On getting caught peeing

The last week has not been a good one.

I had to spend seven hours on a train. I lost a game of chess. I got locked inside an H&M while some thirty masked people stormed and looted the store next door. Outside, it’s been snowing like nothing else. Some homeless people have died. And I had to spend seven goddamned hours on a train.

Also, I’ve been getting caught peeing in my dreams a lot.

It’s quite disturbing, you know. Not the sort of thing you get back to sleep from.

And it’s not in the morning, just before I wake up. No no, at four at night. What am I supposed to do at four in the morning? My lab is under alarm, my apartment’s already clean, and apparently it’s bad form to wake up your girlfriend and ask for sex in the middle of the night.

These dreams are unsettling though.

One had me wandering through this monastery right before closing time. I remember it clearly. It stood on a hill, a very 1960s Italian cinema hill, surrounded by red mountains and set upon by the afternoon sun. I was roaming the corridors. It was closing time and I had to pee but I couldn’t find a toilet anywhere. So I went in a corner.

Another saw me in a garage. A low-budget student film affair, rather late act Reservoir Dogs. Except it was small and claustrophobic and it had a grating just before its doors, running along the length of that wall. And I had to go but couldn’t find a toilet anywhere. So I peed on the grating.

I could feel this was wrong. Neither of these places belonged to me. But I really had to go. So I went. And it felt good. I felt so good. Like brushing your lips against others anticipating a kiss, feeling cold tiles against naked feet, walking home drunk at night and watching the stars.

Then I heard someone coming.

Steps on stone floor,

tip tap,

no time, no time at all, stop and tuck it in, you can wash those later nevermind it now, just as long as whoever they are don’t find you, not like this, not like this, not like this, not – and then there they were.

The first was a priest. Or a vicar. Or something. One of those people anyway, fittingly enough, we being in a monastery and all.

The other was my dad. I have no idea what he was doing there. It wasn’t even his garage, though in the dream it was.

At first they looked suspicious, each on their respective night of course, what with me having just finished fumbling with my trousers, standing straight up with a look on my face. Then there was the stain on the wall or floor. Something was afoot.

”What are you doing?”

”No- nothing.”

It was a pitiful lie, ready to crumble to pieces, which, with the slowly rising smell of ammonia, it did.

I’m not sure what to make of those dreams. The general consensus, after years upon years of psychobabble, seems to be that dreams don’t mean a thing.

Still, my inner film critic is dying to have a go at them. He’s got all sorts of theories about defying authority figures and taking it out on the man ready, though I’m skeptical of his arguments. For one I’d be horrified if deep inside I placed religious puppets at the same level of authority as my dad.

He might have it wrong, but surely there’s something there. I simply refuse to accept that I drank too much water before going to bed.

— — — — — — — —

Actually, I believe I’ve told a lie.

I didn’t mind those seven hours on the train at all. I read the entire way, it was the most relaxing time I’ve had in ages.

Plus there are easily found toilets on trains.

— — — — — — — —

The bit about the masked looters is true though.