Go Take A Dump
By Sean O’Brien
Bathrooms are strange places. Depending on our living situation sometimes we have our own bathroom, sometimes not. In those bathrooms, we have rituals and routines. Some like to piss or take a dump with the door wide open, sometimes carrying on a conversation, while others close the door and enjoy their privacy. Some invite their pets in. Certain people do their business at specific times, like clockwork. Others work the clock like they’re getting overtime. However, most men and women treat their bathrooms as palaces or fortresses of solitude. Women are stereotyped as taking a long time in the bathroom. They enjoy taking long sensual baths, exfoliating, slathering oils in crevices, burning candles, and incense. They spend more time getting ready for work or a date in their bathroom than men do. It’s well deserved time in my opinion; women work hard and should enjoy every second in there. Men, well, men are assholes; I guess that’s why they spend time on the toilet.
“Are you gonna be in there long, Frank?” The woman asked.
“Nope, gimme five minutes, hon, just gotta shit, shower, shave.”
“That’s lovely, Frank,” she responded as she walked away.
“Hon, where’s the hemorrhoid cream?”
It’s disgusting, then they wonder why they have a hard time getting a blowjob.
Shitting at home when you share a bathroom can be weird. Even if you’re married or have had a domestic partner for years, you sometimes feel as if the other person is going to kick the door in while you’re on the bowl and snap a photo of you mid-grimace pushing one out. You listen intensely for sounds outside the door and monitor the crack beneath for shadows or movement. You stare at the door knob to watch if it is turning, slowly and silently, like you’re in a horror flick. You excrement expeditiously evading every evolution and time constraint your mind puts on your compromised reality. The fear of getting caught in a wipe causes nightmares and is the most embarrassing bathroom experience you can have, apart from having a child in a school bathroom, throwing it in the garbage, and returning to prom. Getting caught in a wipe is brutal; you’re in a modified squat, cheeks spread, body contorted and twisted. Perhaps you’ll have one arm back and the other arm spreading a cheek or helping you maintain your balance as your gut hangs out.
“Fuck, if that door opens now, I’m screwed,” you think. So you wipe quickly yet efficiently hoping to get every streak and nugget of crap on that rough one-ply dollar store toilet paper you bought to save a buck. Yeah, you’ll save a buck but you consistently run the risk of a finger breaking through the toilet paper and getting doody finger. If our culture worked like we wiped, we’d be the most efficient workforce in the universe; no lay-offs, no unemployment, no breaks, and certainly no sleeping on the job.
Shitting in an empty house is probably the safest you’ll ever feel. Either way, alone or with others in the house, I’m not one of the guys who are terribly proud of their shits. I don’t call others in to see the size or length of it and I don’t come out of the bathroom with a newspaper followed by a horrendous stench and continue to tell my wife about what a nice shit I just took. I’m trying to keep this woman attracted to me and our romance alive. Even if she’s fond of anal or enjoys licking your ass, that crap repulses women. Shit-talking is one thing, talk of shitting is another. It’s just not my sex style.
On the whole, when I’m talking about bathrooms and telling bathroom stories, I am addressing public bathrooms. I mentioned them because they present funny and uncomfortable situations in places we should be comfortable. Home shouldn’t be a comfortable place to do uncomfortable things, that’s what drug rehabs are for. Public bathrooms are my muse. Specifically the one-urinal, one-stall bathrooms for men and the two or three-stall bathrooms for women that bars have, not the private ones you can lock in Starbucks or somewhere like that. Those bathrooms are good for shooting dope and hitting the pipe. Although you run the risk of getting stuck after you fix. Then customers begin to complain, store managers knock, and employees call the cops. It’s not worth it, stick to porta-potties for getting high. Most people and cops don’t fuck with those.
Growing up in New York City, I had the experience of using the bathrooms in Grand Central and Penn Station in the 80's and 90's. Those spots were shady and overrun with sexual deviants, predators and opportunists.One afternoon someone’s hand reached under the partition and waited for a signal to proceed in some sexual exploit. I stomped on it. Another time a foot slid under the partition, tapped three times and waited for a response. I dropped trow and shit on it. But that was the 80’s and early 90’s, Grand Central and Penn Station have cleaned their acts up the past few decades.
