La Boutique Obscure: 124 Dreams

No. 26: October 1970

The S-shaped bar

I am with Pierre G. in my room. My bed is covered in plastic foam cubes wrapped in transparent plastic casings. Good thing, because water is dripping from the walls and ceiling. For that matter, it’s as though the walls and ceiling are just a single network of multicolored tubes. Everything is soaked. Pierre explains that the people upstairs are having their bathtub redone (refitted).

There is a table next to the bed and on the table a telephone off its hook. I sense that if I hang it up, it will begin to ring (actually, maybe it’s even ringing now, even though it’s off the hook). I hang up; nothing happens.

Later, Pierre and I are in a large drugstore. At one point I find myself alone in the book aisle. All the books are shelved flat and covered in pale-colored jackets (mauve, blue, light grey, rose, lavender, etc.). I realize that they’re all erotic books. The titles are mostly quite short, usually just a female first name (Fabienne, Irene). I don’t recognize the authors’ names (pseudonyms, no doubt).

Pierre and I come to a huge room where we think we can get something to eat or drink. But the maitre d’ directs us to a bar farther down, on the other side of a large picture window.

We each take a glass. One is a tapered whiskey tumbler, the other a handsome stemmed glass with an egg-shaped swelling near the base. On the other side of the window, another large room with a staircase leading up to the restaurant. The maître d’ points us to it, but we only want drinks, and he leads us to the bar. The bar is very long. It is shaped like an S. On the other side of the counter, several large young men, athletic types with crew cuts, are playing dice on a round tray that they seem to be supporting on their knees. The bartender hands us drinks. Someone asks if the dice players are from the university, but they respond by shaking their heads no and they seem to find the suggestion very amusing.