The Bathroom Habits of the Desperate Rabble
Bippy the supervising clown approaches at a fast walk, a stunt-legged trot, really, the pace he uses when he tries to catch me jotting insults into my Moleskine notebook which is crazy, of course, since I make no attempt to hide my literary aspirations on the clock. He carries his ubiquitous clipboard wedged in his left hand. There are four fucking part numbers on that spread sheet attached to that clipboard. How difficult is it to monitor the progression of four part numbers on that spread sheet. How difficult is it to monitor the progression of four part numbers through a process that requires seven operations?
Bippy stands before me, his feet spread wide in a desperate attempt to take up as much space as his little body allows. He quickly consults the notes he’s jotted on the spread sheet.
“We gotta watch our bathroom breaks there, buddy,” Bippy says. “Olga says you were in the bathroom twenty-five minutes this morning.”
Olga is the human resource manager. Olga specializing in human resources is kinda like me hosting a Star Trek convention. It’s downright counterintuitive. I fucking hate Trekkies.
Olga especially dislikes me because I dare display personality. She loathes outward affectations toward character. She much prefers the cogs at Hydra Hydraulics to remain just that. Faceless, silent cogs keeping the machinery humming on an even keel. Also, she apparently believes cogs shouldn’t possess bowels.
“Twenty-five minutes.” I whistle, rocking back on my heels. “Yeah, that sounds about right.”
“Well, just watch out, she’s watching the cameras.”
Maybe she is, maybe she ain’t. Maybe it’s Bippy watching the monitors fed by forty-seven video cameras monitoring the entirety of Hydra Hydraulics. Specifically, the aisle leading to the bathroom.
“Who would have thought, huh?”
“Thought what?”
“When you were but a young lad playing with your tiddlywinks, that you would one day grow up to chart, monitor, measure, and time the bowel movements of the Polish Hammer, perhaps the greatest poet, essayist, and novelist to ever meander through the meadows of the Yellow Bluff valley of Northern Alabama. And if not the greatest, at least the most Polish.
“I’m just passing along what I’ve been told.”
“Oh, I get it. You’re just the messenger. Here’s my message. Mark it well. I’m old. Old dogs don’t poop with the youthful exuberance of puppies. If it takes me twenty-five minutes to shit, guess how long I’m going to be in the bathroom?”
This is a trick question on par with “how long was the hundred years’ war?” If it takes twenty-five minutes to void my bowels, rest assured, I’ll be in the bathroom for forty-five minutes, depending on what kind of interesting shit I find on the internet. And by shit, I mean, you know, stories, poems, news articles, the latest egregious assaults against decency and common sense perpetrated by that orange buffoon in office and his incompetent ilk.
But Bippy is not looking to claw any further down this rabbit hole than the job calls for and he fucks off with a curt nod of the head, satisfied that the warning has been delivered and understood.
The conversation does get me thinking about the bathroom habits of the other degenerate bums I work beside. Cracker McCracken has the odd habit of forsaking the urinals in order to piss standing up in the toilet stall. Is it as odd as standing out in the middle of the woods in Northern Alabama in the middle of the night hoping to catch a glimpse of Bigfoot? I suppose not.
He could have the cock shyness, that enveloping fear that at any moment some curious fellow might peek over the urinal divider and discover the poor, cryptid-hunting son of a bitch is only working with two inches of hose. Or it could be, once upon a time, his classmates in the fifth grade liked nothing more than to kick him in the ass while he tried to utilize the urinal, and he vowed never again. It could be the perfectly rational fear that a shapeshifter or one of those insidious lizard people always infiltrating politics could at any moment swoop in and rip the cock right off of him for daring to post a Youtube video detailing their existence and tenuous proof of their nefarious plots if not for the modicum of security the four closeted walls of a toilet stall provides for him.
Who can say?
I do know Cracker McCracken has been supremely paranoid since leaving the Night’s Watch Cryptid Hunting Consortium and forming the off-shoot clan, Cracker’s Krakens. For some reason, the name sounds vaguely racist to me, but Cracker assures me his latest affiliation of Bigfoot enthusiasts are racially all inclusive. Fact is, in honor of black history month, February has been given over to redoubling their efforts to document proof of the albino Yeti roaming the country.
“Weren’t you the founder of Night’s Watch?” I asked. “How do you get kicked out of your own club?”
“It’s complicated. Cracker’s Krakens is a much stronger, cohesive, and credible group comprised of far fewer Games of Thrones fans.”
“Fair enough, I guess. But let me ask you this… why do you go to the toilet stall to take a piss? It just seems odd to me.”
“I don’t know. It just feels right. Why do you spend thirty minutes in the back stall sobbing uncontrollably every morning?”
“Well, are you asking because you’re concerned about my emotional well-being.”
“Of course.”
“In that case, I’m dealing with the trauma of many, many poor life choices that’s led me to have to dip cylindrical lengths of polished metal into vats of chrome for a paycheck.”
“I hear you, man. Speaking of which, what are the chances of you subscribing to my Cracker’s Krakens Youtube channel? Maybe, smashing the like button on some of those videos, making sure not to skip the advertisements?”
“I’ll make sure to check them out when I get home. What’s the chances of you ordering my latest short story collection “Thrift Store Jackets” on Amazon or wherever incredibly obscure books are sold?”
“Yeah, I’ll be sure to order a copy as soon as I get paid.”
“Perfect.”
“Perfect.”
We make eye contact, and why I’m entirely a believer in telepathy any more than I’m convinced there’s a seven foot tall missing link cavorting around in the backwoods near Yellow Bluff, I think we both pick up on each other’s thoughts, both of us, taking cold comfort in the knowledge that however much time we spend in the bathroom, whether we’re pissing standing up in the toilet bowl while there are three perfectly good urinals mounted on the wall, forsaken, at least we’re not Jerk-Off Joe operating the Cloos who can’t go two minutes in the bathroom stall without succumbing to the temptation to noisily interfere with himself, regardless how many other people are in the bathroom.
Karl Koweski is a displaced Region Rat now living in rural Alabama. He writes when his pen allows it. He’s a husband to a lovely wife and father to some fantastic kids. He collects pop culture ephemera. On most days he prefers Flash Gordon to Luke Skywalker and Neil Diamond to Elvis Presley.
THE POLISH HAMMER POETRY CORNER is a weekly column, posted each Tuesday morning.
