Disclaimer
For some time I have been toying with the idea of writing out in full some of the more coherent of my dreams. This text would then be the first in that series. It is a complete account of a dream I had a few days ago, one of the few I find memorable enough to write down right after waking up. I thought this one was pretty bizarre (that’s why I jotted it down without bothering to get dressed first), but it was only while editing and typing out the whole thing that I realised its coherence. The setting of the dream moves from one kind of booth (stalls at some kind of market or public event) to another kind (public toilets). There’s an undercurrent of liquids that runs through the entire dream: rain — urine — coffee — breast milk — huge amounts of water. And two incongruous items that occur at the start (clippers and socks with holes) are connected at the end. But I don’t dare make any claims about meaning or coherence beyond that.
Oh: and bonus points if you know what the name of this series (“shoedroopings”) refers to.

The boulevard is broad, the sky is open, and the booths and vendors promise all kinds of possibilities. Shall I buy a poster? Shall I steal a book again? I might even go listen to that pregnant weather forecaster who appears to be reading her children’s novel to the people around her. Who knows? Perhaps it will rain later today (you can never tell, can you?) and if so, that will only add to my current sense of the countless options that are about to be fulfilled.

I feel like I’m not really here at all. I have retreated to a misty area just behind my eyes and I’m observing myself much like I am observing other people. This dreamlike detachment from my surroundings is what I usually claim I live for. A little woozy, high on the sense of unreality pervading the atmosphere. If this were a film, I’d be shown walking across a bridge, slightly slower than reality, from an angle slightly below my chin. To make the experience complete I try to roll up my eyeballs so only the white shows. But of course I don’t manage to get them all the way up. I’d have to pull my cheeks down, but that would be unsightly. People walking past me are now no more than colourful hazy shapes. One is much like a rainbow of various hues of tomato soup. A blob of oil, too, wetly slick. It suavely slides past. In a gentlemanlike response, I swerve graciously to the left in order to avoid it. I like making elegant gestures. Oh the dramatic poses I can strike! Let’s do that again. Ready? Annd swerve — ! Ha! Wonderful! Today is such a lovely day. I’ve got my clippers and I’m wearing holeless socks today, so I know I’ll do fine, whatever chooses to come my way.

This is a thoroughly enjoyable experience. I pick up the pace to a rhythmical march, overtaking elderly folk with their hands clasped on their back, narrowly dodging, never colliding, never missing a beat. I imagine the partly digested food in my stomach and my bowels churning left and right, and I suddenly realise I need to pee.

I keep on meandering through the crowds that have gathered at various booths, my elegant weaving bringing me closer and closer to the public toilet in the far left corner. I can’t be interested in local products today, so I just observe the people and try to imagine what they ate today. Eggs, bacon and parsley? Quails’ eggs and mushrooms? Overcooked pasta and soy sauce and — oh, oh, oh, I know: coffee!

Thinking of liquids makes the pressure in my abdomen rise, and I decide that walking in a straight line will get me to a toilet faster. I briefly consider pissing in the street. That is definitely something I would be capable of, right? I mean: if I wanted to, I could, no problem, right? I decide against it.

I make my way to the pavement on the left, between the booths and the houses. Between two stalls covered with white cloth is a crowded area where the weather forecaster, sitting on a small dais, reads to a thronged audience. She’s eight or nine months pregnant and her belly is bulging, her breasts so swollen it’s disturbing. She’s reading something about a mermaid. Rows of chairs have been positioned around her, nearly obstructing the pavement. All seats have been taken and numerous people are standing about. Children sit on their father’s shoulders.

I keep close to the houses, but a lady dressed in black on the last row jumps up cheering, throwing her chair off balance. I can’t dodge it and it smashes into my hip and then to the ground.

“Whoa!” I say. I tip the chair back into balance. The woman swirls around and looks at me with an expression of utter shock. She is about fifty and has the face of an English teacher at secondary school. Her mouth opens and closes a few times. She’s obviously flustered, but I can’t imagine what it is that has so upset her. In the end she turns and runs away; she’s practically fleeing. I shrug and start walking again, but because she’s running in the same general direction I can see how she’s addressing random people and complaining about what I just did to her. “Do you know what just happened?” she cries. Her voice is high-pitched, nearly child-like, and she’s close to tears. “He called me “Mom”!!”

She only gets more anxious when she sees I’m still around, apparently following her. I’m feeling unreasonably angry all of a sudden. This delusional and obviously deeply disturbed woman is making people think I am the crazy one!

