COMMODE STORY

For goodness sake…

Eddie Murphy once quipped that the loneliest and utmost venue for self-reflection is the bathroom, especially if you are doing a number two. Reason being, is that you are alone with your thoughts, with the soothing sound of your faeces hitting the toilet water for company. If you need to go on a diet, your love handles and girth will advise you of this need, as there is nothing as unflattering as one perched on a water closet bowl.

For me, bathroom time is bliss on earth, especially my night regimes. It is my personal time, as I like to think of making a hit, while taking a shit. I also see it as a forum for cleansing myself of the toils, soils and foils of a busy day, as I replenish my physical essence in the fragrance of pomade, fluoride and eau de toilette (pun intended).

Besides, I am as socially awkward as a friendly leper. My lack of social graces gets worse in confined spaces like a public bathroom. For me there is something mightily disagreeable about other users trying to make small talk about the weather or economy in an office toilet facility while I am trying to desperately aim my crooked penis at the urinary bowl. Mess around and get bathed in my salty urea, as I can’t shoot straight for toffee.

If I waltzed into a gents’, and someone I knew was there already say washing his hands at the sinks after a poo poo, I grunted my greetings and edged past the usurper straight to the urinary cubicle. I try to wait until dude left the room, before I proceeded to wash my hands. Sometimes with these over-friendly folk, it is a waiting game of who blinks first. Like dude, I am still here – you can shit your bowels out now.

By the way, what is the correct spelling for faeces, as Microsoft Word’s spell check disagrees with my construction of the word at every turn.

I spent my formative years in boarding school, as my parents conveniently subcontracted the stress of raising me to a bully of a housemaster who wore baggy khakis and a big belt buckle,  like the court clerk from Ichoku.  Of all the most unbearable things about boarding house life, the toilets were the worst experience, and I still have nightmares from sneaking into a toilet early one morning, only to be confronted by a Pied Piper of Hamelin type rat taking a bath in a commode full of semi-solid waste. Talk about eating where you shit at.

Unfortuately I am sometimes still forced to use public  conveniences either at work or at eateries, when my stomach decides it cannot keep down the TV dinners I spend my lunch money on these days. I have also had a few inconsiderate house guests over, and I find that bathroom users fall broadly into the following 5 categories.

• Folk (inconsiderate albeit) who leave skid-marks in the toilet bowl after doing their business. I once told a story of how I bounced out of a house party full of glorious spread, because the bathroom facilities were a disgrace. There was no logical way a home could have produced kitchen grub that good, and a convenience that gross.

• Those who shower like they are on a home irrigation project. I once walked into the bathroom of a flat I was sharing with some students and I saw an amount of water that looks like it was what the Titanic displaced when it sunk.

• People who shed hair. On the toilet seat. Perhaps a memento or a some kind of sickly keepsake for the next punter? Pubic hair surely cannot be that long and nappy?

• Users who grunt and pant during the defecating process, like they are birthing a giant infant.

• Normal folk like me, who are considerate and tidy users, with the added ability to hit opera type notes while singing in the shower.

So there you have it.