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A walk halfway home

For months now, I've been unemployed and barely looking for a job, watching my savings dwindle and enjoying movies from my recliner. Some days, and sometimes for several days in a row, I don't get out of the recliner at all except to microwave a meal, use the toilet, or maybe take a shower.

It's great! Wish I could afford to live like this for the rest of my life. I can't, though, so my plan is to drag myself to a temp agency and go back to doing office work. Sigh. I'll fill out the forms and take the typing test and all that, but not yet. Maybe around the end of the year.

Meanwhile, there's only one drawback to life in the recliner: My legs have started hurting when I get out of the chair, and I'm a little shaky on the first few footsteps.

Obviously, I need to walk more, so after breakfast on Saturday, instead of taking the bus home from Mrs Rigby's Diner, I walked halfway home. 

♦ ♦ ♦  

It was never my intent to walk all the way home. That's for athletes. After a mile or so, my legs told me I'd walked enough — just after a bus went past. So I had half an hour to lean on a shelter and wait.

And that's when I felt something gurgling inside me, and knew I needed to do a #2, and soon. Shit.

There were no public parks nearby, and of course the johns at parks are always padlocked, but maybe some bushes to crouch behind? I was at a mostly commercial intersection, with no bushes, so I went to each of the several businesses that were open — a thrift store, a convenience store, a locksmith, etc. They all had signs posted saying, "No public restrooms." One of the signs also said, "Thank you." What were they thanking me for?

A few doors up the street was an Asian take-out place I'd seen many times from the window of the bus, and always I'd been intrigued but I'd never gone inside. I approached, and a sign said, "Restrooms for customers only."

That's much better. Not perfect, because you shouldn't need money to poop, but I had money. I'd just eaten breakfast so I wasn't hungry, but I could order something to-go and bring a nice dinner home to be microwaved. Maybe I'd like it, and become a regular there.

The hours painted on the door promised that they opened at 11AM, and it was 11:23, but the door was locked. Seeing someone inside, I shouted and banged on the glass, and an old Asian man told me, without opening the door, that they wouldn't open until noon.

I didn't flip him off. Something else was on my mind: I needed to poop, even sooner than before.

Since they'd lied to me about their hours, the back of that restaurant would've been my target, but it was fenced off.

Up the street, another restaurant was closed until 5PM, but it had a vacant lot behind it, with no fence. I loitered behind that building for several minutes, but I didn't want to do it — poop outside, in public, behind a restaurant. I am not an animal. 

The urge seemed to subside, so I walked back to the bus stop. 15 minutes remained before my bus was due. Longer if it was late, as buses frequently are. I could make it, I thought, and poop when I got home.

♦ ♦ ♦ 

When the bus was 12 minutes away, my innards gurgled again, and there were only two choices — wait for the bus and shit my pants, or return to the vacant lot and shit behind that restaurant.

I walked back behind the restaurant, and looked to see if there were any cameras, though cameras could've stopped me. Only a chain-link fence stood between me and the back porches of three houses, and the porches were empty, but someone watching couldn't have stopped me either.

There was nothing else to be done. I am old. I take laxatives. Sometimes they work really well.

So I pulled down my britches, bent over next to a wall, and pushed it out. Pushed hard, because I knew it was loose and I didn't want any brown drips on my heather sweatpants. 

About a quart of shit came out, faster and flying further than I'd expected. With the consistency of tapioca pudding, half of it splattered onto the wall in two biscuit-sized lumps, and two more lumps were on the ground. I could've pooped more, but it was no longer urgent. 

To wipe my ass, two napkins were in my pocket from breakfast, but this was a very moist poop. Two napkins weren't enough, and my personal clean-up was half-assed. Being a good citizen, I walked across the lot to put my shitty napkins into the restaurant's dumpster, but it was padlocked, so I stuck them to the dumpster's lid. 

Walking back to the bus stop, leftover poop made my cheeks slippery, but there wasn't much of it. Better slippery than the alternative.

♦ ♦ ♦ 

If you live in a big city like mine, maybe you sometimes see human feces on the sidewalk, or on your lawn. This time it was mine, and I'm sorry about that.

Nobody wants to poop behind a restaurant, and nobody should have to. I had to, but I wish it could've been the restaurant that wasn't open when they said they'd be open, instead of an innocent restaurant.

♦ ♦ ♦ 

I've wondered before, and wonder more often as I get older, where's the public supposed to pee and poop, when there are no public restrooms anywhere? A week ago, I peed behind a convenience store because I had to pee, and now I've pooped behind a restaurant because I had to poop. 

Throngs of homeless people make it difficult to keep a public restroom tidy, I know, but so what? Public restrooms ought to exist, same as public streets and public sidewalks. If it's too expensive, I'd happily settle for a portable shitter.

People are going to pee and poop, you know, whether there's a restroom or not. 

♦ ♦ ♦ 

My bus came on time, and even with shit squishing between my butt cheeks, it was a better ride than if I'd tried to hold it, and instead pooped in my pants on the bus.

At home, I beelined straight to our wondrous toilet, pooped some more and tidied myself better in the end.

When I got to my room and took a look at my britches, yeah, a few drops of brown had dripped onto the heather.

11/21/2022   

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5 comments:

  1. I'm searching my memory, and I don't think I've pooped like that. Pissed in the wild a lot - just open both car doors on the driver side, and piss. Also pissed in bushes and against a trash can in SF many times. No poop, though I'll keep pondering, maybe I'll remember...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You have never? Wow. I believe Saturday was my third.

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  2. I take cardio meds, a dozen a day, including diuretics. I'm not going to hide out in my house. The world is my rest room.

    John

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    Replies
    1. I love that thought, "The world is my rest room." I prefer porcelain, but next time I'm out and about and nature calls, I'll remember you and poop without hesitation. :)

      Delete
  3. Only once, about twenty years ago on the backside of a padlocked restroom in Papago Park. And though it was only once, it remains to this day the reason I keep a few hand towels I wouldn't mind saying goodbye to if the need arose in the trunk of my car.

    ReplyDelete

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