Words, Words, Words
a.k.a.,
the stuff inside
Nirvana and noodles in aisle nine
Scary but true tales from the toilet
Would the real Erica please stand up?
Diary of a slave to New Jersey Transit
The best import since the Camry
Solitaire only looks sweet and innocent
Seen and heard: Nifty stuff in the news
Stuff that rocks just like Lenny Kravits
To
be perfectly honest, I thought all the jokes I had heard about men spending
a lot of time in the bathroom were just that , jokes. I didn't think they
were true. After all, I am a woman and I don't spend more than five minutes
in the bathroom with the door closed. I think of sitting on the can as
wasted time. There are so many better things to do. As the saying goes,
if you're not going to piss, get off the pot.
After I went to a guy friend's bachelor pad and saw the stacks of Dayton Daily News and the Louis Lamour books with pages gone wavy from the steam from showers, I didn't think the jokes were true. Then I moved in with a man and learned it was all too true.
At first, I thought he had some sort of stomach flu, why else would a person spend a half an hour or more just sitting on the toilet? It became a three-time-a-day ritual. He'd lock himself in the bathroom with a cigarette, radio and the latest Discovery magazine. I thought, maybe he was actually a follower of Islam and using the bath mat as a prayer rug to support his hidden addiction for turning toward Mecca. But that can't be right. Besides being Catholic, he likes his pork rinds too much to be a follower of Mohammed.
Could he be part of a vast government conspiracy (I call this the "X-Files theory")? Maybe he is communicating with extraterrestials via a micro-computer chip implanted in his $10 watch from Chinatown. The aliens first made contact with him via an anal probe after he ate a batch of bad fried calamiari rings. The conspiracy even extends to the Union City Department of Public Works who supplied the aliens with complete plans of the sewer system in exchange for Mayor Raul Garcia to be addressed as "Rudy". But that theory doesn't hold water because my man doesn't have any government secrets beyond where to find a good parking spot and I haven't seen anyone in the neighborhood that remotely looks like David Duchovney.
The real reason he spends so much time in the bathroom is that it is the only time during his day that nobody bothers him (and he's lactose intolerant). I find that daily escape during my nightly shower but he doesn't get that because of the two other women banging on the door to curl their hair in the morning. I guess I can respect his need for time alone, to go through the day's events in his mind and formulate the meaning of life.
Even if it does make the room stink.
"As
you grow older, you understand more. Unless, of course, you become boring.
Now that's what you've got to worry about."
Charles Schultz