I’m a Bathroom Talker

Some people like Cat Stevens. Others like group sex. I don’t particularly care for either, but what I do like is talking in the bathroom. I like it so much that Bathroom Talker stationary and an official Du Rag may be in order.

The bathroom is modernity’s phone booth and I’ll gladly deposit another quarter when prompted. Public, private, co-ed, no-ed – you give me a bathroom, I’ll give you a good time. Simply put, conversation just goes better with tiled floors, toilets, and mirrors. Especially full length mirrors. Just add a little room for pacing and you’re golden. But not in the shower kind of way.

Before you puke in your mouth and then swallow it, let me be clear: My bathroom conversation habits are not of the on-the-toilet variety. This is not a hold-your-breath homage to pant-wrapped ankle efficiency because in case you haven't heard, Multitasking is on holiday and we’ve hired a temp.¹

Food has delivery services. Hemorrhoids have Preparation-H. Conversation has the bathroom and bathroom mirrors. All are classic examples of life’s inevitabilities made better by innovation and vanity. And in the case of conversation, made better by a million times infinity to the twentieth power. Pow!

Today is Monday. It is a Monday whose afternoon featured a phone conversation in a three-stalled bathroom. There, I sashayed in front of two mirrors and came to the following conclusions:

Conclusion 1: If I could clone humans, I would not do so to create a mutant army, cure disease, or resurrect extinct species. I figure the flora, fauna, and what-have-yous are dead for a reason and that reason is paper taxidermy. Go visit your library’s reference section. They’re called books, dig?²

Conclusion 2: If I could clone humans, I would clone myself. “Hi, my name is your name. Wanna be my girlfriend?” She’d obviously say yes because I am melt-in-your-mouth-but-not-on-your-clothes arm candy and I give good toothache. I’m also as a fabulous raconteur. Conversation with me flows like a hot stream of molten rock, devastating everything in its path, one word at a time.

Conclusion 3: Some people should not be allowed to drink in the company of others. Especially not in public places where they’re free to be their white-trashy but too sweet to be creepy drunken selves. It’s one thing when you hold the door open for Drunk Guy on your way out of the bathroom (i.e. common courtesy), but it’s a whole other spool of time vacuum when what should be a three to five second interaction turns into ten minutes of Drunk Guy talking about his relationship problems and asking you hypothetical questions about “Ifs” that will never happen. And yes, Drunk Guy, I do know that I’m drop dead gorgeous. I’ve died many times while looking at myself. And no, I don’t care that girlfriend Bubblegum has come to hate her body. She should take that up with Lou Reed and you, sir, should go pee.

Conclusion 4: If I could clone myself, I wouldn’t do it. The clone would taint the sanctity of my private bathroom conversations. And she’d grow jealous of my overbearing let’s-be-best-friends-like-forever relationship with reflective surfaces. Invariably, I’d have to break her heart and run the risk of accidentally killing myself in the process because of the identical DNA thing. I think I’ll pass.

All in all, today’s bathroom-talking mission was a success. And while walking out of the three-stalled, two-mirrored paradise, a few things looked certain. Life would continue playing its game of ambiguity hopscotch. People would continue claiming to know things they don’t. And I would continue taking my phone calls in the bathroom.


¹ The temp is a living incarnation of Beck’s Nightmare Hippy Girl and, for better or worse, she spends most of her time in the bathroom, talking.

² Or shovel.

Haiku Party for My Favorite Megalomaniac

Steve Jobs
Originally uploaded by kafkas_undies.

A black turtleneck
is no gift for the man I
wish was my father.

A minimalist,
you will not receive a card,
an empty gesture.

Adoption papers,
not five restraining orders,
will arrive by post.

Just sign and return
and please don't call the police
like you did last time.

p.s. happy fiftieth

How Not To Save the World

If you’re looking for a job and you hate people, working as a street canvasser is probably a bad idea. The idea quickly turns from bad to terrible when involving employment at a non-profit organization whose causes include so many liberal talking points that the whole idea resembles political parody taken to an extreme.

Hi, we’re against littering and cutting down trees and water contamination and animal testing and hungry children and disease and war and globalization and can’t we all just get along?

Believe it or not, such organizations actually exist. And scarier than their mere existence is that they hire people to hit the streets and ask you for money. On the surface, these canvassers may appear concerned with spreading their pseudo-revolutionary ideas, but all they really want is your cash. And sometimes, it’s just easier to give it to them unless you like it when your ears bleed. And bleed they will. You’ll be a bicycle riding, SUV burning, macrobiotic vegan with a head full of Nag Champa scented dreadlocks by the time these people are through with you.

