This story was originally written years ago, and I was recently encouraged by someone awesome to repost…. so Here Goes!
Porcelain God 6.23.09
I have never been the kind of person who is afraid to poop in public. Not meaning I would simply drop trou and defecate in front of the general population, that would be frowned upon. But in any restroom, upon the call of nature, I’ve always felt that if I gotta go, I gotta go. And if I can reasonably guess that everyone else does it, what really is the problem?
It astounds me: the lengths that people will go to attempting to prevent the shared idea that they poop. Many times I’ve been in a public restroom, or semi-public, in a stall next to someone I know needs to let it all out. They sit in pin-drop silence, trying to hide any recognizable shoe attributes, each poorly stifled fart a shameful foreshadowing of the crap ahead. Waiting… waiting… and waiting for you to, Jesus, just get OUT.. I mean, who in their right mind would hold onto a big indigestible mass of bacteria and feces at the expense of some stranger‘s unconfirmed opinion?
Pathetic, I think, as I wait a little longer. I shift about… mosey out of the stall…wash my hands for exactly the proper thirty seconds… then…perhaps slightly cruelly…smooth every hair into place in front of the water-spotted mirror. Perhaps it is my intolerance for people who do not share my exact philosophy on excrement, perhaps it gives me some consternated sense of power. Whatever the case, it’s simply too easy to make poop suffer.
A girlfriend recently delighted me with the revelation that, during a vacation with her boyfriend, she did not poop for an entire week. How awful, I thought, and envisioned her being filled from rectum to esophagus, painfully stuffing down that last coconut shrimp. I wondered if that satisfied her boyfriend, if checked his bank balance in relief, the whole vacation a well-designed plan to find out the truth: SHE POOPS NOT! Realistically, chances are he didn’t even notice she was harboring all that shit… unless of course the bedroom intimacy took an unfortunate adventurous turn. This was not part of the story’s point, however, so I gave her the benefit of the doubt.
I have often wondered what it is about people that makes them so afraid of what they, as human beings, are. People are surprising in the way that they are so unsurprising. In one way or another, we all do the same things for which we negatively judge and accost each other. I’m afraid, my friends, that we are all one kind of skin-sack of shit.
If you think yourself otherwise, you’ve got yourself fooled.
In my profoundly mediocre existence, I have sometimes come to understand that I am figuratively doing this. That for some inexplicable and ridiculous reason, I’m holding onto something that really does nothing but make me squeeze my metaphorical butthole. It is not good, it is in fact terrible and painful, but perhaps to me in that moment not as terrible and painful as the idea of losing what I’m holding onto. Perhaps I am afraid of what people will think about it. Perhaps they will call me the shit and praise the feces.
But what good is that to me anyway; if I don’t poop, dammit. And get on about it.
seeallisonplay 