hotelneptune

I woke up submerged in warm, spiced water. I inhaled water by the lung-full, then burst up out of it just to retch it back up again. My eyes pound and shoot strings of christmas lights flashing just in front of my brain. My nose bleeds. My ears buzz. Everything is blue gray fog. I cling to the side of a large, stone basin in an echoing stone room. The air, the water, my blood is so thick and stagnant that I float to the vaulted ceiling 35 feet, no longer teathered to anything, and my body escapes as steam through a small ventilation shaft. I woke up again, 56 years ago, 1,924 years ago, earlier today on a back alley behind a bath house in Pompeii. The year is 79. I rememember that time-travelling stall I visited in the Mez bathroom in Old Town San Diego yesterday back in 2003... "Oh, yeah." This is another reason I hate public restrooms. They smell, they're cold and dirty (or worse, warm and dirty), they're embarassing and uncomfortable for meek, self-conscious guys like me, and they send you back in time to ancient Pompeii. And ancient Pompeii was so humid today. My clothes clung to my wet body, and orange dust clung to my clothes and to the insides of my wind-pipe. I dragged myself to the shade of an olive tree several feet away, and slept through the rest of the day beneath pieces of Itallian blue sky and tiny, swarming Itallian red flies...