning staff and competent-looking maintenance guys faster than going into the bathroom to find your shit-encrusted nightmare has come true. All I did was walk down the hall to the bathroom and AAAAAAGH! The monster from my dreams!

I left the Fourth floor where I work and went down to Three. Same thing, a stinky mess in the toilet and some water on the floor! I went all the way up to Five, but that bathroom was occupied. So I went up to Seven. Now, it just so happens that the building management has completely overhauled the Sixth and Seventh floors. Step off the elevator into Six or Seven, and you aren't greeted by a wall of electric power meters. It's actually tiled and carpeted and looks like any normal office building.

I dared breathe a sigh of emotional relief for the expected physical relief.

I went into the bathroom, and I took a nice big dump. Ahhhhhh.

Then I flushed.

And the toilet started to back up.

It kept backing up as I watched in horror, and spilled over and oh my god it just kept coming.

By the time I found the building manager he already had a plumber with him. Apparently the whole building backed up.

Fucking. Gross.

I wonder if this means I'll never have one of those bathroom dreams again.