Lie Here and Watch TV
10-20-1999
I arrived at a large indoor pool. Various people were around, swimming and whatever. Water poured into the pool from a couple places in the walls, like a perfectly vertical waterfall. I was pretty sure there were to secret passages behind them.
I went to a shallow place in the middle of the pool, less than a foot deep, and lied down on my back to just soak and relax. I tried to think why this placed seemed so familiar, and wasn't it supposed to be larger? Weren't there supposed to be water slides and tunnels and stuff?
I swam underwater and experimented with breathing with my nose. I wasn't too surprised that it worked, because it always did. I sucked the air from the water slowly, though, thinking that the goggles I wore that pinched my nose a little bit were helping to filter the air. I remembered someone once telling me (though this never really happened, real life or dream) that since swimming was a lot like flying, and that since you breathe air when you fly, you can breathe air when you swim, too. That made perfect sense.
I got out of the pool and saw my neighbor John there (old black guy with grey hair and glasses). Just then a bunch of kids started swimming where I was. It was a secluded part of the pool, walled in on three sides. You could climb up ladders built into one of the walls up to these little parapets and niches that you could dive from. Somehow I ended up in a challenge to swim against all these little kids. I won, of course, and climbed up into one of the niches so that I could remove my green karate belt. The kid who issued the challenge took off his purple belt and put it on me. I thought this was an easy way to advance.
I looked around the place and realized this was someplace I came a lot as a kid, and hadn't thought of in years (not true), except that the little rubber things weren't on the sides of the pool anymore, the tiles on the bottom of the pool depicted a Looney Toons mural instead of the plain white, light blue, and dark blue that they used to, and, I noted when I got my new karate belt, the diving parapets were roped off.
I walked over to John and said wistfully, "This place brings back a lot of memories. I used to come here all the time." John asked, "How old are you?" I don't remember if I ever answered him.
I remembered the demon that had been put to death so long ago. I tried to relive the memory of those bygone days when he, a jokester of a kid, and myself tried to do some dastardly deed. We were making our escape over the rooftops. He jumped into a large getaway crate that was hanging in the air, breaking a few boards from his immense size and strength. The little jokester kid jumped after him, playfully jumping on the demon's head. I jumped in after, landing on the floor of the crate. I was in the midst of giving words of commendation to the big demon lug when I noticed he wasn't moving. I realized he had a huge puncture wound in the side, quite old, and that he'd gone on anyway. He was, however, still alive, and I tinkered with his mask, which was a complex breathing apparatus, in vain hope of saving him. He lied down and took it off, revealing himself to actually be a woman, kind of cute, but also kind of fat. She admitted she'd wanted me for a long time, and kissed me, but I was mildly revolted (not so much cuz she was demon, but because she was fat) and didn't return the kiss for too long. "I'll just lie here and watch TV..." she said.
posted by Phlegm at 11/24/2003
