On Pooping at Starbucks (uploaded while pooping)

I have a dear friend who I've known half my life who can hold it for days. If he goes on a camping trip (he wouldn't necessarily, but if he did) he wouldn't bother to pack the toilet paper. He just wouldn't poop. It is a talent born of necessity. He is self-described as "poop-shy". He only poops at home. He only poops when alone. It works out to about twice a week, and I think he's awesome. The self-control. It's amazing. It's spiritual.

(Beer-spiller. I'm a Beer-spiller. Just spilled beer on my computer. I'm so stupid.)

Suffice to say I am not that way. About once a week, maybe once a month (if its a good month) I have what I have begun to call a "Poop Emergency". My brain receives an urgent signal from my colon that launch sequence has been initiated. It is now no longer a question of when I am going to poop, its only a question of where I will be when it happens and whether or not and if so to what degree my clothing will be soiled in the process. "Urgent" is an inadequate description. "Urgent" is an overused word that implies several layers of possible meaning. This is beyond urgent, or at least at the very top end of the possible meanings of the word in terms of severity. It is urgent as in "the consequences of procrastination of any sort will be tragic."

It's not that I prefer to poop in public, the thing is that I often have to. Unlike my friend, I don't have that choice. It may not have taught me the measure of humility that the Lord probably intended in giving me these unpredictable bowels, but rather simply bolstered the paranoia that apparently runs in my family (maybe for the same reasons).

Dragging my carry-on luggage frantically through the airport, one hand pulling my suitcase, the other clutching a wadded up ball of pant material near my butthole (why do I do this when I have to poop? It slows down my running and doesn't help me hold it. Something left over from my childhood, no doubt), I "skitter" into the bathroom. Cutting in line and apologizing profusely I slam shut the first empty stall door I see, let my luggage fall to the floor and rip my pants off, praying at this point that I don't have to deal with any serious clean up. You can only do so much with airport toilet paper.

So much chaos in such a tiny space as a bathroom stall. The candy I grabbed for the flight falls in the toilet (No rescue attempt is made. I'm just cutting losses now). I hit my forehead on the coat hook on the door, leaving a mark I will later have to explain to someone. Banging the big plastic toilet paper dispenser with my bare ass. I'm sure from the outside it sounds like I'm wrestling with myself, and I guess I sort of am.

Then, once I am in position and my clothing is relatively safe, to save face (I don't know why I bother,), I reach back and flush the toilet, sometimes several times in a row as necessary, to mask the sound of the first violent explosion of fecal matter which is amplified in perfect acoustic quality by the echo chamber we call the toilet bowls. (Why are they so loud? Nothing is that loud.)

I've always made it so far, and there is doubtless a psychological element to the urgency. The imminence always ramps up considerably the closer I get to the toilet. It's always as if I just made it. As if one more second would have spelled certain doom. This is certainly evidence of some mental disorder or some neurotic tendency at least, I realize, but I am who I am, and no one who knows me well will disagree that minor psychotic episodes pop up in my world occasionally.

Needless to say, I am a big fan of onsies. Not the baby clothes, but bathrooms with doors that lock out the public. No stalls (the illusion of privacy). No wall filled with urinals (is that guy checking out my junk?). Just me and the tile. Solitude. Maybe a vacuum cleaner for company, but vacuum cleaners never judge.

You find onsies at small places. Convenience stores. Starbucks. I like it. The security of the "click" of the door locking behind me. The feeling of nirvana that overtakes me. I close my eyes and go about my business. I can let it all go without the worry of the lock on the stall door not holding (they are invariably in disrepair and suspect even when totally functional). Can you imagine two people both suffering from a poop emergency in the same stall, the lock having failed, fighting for pooping space on the same commode.

"Move!!"

"I was here first! Get out!"

"I can't! You have to move!"

Then later . . .

"Let's never speak of this."

"Okay."

This has never happened to me, but it may. I fear this. I'd probably kill myself.

I mention Starbucks intentionally, strategically even because of one peculiarity, and I hope they don't sue me for blogging about their bathrooms. Let me butter them up by first saying their bathrooms are great. The locks always work. I've never found one to not hold (my second greatest fear is to be caught in the onsie out of reach of the door when the lock fails and someone barges in to find me in the meditative position, possibly contemplating my wiener--oh shut up. You do it too.). Their bathrooms are always clean, good smelling, and usually handsomely decorated. They do a wonderful job with the poop room, and in an emergency there is no place I'd rather be (no place except my own toilet of course. I stand with Dorothy in saying there truly is "no place like home.").

