Stinky
I have what has been described as a "delicate constitution." My stomach is easily upset and very difficult to settle. One thing that kick-starts my gastrointestinal rollercoaster is pungent, foul odor.
One very warm summer night between my junior and senior years in high school, I returned home from work kind of late. Waiting for me on the porch was Stinky, the neighbor's cat. He wasn't his typical ebullient self as I reached the top step, but I failed to really notice thanks to the time. I walked through the front door and was met immediately by one of the foulest stenches I have ever encountered (after 8 years it's still holding steady in the Top 4). That night, unfortunately, my mom was working late and my sister is a fat, lazy, good-for-nothing cunt bitch, so finding the source of the smell and cleaning it up fell to me.
I walked into the living room looking for rotten food or a dead animal carcass, but neither was to be found. I was about to head into the kitchen to continue my search when I heard my dog lapping at something behind me. I turned around to find him eating a HUGE pile of cat vomit behind the television. It turns out Stinky--who liked to come over every night for some affection and some free food--had gotten sick and decided to empty the contents of his stomach onto the carpet behind the rolling TV cart in our living room.
When I saw my dog going to town on Lake Cat Vomit I nearly lost it. Not only was the sound disgusting, but I regularly wrestled with my dog and let him lick my face...mmmm, mmmm, mmmm.
I immediately schoo'd him away and pulled the TV cart to the side so I could assess the damage. It looked like a Superfund site. I'd never seen anything so vile in my 17 years on this Earth. It looked like what I imagine a gallon of oatmeal would look like after you tossed in a pint of bile and 5 pounds of freshly ground road kill. Since I was essentially alone in the house, there was only one thing I could do--clean it up.
I went into my mom's linen closet and got out a couple of the oldest towels I could find. I threw the first one over the gigantic pile of cat puke, put my hands on either end of the towel, and started drawing my hands toward the middle in an attempt to concentrate the puddle into a smaller area that might be easier to scoop up. In doing this, there were two things I had not accounted for:
1) a cubic yard of cat vomit is really really squishy
2) a cubic yard of cat vomit does not tend to soak into 15 year old towels but, rather, tends to find the paths of least resistance on its way to the outside world.
These two fundamental laws of cat vomit combined on this fateful evening to create one of the more traumatic experiences of my teenage years. A sizeable amount of cat vomit managed to ooze its way out from the edges of the towel in my hands and cascade down my shirt and my shorts. This time I did lose it.
I puked. All over the pile of cat vomit. I was working as a caterer at the time and that night we had a sit-down dinner with prime rib, maple carrots, rosemary roasted potatoes, and chocolate decadence for dessert. The party was not 100% attended so everybody on staff was able to partake of the same meal as the guests. You got it...all that came out in a torrent and splattered on the surface of lake KittyPuke.
Great. Just fucking great. Now I have to clean up a growing, seeping mass of multi-species vomit. Even worse, if I get too close to it again, I will only be adding to its volume until my stomach is completely empty. I had to take another tack. I changed clothes, went into the family room closet, and got the vacuum cleaner.
At first, the vacuum cleaner worked like a charm. I moved slowly so I didn't grind too much carrot or cat bile into the carpet, while at the same time increasing my chances of soaking up the lion's share of the liquid. All was well until the vacuum cleaner hit a snag.
Deep in the heart of Lake KittyPuke, was a long, fibrous, stringy object that my first cleaning attempt had missed. What turned out to be--as I found out later--a section of nylon stocking, had lodged itself loosely in Stinky's intestinal track. Just my luck, it also managed to lodge itself loosely in the rotating part of the vacuum cleaner head.
Half way through the pile of stomach contents, this piece of nylon stocking gets stuck in the vacuum cleaner and it starts spinning on one of the rollers. It starts spinning and, in its finest Jackson Pollack impersonation, it starts shooting a semi-fine spray of cat and Nils vomit across the living room wall behind the TV, across my bare lower legs, across the back of the TV, across my dog who refused to get the fuck out of the way, and across the carpet itself. I was at a complete loss. There was only one thing I could do...
...so I puked again.
The Pee Police
Whether it's suit pants or boot-cut jeans, it is the style of the day for men and women to wear their pants a little long. Gone are the days of ugly exposed laces and all those times you sit down only to have the leg ride up and expose 8 inches of sock. In their place, we have longer, sleeker lines that have the added benefit of not disrupting the flow of the entire outfit. Genius, I know. The problem with this little advance in fashion, however, is the increased likelihood of fraying and discoloration at the bottom of the pants themselves.
Besides overuse, I originally thought the only real menace to the cuffs of my pants was bad weather. Muddy ground, standing water at curbside, wet sidewalks, untrimmed shrubbery still coated with rain. You know, just sort of your standard hazards created by inclement weather. Well, I was wrong. For men, our pants have at least one other enemy.
Urine.
At work over the last 6 months, I found out about this little morsel of delicious, savory goodness the hard way--thanks, in no small part, to the large puddle of urine I found myself standing in at least 3 times a week.
Now you might be saying to yourself, "Well, how is that really a menace to your pants? Can't you just not stand in the puddle of urine?" The short answer to that is, "yes and fuck you." My answer, however, is "no, I shouldn't have to worry about a fucking puddle of man-urine on the floor of my goddamn work bathroom every goddamn day."
