I have posted about my bathroom issues before, whether its the unusual frequency of my log rolling during a period of strenuous exercise, my fondness for public restroom design, losing a shitting contest, or pretending I’m like a fecal Columbus.
Well today there was an angry man in the bathroom.
This wasn’t normal behavior, I don’t think. I’ve been in a lot of bathrooms in various states of pain, and not once do I recall ever acting like this man has. It wasn’t proper, it defied explanation. Even when my insides were bursting forth with a torrent of unreleased diarrhea I was never angry. But this man was
I was first in the bathroom this time and as it is my privilege, I asserted my rights to take the best and cleanest stall to do my business. I wasn’t planning on being there long, having had a light lunch of some noodles and soda, so I had my getaway planned easily. It was to be a quick Drop, Splash, and Flee, moreso because most of the division was celebrating at a baby shower.
Right away, my nose senses detected a problem. It seems some unthinking cro-magnon had left a present in a stall. Not a fully wrapped brown gift with ribbons and a card, but a malformed smear of the remnants of what I can only deduce as yesterday’s lunch of rotten eggs. The paint on the bathroom walls peeled, the flaking chips curved inward towards the stall like some kind of gravitational singularity, a literal black pulled in by smell. I took the furthest stall and cursed the day I became irreligious
Drawn by a powerful intestinal desire, another man entered a few minutes after I was settled in. From the lonely crack between the doors, I could see his face. Right away, his mouth sneered in a grimace, upturned nose strained vainly against the smell. The hairs on his goatee bristled as he approached The Stall. He must have seen what I saw and reacted as I did. But unfortunately, the only stalls left were adjacent to that, so he had no choice
Sometimes, in times of great conflict, it is said that ordinary men achieve greatness. This was not one of those times.
Owing to my previously mentioned shy anus in a previous thread, I had paused, as a dog might when a stranger walks into his yard to assess the threat level of this new variable. It was not an exaggeration to say that my bowels shut down and turned off, the spigot locked until the other person went away. And so we sat and waited, and waited.
It must have been too much for the other man to handle because after dropping a mere handful of bombs, a roar could be heard or imagined. Suddenly, the other man sprang into action! With what I can only describe as murderous intensity and determination, he began furiously unrolling the toilet paper (and using it hopefully). This was a man who was shat upon, a small man in a world of giants, who has been abused and trodden on and would take no more! He pawed at the roll like a bear slapping a beehive full of wasps. A hundred squares must have flew off in an instant! The turning of the spindle sounded like the revving of a race car’s engine, so quickly he must have wiped that the TP would have burnt up from the friction. I sat still in utter horror and fascination, listening to this cacaphony in the other stall. A chainsaw run loose in an orphanage of glass babies would have made less noise.
Finally, after untold minutes, the furor stopped. Either he got that last dingleberry or ran out of TP, but the terrible night had begun to dawn. I still was listening, still was listening, for that angered stomp of determination after David slew his foe, watched him from my ivory throne through the lonely crack between the doors from my stall at the end of the aisle and I could have swore that he left without a goatee!