There is one drawback in pooping at Starbucks though. The light switch. In Starbucks' ongoing effort to remain "green" (admirable and necessary), they have installed in many locations motion sensing light switches in order that unoccupied bathrooms' light switches would turn off until necessary. This is a fantastic idea, except that they often are not exactly bank-security quality motion detectors, so they only detect large movements and unstimulated will turn off rather quickly (like every big company, Starbucks is on a budget. I'm sure these are cheaper.). This is well and good. They don't need to be of tremendous quality. The trouble is, they will often allow a pooping patron (I travel for work and write as a hobby, so I haunt Starbucks religiously and therefore poop there religiously,) to go unnoticed by the little night-vision enabled leprechaun who lives in the light switch. This means the light turns off every time in the middle of a session, and this is disheartening. Now I am sitting on a commode, half done with my ultra-caffeine inspired BM, and I am waving my arms in the air like someone trying to be rescued from a deserted island.

Where did we go wrong in our progress as a race that it would come to this. For one, it is completely unnatural for someone to try to be noticed while pooping. There is fundamental contradiction here that does not feel good. It is furthermore humiliating (maybe not humiliating, maybe just bizarre) to realize you are trying to be noticed by a machine which has suddenly cast you into artificial night. Begging this little computer switch to turn the lights back on. It's like a rain dance done while sitting down.

It occurs to me that people were never meant to do this, sit on a toilet and wave one's arms. If you don't believe me, try it at home next time you have occasion. Turn off the lights in your favorite poop room, and wave your arms while pooping. I challenge you. You will find it severely unnatural and somewhat obscene. You might even feel a little dirty in your soul, like you're doing something wrong. And for God's sake, make sure the door is locked.

You Have to Hate Yourself to Try to Write a Novel

This is my first blogging attempt. Please be kind.

If you've ever tried to write a whole book (and you're anything like me), you can identify with the title of this post, and commiseration is likely what caused you to read rather than discard. Granted there are people who can crank out a full length novel in a month with no trouble, but I hate them (not really Tony. I'm just jealous.), and they have no place in my world (no, really, you do.). In short I want nothing to do with them (I don't mean that.).

As I sat down to put in my daily *smirk* time at the computer hoping to produce some genius nugget, I looked for any distraction to keep me from having to try to summon and tame the muse. One such distraction has been books on novel writing and elements of novel writing. Plot is kinda tricky for me, so I read a bit of one by someone named J. Madison Davis starting in the middle. Chronology was the topic. After reading a bit of J. Madison's take on chronology in fiction I was reminded of some chronological switcheroo I was thinking of doing when I started this novel, keeping things confusing, letting gaps in backstory linger ominous like thunderheads until the big storm at the end when everything was tied together with genius tidiness, all questions answered, all angst relieved in a big cathartic literary orgasm of a finish. Then I would get my 6 figure book deal and we'd all live happily ever after (until I developed my drinking problem later in life and died of liver cancer, but that's too far off to be concerned about now.).

Gallons of coffee and twenty years worth of hand wringing later (condensed into about three months) I have given up on anything cute. It seems a more daunting task than I am up for just to get the thing written, all devices standard, no fancy options, no trick endings. I feel like I'm trying to build a Volkswagen from spare parts as it is, and for all of you who know about my level of expertise in auto wrenching, you can appreciate the depth of that metaphor (simile?).

The thing is, I have no excuse. I have a very serviceable idea for the book. Simple and poignant. I have a job that forces upon me lots of down time in another state which is built in writing time. I now have time at home (waiting for a baby) with a supporting wife who helps me make sure I get four or so hours at least four times a week to write while she in her 14 months pregnant state wrangles the babies who have so far made it to this side and works on her projects to be done before the baby gets here such as eliminating all the piles of paper in the house and organizing every closet, and vaccuuming under all the beds and . . .

I also have good friends who encourage me by calling me names (good and bad), and I just don't think I can do it. So crapping hard. This is a form of torture that is far beyond water-boarding in its severity, but irrelevant to national commentary only because it's self inflicted. You have to hate yourself to undertake writing the next Great American Novel in this day and age. At least, if you share my neuroses, its on par with doing your own dental work.

That said, I got a great idea for my next book the other day and I can't wait to finish this one so I can get started on it.

I must hate myself.