Sad as that is, it is also inevitable. Unless you work for them for a day and get fired before your shift is over. Such was the case with my “friend.” My “friend” - who we’ll call “Matt” - decides “he” needs a job. A recent Portland, Oregon transplant by way of Los Angeles, Matt finds the Portland job market depressed and haggard. Like a thirty-something’s postpartum blues less the giving birth part.

Searching high and low and lower, Matt finds a street canvassing job posted in the paper. At last! Something worth his $100,000 college education! He calls, schedules an interview, arrives in a suit, and gets glares that scream “Oh shit, I think it’s the Man!”

Having assured the interviewers that not only is he not the Man, he is not even the woMan, Matt inches toward the self-denigrating mountain peak otherwise known as employment. After watching an embarrassing video (yes, VHfuckingS) about some liberal nonsense, Matt is hired. Show up tomorrow at 8:30 and be ready to change the world – one dollar at a time!

Next morning, Matt shows up. Weary of what the day has in store - namely accosting strangers in public places – he shows up nonetheless.

And here’s the best part of the story. Each member of the street team is given a t-shirt. Save the Whales, Save the Trees, Save Your Dignity, and Save the Children t-shirts all around! Except there were no Save Your Dignity shirts. Matt is lucky enough to get a Save the Children shirt. His favorite because the only thing he hates more than children is saving them and the only thing he loves more than dead, poor, hungry children is Irony. He puts on the shirt and then watches in horror as the street team’s leader instructs everyone to put their hand in and in unison shout “Let’s go help make the world a better place!”

Matt tried. He tried by going to the town square in his Save the Children t-shirt. He tried by saying hello to people who looked gullible. He tried by avoiding eye contact with those who knew better. And through his efforts, he didn’t raise a single dollar. But he did get some suspicious glares and he did get fired.

Interlibrary Loan, Will You Marry Me?

We can do it all progressive-style. None of that white dress rehearsal dinner rubbish. You can still date others, sleep with them, have their babies for all I care. My love for you is so pure, it is unhampered by pedestrian toils of jealousy and those overrated longings for commitment and ownership.

If you want, we can even have a prolonged engagement. I’ll buy you a diamond ring. Or two. Or a thousand. But since you are a national computer network, I’ll have to wear them on your behalf.

Interlibrary Loan, let’s get married. If for no other reason than for the supremacy of your acronym. ILL. You make me ill with your power to connect me to musty shelves the world over. You make me ill each time I get that phone call telling me my requests have arrived and that the library closes at five. Baby, my love for you knows no regular business hours. And that, too, makes me ill.

Inspiration

Inspiration is one of those funny phenomena that refuses, by definition, to be pinned down in source or substance. It refutes the idea of a universal anything, acting instead like a five year kid playing dress up. “I’m a ballerina!” “Now I’m a farmer!” “Look Mom! Now I’m a homeless drug addict who predicts the apocalypse!”

And as hard as it is to identify Inspiration’s fountainhead or to commit its life cycle to graph paper or gelatin mold, it’s all the more difficult to do from a cyclone of frustration. Spinning, thoughts tend to resemble a bulimic girl on the bathroom floor. Finger down throat, regurgitating the day’s grievances. Compulsively rehashing incidents of others’ incompetence and stupidity, and hoping no one walks into the bathroom mid-act. Finger down throat, you picture yourself wearing that hot Prada number, finally free from normal body weight’s slavish shackles. Or in my case, finally free from a world populated by those who ask the same question twenty times and misspell “You’re.” I already look hot in that Prada number. My metaphoric bulimia will not change that. It will, however, keep me hunched over the toilet bowel of Rage hoping there’s some truth to Revelation.

On a diarrhea snowstorm Monday, I was preoccupied by thoughts of the Rapture, finding it impossible to focus my energies elsewhere. It didn’t help matters that I had driven through the mess to go to work on a federal holiday. The office was closed, but being a conscientious, deadline-minded goddess, I had agreed to show up and work on program budgets for the coming fiscal year. So after arriving and enjoying a cup of coffee, imagine my horror to find that half of the expected submissions were missing.