Bar bathrooms are what I am aiming at. I worked at Korova Milk Bar on the Lower East Side for years and have seen some despicable shit in the bathrooms. The women’s bathroom at Korova Milk Bar was far worse than the men’s room. I don’t know what the fuck those women did in there but it was nasty; not the good bedroom nasty either. I’m talking elephant-sized shits that clogged the toilets, bloody tampons stuck and smeared on the mirror, cum filled condoms placed over the doorknob or on the toilet handles, boogers smeared on the back of the stall door, shit-stained panties hanging from light fixtures, and bulimic sized amounts of vomit in the sinks. They wonder why the bartender didn’t fuck any of you skanks at the end of the night. The men’s bathroom wasn’t as bad. It was still gross but less disgusting and more comical. I had a classification system for the men who used Korova’s bathroom. Men employed different urinating styles when taking a piss. The most common style was the urinal hugger. They have half of their body; arms and hands stuffed into the urinal, hugging it and looking straight ahead. They rarely turned their head to see who walked in or to have small talk. They stayed focused on the wall in front of them . This guy’s dick must be so small he hugs the urinal in an effort to thwart the other guys from sneaking a peek, because if it’s a regular-sized dick, he hit the back of the urinal with it. Then you have the hugger/angler, A.K.A. the huggler. This guy basically does the same thing the hugger does except he angles away from the door or person next to him. If you’re on the left, he angles right, and if you’re on the right, he angles left. It’s strange. Some will even angle mid-piss if you walk in on them. Then there’s the sole angler, he doesn’t hug, he just angles. Now it has been said that they angle to avoid any splash back from pissing; I can buy that I guess. However, why wouldn’t you just stand back from the urinal a bit further? The sole angler is usually a bit more amiable and will start small talk if you piss next to him. Maybe he had a bad experience as a kid, but you can tell he’s aware of his style and making an effort to be normal. Then there’s the drunk guy. He stands anywhere in proximity and pisses all over the place including himself. He makes jokes or talks to you about who he’s going to bang later. Sometimes he’ll piss in the sink. Then he stumbles out of the bathroom with his pud hanging out of his pants talking shit to himself. Then there’s the naked guy. The father of all bathroom guys. This guy’s style is classic. If you haven’t encountered this dolt yet, hopefully, you never will. I encountered him one evening while at Korova with a broad I was dating. We we’re headed to a show and stopped by Korova to have a few drinks first. We were standing at the bar kicking it with my buddy, bartender and owner of Korova, Nicky Squids. I was drinking a pint of Guinness and a whiskey neat. I finished my drink and yelled to Levy, my other buddy and second bartender, “Levy! Another round, kid, please!” I encouraged my girl to try a Moloko or specialty Martini and requested the bag of blow she was holding. She smiled, handed it over, gave me some tongue, and told me to hurry back. I slapped her on the ass and off I went to the men’s room. I opened the bathroom door, walked in, and there he was. Slightly balding in the back, chubby, head raised to the ceiling poorly singing “The Trooper” by Iron Maiden and air drumming the parts. This fucking guy is standing at the urinal, in all his glory with his shirt off and his pants pulled down around his ankles. His gut and pimply ass hanging out, balls swinging and quite proud that he hit all the stops and accents in the first verse of The Trooper. He could have been piss drunk, stone-cold sober, or somewhere in between, who knows? He turned towards me, hands-free and asked, “What’s good, dude? You a Maiden fan?” It was a bit startling and unsettling at first, but I played along.
“Hell yeah, I’m a Maiden fan. Steve Harris and Nicko McBrain? Awesome rhythm section.”
He acknowledged my response by throwing me the horns, the universal heavy metal sign, and returned to air drumming and singing. Where did this fucking guy grow up, I thought. Who told him it’s ok to piss in a public bathroom like this? Sure if he’s wearing a colostomy bag it’s alright but those guys go into the stall, lock the door, and empty it. They don’t stand at the urinal naked talking metal to the next guy. But there he was, standing there with his hands in the air and pants on the floor, pissing. He finished up, pulled his pants up, and started grooming himself in the cracked mirror on the wall. Another patron walked in and the naked guy greeted him, “Sup, dude? The fella didn’t answer. Half naked now, he combed his wispy and balding hair and perfected his aging rock star look. He placed his Goody comb in his back pocket, lit up a Marlboro Red, and exited. I did two lines of blow, checked my nose for residue, and heard Levy yell, “Dude, put your fucking shirt on, I ain’t gonna tell you again.”
Again?
