GUY CAN'T EVEN TAKE A DUMP

 

I hate it when I’m rushing for the bathroom so I can take a dump but people keep interrupting me.  This happens a lot, too.  I often wonder if there’s a certain look that let’s people know I need to crap.  There must be.  That’s their signal to annoy me and keep me from answering nature’s call.

 

That’s such a pain in the ass—figuratively and literarily.  It’ll usually happen at work or at a concert.  Or even at home.  It happens everywhere.  I’ll be getting ready to take a dump at work and someone will page me.  Or I’ll be given some special assignment that needs immediate attention.  So I’ll be painfully trying to execute some menial task while gas passes through my intestines.  The discomfort rises in intensity.

 

These are the kinds of things that you just have to learn to live with.  Hell, it’s a royal pain in the ass (pun intended , though a meager one at that.)  I know they do it on purpose, too.  It happens too often for it to be mere coincidence.

 

Work is a classic place for being intercepted on the path to the crapper as I already noted.  It is one of the worst but by no means the only one.  It happens at poetry readings and bookstores.  Everytime I go to Borders Bookstore, I am subjected to long waits to get into the bathroom.  What’ll happen is this:  Someone will wait until I make my move and then they’ll swiftly move in front of me to get in.  Rather than wait, I’ll browse through some books on the shelves and return.  There will now be a line.  There’s always people waiting to use the john at Borders.  Sometimes I think it’s the only toilet in Center City.

 

Of course, it sucks at bars.  Obnoxious drunks (on the nights when I’m not the obnoxious drunk) will tie me up in incoherent conversation.  I’ll be desperate to get to the seat.  Using the shitter at bars is embarrassing enough in the first place but sometimes necessary.  It usually happens at bars with all you can eat wings specials.  That’ll get you every time.

 

But it’s rough when you’re ready and some drunk fool is accosting you.  You’re just hoping the bathroom will not be a rat infested dunghole.  The drunks impede on your forward progress.  And then when you finally free yourself from the drunk, the stall will be occupied.  It’s gotten so that a guy can’t even take a dump anymore.  It’s a really annoying trend.

 

I mean, it’s such a basic thing.  What if the outhouse was in use when Jefferson needed it?  It’s just a bitch for anyone to endure.  I always have trouble everywhere.  It gets worse on trains and buses.  Of course, those are places where no human should have to shit.  Port-a-potties in the parking lot at concerts are inhuman.  You have to shit but you just can’t bring yourself to do it.  The bathroom in the Long Island Railroad portion of Penn Station is like a page out of a horror story.  Sometimes I wish I were a dog so I could just shit on lawns and not give a damn about it.

 

Now that would be the life—but even a dog has to wait for his human to let him out.  Dogs suffer just as much as people do.  We all have to wait for the john.  It’s got to be the worst thing in the world.  Trying to find a bathroom in New York City or waiting in a long line at a concert arena.  Shitting is a dreadful event.  It’s not like pissing where all you need is a tree or some bushes.  It also requires some toilet paper and that ain’t always available either.  You just can’t win in this situation.  A guy can’t even take a dump anymore and that’s just a sick fact of life that all of us will have to live with.

 

Author's Notes/Comments: 

written in 1995.  Borders Bookstore is no longer open--at least not in Philly.  This must have been one of my working monologues when I ventured into stand up comedy.  I always riffed on monologues that were ready written.  I could delete or add in as needed.

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