Now, I guess you could carve out a defense for such ineptness - albeit a feeble one - had reminders not been sent out in the form of emails bearing big red fucking exclamation points. These tardos had been given weeks of preparation time. They’d had individually tailored spreadsheets and guidelines and formulas put in their little baby laps. Their little questions had been answered, reports run, and analysis provided - but apparently, timely consideration from one end does not elicit a similar response from the other. Perhaps the worst offense here is that these are no regular tardos – no run of the mill “mommy drank during pregnancy and was a heavy cocaine user” sob story excuses for humans. No, these are well-educated, well-groomed tardos with respectable pedigrees. You’d think such circumstances would have armed them with mental faculties sufficient enough to process the concept of a deadline. But no, that would be far too convenient.

So now I am in this god-forsaken snowstorm, sitting in front of a fucking Windows machine with a cup of coffee and a bad attitude. An atmosphere ripe for frustration. Especially when a substantial part of your bad attitude comes from knowing that Hunter S. Thompson is fucking dead and that you can’t yet follow suit because you haven’t yet left a big enough mark on this horrible planet. What a day.

After drinking more coffee and printing hundreds of pages of documentation collected for a personal research project, my rage returned with a vengeance. Wait, my rage never left, so to say it returned is misleading. I guess it just grew. And in this most unlikely of environments, I was suddenly tapped by the wands of Inspiration and Entertainment and baptized in the waters of Revenge. I think back to a story shared with me by a dear friend. The story takes place in a public school in Norfolk, Virginia and involves a two and half year long mystery. The mystery involves piles of “mysterious” human feces showing up in teachers’ classrooms and administrators’ offices. Turns out the perpetrator was a teenage boy who knew of no other way to express his frustration. Hey, I’m frustrated too! I might not be a teenager in an urban school, but I do know how to poop! And I have a penchant for stealth!

Ahhh, Inspiration and the sweet smell of revenge. Resembling the smell of human waste, to be sure, but a sweet smell all the same.

Goodbye, Dear Sir

Your disdain for orthodoxy will be sorely missed. Less than 24 hours after the Deed, the world reflects with mouth agape. It dwells on your to-the-jugular, experiential stylistic bend and your trademark bird-flip to starched collar prohibition. And all the while, the world shakes its global head with an admonishing "You bastard."

Single gun shot to the head. Admirable in efficiency, I'll give you that. But efficiency is no band-aid for our heavy heart, nor does it stifle the desire to drop a heavy dose and hit the road.

You bastard, indeed.

Goodbye, dear sir.

Clubbing Baby Seals - Part II

From time to time, you get the sense that divinity is on your side. Like when the universe takes on the form of Catholicism's vengeful god and directs its fury only at those you deem worthy. Shortly after the beached seal sighting, I thought fake catholic god was treating me to one of these occasions:

A few days after the seal-in-river-on-ice discovery, the blubbery attention whore was still lounging on the ice and my chromosomally challenged co-workers were still in the midst of their waddling/shrieking campaign. And each day they came in appearing to have completely forgotten they'd seen the seal the day before. “Look! A seal!” It was like they all had a bad case of retrograde amnesia, except their forgetfulness was not the byproduct of a fiery car accident or unspeakable childhood trauma. It was just another display of stupidity - a display so intimate and raw and exposed, it felt like watching the local shopping cart cat litter plastic bag lady undress. It was the other kind of voyeurism - the kind where arousal is replaced by nausea and where nausea is followed by violent vomiting.

Tectonic plate (who is a born-again Christian) has her vocal chords set to perma-annoy: seal this, seal that. Something about it being stranded and the game warden being called in. Something about a rare species of seal unable to breathe under water. Something about the game warden being called in to shoot it. Wait, what?

Apparently, the Fish and Wildlife Service is so under-funded that the state government responds to stranded animals by killing them and calling it good. Far less expensive (and hokey) that the “let’s save it” approach. Makes sense, non? And in our case, the best past was that the warden was coming as a direct result of screaming tectonic waddler calling to express concern for the seal’s safety. Hahahaha. That’ll teach you to have a social conscience.

Writhing in anticipation, I compulsively consulted the clock and wondered when the blood bath would start. I wondered whether seals could fight back. I sure hoped so, if only for the When Animals Attack novelty factor. So I wait and wait and wait...

And then, the news arrives. The warden and his gun are not coming. Something about the seal not being of the suspected rare breed. (I think that was code for "it's just a fat, lazy seal.") So no warden, no man versus beast soap opera. No dead seals. And much to my chagrin, no new fur coats or PETA activists to give them to.

Thanks a lot, bJesus. Thanks for nothing and everything and for whatever falls between the two. You’ve once again destroyed my feigned faith in your power. I'll never pretend to believe in you again, not even if you promise me three more wishes and to take out the “no wishing for more wishes” clause.