She reaches the public toilets before I do, and I hear her whining to someone sitting on a chair beside the door. I don’t immediately realise it’s my mother sitting there, but when I do, I get really angry. I march resolutely towards the two women and start shouting. “Oh shut your face! One, I just said ‘whoa’ when your chair crashed into me, and two, you’re not my mum!”

Still angry, I push open the right half of a double door in dark wood with a deliberately unceremonious gesture. The room beyond is a regular public toilet area: dirty, smelly, and with a floor colour that’s slightly reminiscent of vomit. There’s toilet booths to the left, and a sink in the right-hand wall. I get into the first booth — it doesn’t really matter which one I take: surely they’re all the same, aren’t they? There is a hole in the floor, under the toilet bowl and slightly to the left, and there is a wad of greasy hairs in it, as if someone’s been showering there. The toilet bowl is ridiculously oval, spotted with reddish smudges — rust or cigarette burns? A tangle of rusty pipes protrudes from a hole in the wall.

I toss my bag in a corner — I’ll wash it later — and flush before peeing, to get rid of the slight disgust I always feel when I imagine my urine mingling with someone else’s. Exchanging body fluids is slightly too intimate for me to feel comfortable doing so in a public toilet. But something’s not right. The water keeps pouring from under the edge of the bowl. I push the flush button again a few times and try to pull it in neutral again, but the toilet won’t stop flushing. The water rapidly fills up the bowl, and I see water coming up through the hole in the floor as well. It is rising unnaturally fast, filling up the hole in a matter of seconds. When the hole overflows and the water spreads out over the floor, it keeps rising at a steady pace, as if the increased surface to be covered is of no importance. Have the laws of physics been suspended? I pee as fast as I can, but the water reaches my knees and is soaking my thighs before I’m done.

So someone’s drowned in here, I think, That’s how those hairs got in there.

I open the door of the booth. The water, which so far has apparently been slowed down by the narrow opening under the door, now spreads through the larger room. It is still not showing any signs of slowing down. I slosh through it to the double doors — what if it floods the area outside at the same rate? I’ll just have to accept it will drown the rest of the people along with me, then. It has reached my hips when I try to open the double doors. I’m pulling against the pressure of the water, but when I manage to open one half at a slit, the water rushes through. The water level within this room drops rapidly — only my shoes are submerged now. I can hear surprised shouts and exclamations of the people on the other side. I realise, though, that this is only a brief delay.

The strange woman is nowhere to be seen. My mother has risen from her chair: “What the hell did you do?”

“I just flushed, mum, and all the water came out of a hole in the ground. I didn’t do nothing wrong!”

She just grunts in irritation, unable to find words, or just too much in a hurry, and pushes the door open. The water now coolly laps at my heels, but I can sense it’s about to rise again at its unnatural speed. So much for delaying it.

Together we squeeze into the booth. The water is knee-high again.

“My god, will you look at that?” she says, pointing at the corner with my bag. “That’s where that doggy went. And now it’s all over your stuff. Have you no sense at all?”’

I say nothing, but inside I’m urging her to get on with it.

She points to the dirty pipes: “You’ve got to hold the installation shut for fifteen minutes; That’ll stop it.” I haven’t got the slightest idea what she’s talking about, and it’s making me feel hopelessly incompetent.

She takes out her handkerchief and wraps it twice around the central water pipe, real tight. It is identical to all the others, but she obviously knows what she’s doing. There is no time to knot the cloth, so she just clutches the tips in her left hand and holds it firmly in place. She wraps her right hand around the juncture of two pipes and squeezes. The water is chest-high now — my chest. She is at least a foot smaller than me: she’s in up to her neck, her chin dripping. I stand ready to take over when her fingers grow too numb, but I already know she won’t let me.

A thought strikes me. If today feels so much like an independent film, and if those are quite close to incomprehensible post-modern literature, then perhaps a solution might be found by approaching the issue on a deeper level? The idea seems plausible. This water hole might have something to do with the lack of holes in my socks. If I tear a hole in my socks, the water hole might close. I don’t see how this motif could make sense, but I realise that if I don’t do something, I will drown here, in a public toilet where a dog has urinated in the corner. I lift my right leg and hold it with my left hand. It moves sluggishly under so much water. I remove my shoe and dangle it from a finger. I need something sharp to tear the fabric. Of course! My clippers! They have a pointed nail file that folds out. With one hand holding my leg and my little finger holding on to my shoe, I fumble for my clippers in my pocket.

Will it work?