Last week I finally had enough and there was...um...an incident.
I work on the 5th floor of my building. My firm owns all of the 10th, 11th, and 12th floors, but only half of the 5th. As such, we on the 5th floor are forced to share a bathroom located off the central corridor with two other companies that occupy the remainder of the floor. The bathroom has three stalls and two urinals. One urinal is standard--bolted to the wall about waist level. The other is much lower on the wall to accommodate children, midgets, and really, really well hung black men I guess. You would think that the urinal under which a puddle of piss would most often be found would be the lower one, as the stream of hot steaming man-piss has farther to travel when expelled from an average adult male.
Well, you would be wrong. Without fail, at least 3 times a week, by 4:30 in the afternoon the standard urinal has a wide, sticky puddle of pee underneath it. I was at a loss to understand the dynamics of this situation until I went in to use the bathroom last Tuesday before I left for the day.
Before I even turned the corner to the urinals, I heard someone talking. That's not unusual because guys from the investment firm down the hall tend to go in pairs and chat about stupid shit while they're taking a leak. This time, however, there was only one guy doing the talking. I turned the corner to find some guy using the standard urinal with a newspaper tucked under his left arm, his cell phone cradled between his head and his left shoulder, and a pen and his penis in his right hand.
Initially, I didn't think too much of it. I merely bellied up to the midget urinal and unzipped to take care of business. About 15 seconds in, I started feeling something intermittently hitting my left pant leg and my left shoe. I ignored it at first until it became not so intermittent. I looked to my left to discover that my urinal-mate had forsaken control of his penis and its trajectory in order to write something down on the front page of his folded up newspaper. The motion of writing briskly on the newspaper made his hips sway enough that the urine stream repeatedly hit the edge of the porcelain urinal and ricocheted wildly onto the floor and my lower left leg. I was pissed and he wasn't helping matters.
"Hey," I said to him rather calmly. Instead of looking my way or responding, he sort of turned his whole upper body and gave me the "I'm on the phone, buddy" gesture.
"Dude, watch where you're pissing please," was the next thing out of my mouth but he went on talking and scribbling. This request, apparently, went unheard.
So I took matters--and my penis--into my own hands. I turned to the left and directed my stream of urine directly onto his right shoe. It took a split second to train the stream, but I bounced that piss right off the top of his black wingtips. This finally got his attention.
"Hey asshole, what the hell are you doing?!" He hadn't bothered to stop writing or talking on his cell phone until now. He had just finished up peeing and as he shouted and I turned back to the urinal, I finished as well. As I zipped up and turned to walk toward the sinks, I ripped into him:
"Next time, why don't you spend less time on the goddamn phone when you're taking a leak?! You were sitting there blabbering on the phone and writing away and the whole time your fucking piss was bouncing off the urinal and hitting my shoe and my leg...LOOK AT THAT SHIT! LOOK AT THE GODDAMN FLOOR! That's fucking disgusting. No one wants to stand in other guy's piss! I didn't ask for you to piss on my shoe either! You did, however, so don't fucking start with me"
The guy tried to respond but by the time he got zipped up and cleaned off, I was throwing away my paper towels and out the door. I haven't seen him on the floor since...maybe he was a client or a visitor, who knows. I put up a sign in the bathroom the next day though. It was there until Friday when, I suppose, maintenance took it down. It said:
"Dear 5th Floor Tenants,
PLEASE STOP PISSING ON THE GODDAMN FLOOR!
Sincerely,
The Rest of Us Who Don't Want to Stand in Other Dudes' Piss"
Turtleheads
Organized religion, the Enlightenment, and democracy are responsible for countless advances in human civilization. I am confident that, if asked, I could connect college football and Jack in the Box back to Martin Luther and the Declaration of Independence. One thing they are also responsible for, however, is the completeness of our shame and guilt for natural bodily functions. Potpourri, Glade plug-ins, Lysol, bathroom fans. They're all products developed to disguise the occurrence of natural daily functions. I mean, sure, no one likes to wallow in the afterglow of their own crap...but still.
My favorite manifestation of this all encompassing shame occurs in office bathrooms. It is a rare instance when a man or woman can go a full workday without having to drop a spike. It is an even rarer occasion when a man or woman can drop said spike without another person coming into the bathroom. The funny happens when the spike-dropper is finished and ready to come out and, hopefully, wash their hands.
You see, with the shame of having a colon comes the pathological desire to never let anyone you know ever see you come out of a stall after having taken a crap. What this does is keep you holed up in your stall until everyone leaves. You may have already courtesy-flushed twice, you may be tucked in and buckled up, but you're going to stand there idly until its all quiet and the bathroom front.
I saw one of my co-workers pull this the other day. I'm not sure which co-worker it was, obviously, but as I stood at the urinal I heard someone flush in the handicapped stall. I had to take a pretty big leak so I was standing there for a bit. No one emerged...and that's when I got an idea.
I flushed the urinal, walked over to the sink, turned the water on full blast, and left the bathroom without making a noise.
Posted by nils at 8:48 PM