Clubbing Baby Seals - Part I

Some of my income comes from a 501c3 environmental protection organization. Before you ask, no, I don't clean otters and penguins and seashells after oil spills, nor do I chain myself to dead trees. My efforts to preserve biological diversity are of a far less idealistic, far more left brain nature.

So recently at the organization's Maine office, I'm hanging out in my office looking swamped and focused, if only by virtue of the piles of papers and binders and post-it notes that cover my desk. I'm busy typing a personal email and listening to fabulous tunes all headphones-like when a tidal wave of high pitched yelps and elephant-walk floor shaking crashes over the shores of my tranquility:

"Look! It's a seal! Oh my god! Look at it! There, on the ice, in the river!!! Oh my gawd!!! A seal! Look! Wow! It's a seal in the river!"

"Have you seen the seal yet? Have you seen it?? The seal! There's a seal in the river!"

No, I haven't seen it and I don't really care to see it and you sound like the Chicken Lady from the Kids in the Hall, but if going to look at the fucking seal is what it takes to appease your five year old fascination with "wildlife" slash shut you up so I can get back to my emailing and music listening, then fine. Let's go. And I did. I looked at the stupid boring seal and then with characteristic deadpan delivery (rife with British sarcasm), responded with something like "whoopee" or "fascinating." Either that, or I looked and left without uttering a word.

I looked at the animal and it was as vapid, lackluster an experience as you might imagine. But I looked and thus thought myself free from further seal harassment shrieking. But no. No. Minutes later, I hear the same nightmarish shrieking and earthquake waddling make its way throughout the office. And then it gets closer and closer until she's running past me AGAIN screaming "Have you seen the seal? In the river? The seal?!"

Getting Hip with Geographic Nomenclature

It's not called Nostalgia. It's called hating the place where you live and wanting to return to a locale not nearly as disgust inducing. It is wanting to return to the place that jived with your misanthropy like Jesus jived with man sandals. And it is longing to forever leave the place whose citizens claim American Chop Suey is food. A delicacy all New England-fied. Me? I'd rather be purging from both ends.

The aforementioned hell is called Maine. It is a place of diseased lobsters, high cancer rates, and obesity stats that desecrate the proverbial roof to such a degree they've started calling it living art and airing "Exercise is Excellent AND Exciting" PSAs. So while these walking installations go about their business, looking like creativity's infected pancreas, wafts of American Chop Suey fill the air and then someone shouts "I love ketchup!"

I'm not the betting type, but I guarantee my organic fecal pancakes taste two to three times better than Maine's best American Chop Suey. The latter phrase is a logical fallacy, I know. But just let it ride for comparison's sake. I understand the error in implying that a "best American Chop Suey" can even exist. It's like you're judging an amputee burn victim beauty contest and then crown the one that can blink the winner. Claiming irregular eyelid movement put the victor in a league of gorgeous all her own just doesn't fly. It doesn't fly in the way plastic chew toys don't fly and in precisely the same manner that American Chop Suey as food doesn't fly.

But we're in Maine, where the natives like their food just like they like their social services: lacking any nutritional (or humanitarian) value, but consumed in such great quantity that Maine's women all start to look like science experiments gone horribly awry. Like Dr. Moreau crossed a balding office supplies salesman with two-week old London broil from the clearance section, then colored it plaid.

Food as high art is a foreign concept to Mainers. Foreign in the same way they don't understand the trouble with having children with one's siblings and first cousins. Foreign like the idea of graduating high school. Not at all familiar like a family tattoo session. Warner Brothers Cartoon Character meet Cherry Blossom. Cherry Blossom meet Jumping Dolphin. Jumping Dolphin meet Calvin Peeing on Ford Logo meet oh my god how the hell did I end up here?

All I want is to be back in the place that nurtures my cynicism without nurturing homicidal daydreams. You go back to Seattle, I'll go back to New York. Residential style. I just want to return to the place where anonymity is valued and where cultural enlightenment jives with personal happiness like HIV jives with AIDS.

This is not Nostalgia. It's not some piece of cotton candy memory puff glitter whereby you fancy yourself street frolicking while a sappy pop tune neé commercial love garbage plays in the background. This isn't that at all.

Yelling at Strangers' Children

Everyone needs a pastime. My current favorite is verbally assaulting children. Not all children, just those unlucky enough to cross paths with me in the streets or in retail venues or just about anywhere public. Oh, and they have to be strangers. Making children you know cry has its own rewards, but they pale in gasp-factor comparison to attacking perceived "innocents."

This weekend saw two such incidents. Both in a single day, no less. And both - not coincidentally - were prompted by head-in-plane-exhaust-cloud parents who thought their resource consuming offspring should be allowed to roam freely. And by freely, I mean without a kid leash or a parent screaming step by step directives so the little beasts know where to go and where not to. Contrary to what appears to be popular belief, consideration of others is not overrated. Maybe Parenting Monthly should explore that fucking topic from time to time instead of wasting precious editorial space on tips for baby-proofing your home and nightmare articles titled "Kids Say the Cutest Things." Cute, shmute. These little monsters are nothing but earth-is-the-center-of-the-universe theories in human form. And to that, I say take your hypothetical and empirically defunct ideas elsewhere. Preferably to an abortion clinic. You might think it's too late, given that you've already done the whole vaginal canal passage thing, but you'll be surprised by what an extra twenty will get you. Slip the doc a fifty and he'll not only give you the best postpartum abortion of your life, but he'll he even send the subsequent mess to your mother as reminder that breeding is selfish and inconsiderate.

So this weekend, walking with art supplies loaded arms down an ice mountain sidewalk, a little child gets in my way and blocks any possibility of passage. The mother is distracted by ineptness. This leaves me no choice but to give a harsh "Ummmm? Excuse me!" The child responds with a scared yelp while the mother apologizes profusely. Incident A. Incident B involved me walking down a sidewalk later that evening, en route to see a new film by fabulous director Pedro Almodovar. In typical fashion, I was running a tad late and multi-tasking all the way there. And looking remarkably adorable whilst rocking the early '90s Brooklyn look. So hot. Anyway, as I'm walking and multi-tasking (i.e. telecommunicating and iPodding), a little loose child dares get in my way. After responding with a loud and shrill "Excuse me, child," I proceed to the theatre and walk in precisely as the screen fades from black . Perfect timing, no thanks to a libido-fueled bad decision.

Sleepless in Sentience

Maybe it was the few dozen chocolate covered espresso beans right before bed or my disappointed liver sniveling that the night's recreation had fallen short of expected contributions to the daily-dialysis-in-twenty goal. Maybe it was Physiology's answer to my stubborn conviction. A biological "As if" valley girl snort at perceived imperviousness. Or, maybe it was biology trying to teach me a lesson. Whatever it was, its muffled message continues to resonate. It's like someone hit a gong and used a magic mallet that's resulted in ceaseless sound ripple monopoly. Only difference is that instead of the rich, textured tone of a gong (or tam-tam, as the orchestral folk are quick to point out), this audio un-delight sounds an awful lot like the metal edge of a snow plow scraping mercilessly against a concrete/snow/ice combo. Particularly the metal on concrete part. All night.

So maybe this isn't some karmic delusion. Maybe the Hand of Fatima isn't giving me an ass slap and sending me on my merry way. This may even have something to do with living in white-as-death-winter Maine and the elements. God, how those elements taunt me. And not in that hot, kinky sort of way either. It's more like Sartre's No Exit. A gorgeous vixen floating atop a narcissistic martini without a mirror in sight. Straight up.

Birthing through Liposuction

They say motherhood is a beautiful thing. They say it is an experience whose profundity is unparalleled - one whose scope transcends all tools of definition available to Man. "It'll change you forever." Yeah, you'll be changed alright. But the metamorphosis will not be one of promised spiritual enlightenment. Instead, you will awake and find yourself transformed into a walking four lane highway stretch mark. Double yellow lines and all. A tollbooth, even.

And here, you console yourself, confident that you will never contract this disease. You have an arsenal of defenses: birth control, lack of reproductive organs, etc. But what you neglect to consider is that there is something worse than this nine month slash rest of your life walrus sized body invasion. Yes, worse. Hard to imagine, I know.

What’s worse is watching the gradual expansion, the steady hip widening and ass growth, the new cellulite pockets appearing daily beneath a thin cloak of fitted maternity wear. Someone get me a fork. Or a rusty nail. The only way out of this is to pull the Oedipus-inspired stabbing out the eyes maneuver. Ahhh, ol’ reliable. (Rich in drama, but just think of the literary merit.)

Considering childbirth? How about considering those around you first? Think about what your misguided passing-on-the-seed nightmare decision will do to our visual environment. Don’t think your hormonal outbursts, tales of midwifery woe, or birthing pool photos will console us. Seriously, they won’t. If anything, they will make us want to give you an industrial vacuum. And some heavy duty trash bags.