Doomed

To avoid the sometimes soporific pace of Mr. Darwin’s travelogue I’ll not describe every molecule of the upstate traffic isle. Suffice to say the island was ovoid in shape, bounded along all sides by maniacal drivers operating their motor vehicles at breakneck speed. As is so typical of the upstate region, the island’s terrain was boring. The view in every direction was uninteresting. The geology ho-hum. A scanty layer of lawn blanketed the island, and every surface—the grass, the inoperative drinking fountain, the concrete pathways—radiated heat at a temperature comparable to the surface of the sun. To be more exact: the surface of the sun in August.

The object of my quest was to locate some insect trapped here and specifically adapted to this sordid environment. I needed only to collect a specimen and name the new species for myself. My discovery would launch my new future as a world-renowned naturalist, and I’d need never again be claimed as a dependent on the tax returns of Camille and Antonio Spencer.

Not that my parents ever paid taxes.

Hulking at the center of the island, like a dormant South Seas volcano ripe with the gaseous stench of brimstone and methane, stood the cinder-block public toilets. To attract exotic insects I uncovered my jar of highly sugared tea, and I waited. Dared I hope for a blaze-colored butterfly? If such a unique species appeared, it would be my own: Papilio madisonspencerii. My clothing hung drenched with perspiration. My neck itched. My thirst grew.

Instead of unique aboriginal butterflies, I was beset by houseflies. Rising as a dark haze, migrating en masse from the reeking public toilets, sated from feasting on fresh human bowel movements, wet with the excrement of strangers—these flies migrated straight to the sweetness of my lips. Fat, buzzing black flies as large as twelve-carat diamonds swarmed in a teeming fog around me. Mr. Darwin, my invisible mentor, would be ashamed, for I was unable to summon up even a distanced scientific curiosity about these loathsome vermin as they alighted on my arms, my sweaty face, crawling upon my damp scalp and specking me with their poo-tinged feet. Parched and frustrated, I flailed them away and drank greedily of the tea. The sweetness begot more thirst, and soon I drank again.

Besides the vile houseflies, the only evidence of animal life thereabouts was dog doo-doo. In the same way sea-birds have deposited millennia of guano on certain remote islands, thus making those nations wealthy with quarries of nitrogen-rich fertilizer, I posited that future upstate residents would someday mine their traffic islands for the vast accumulations of dog poo. No butterflies arrived. Nor did any neon-colored dragonflies. Stymied by the day’s suffocating heat, I partook of more tea. Between the heat and the vigorous exertion required to ward off poop flies, I soon found I’d drunk most of the gallon.

So well irrigated by tea, I found myself compelled to make number one. Painfully compelled.

Please, Gentle Tweeter, do not take what I’m about to say as elitist. If you’ll recall: You are alive and most likely eating a nice buttered snack, while my own precious body is providing craft services for earthworms. Recognizing our relative statuses, in no way can I really high-hat you. But, plainly put, until that tedious upstate moment I’d never before made use of a public toilet. Oh, I’d heard tell they existed, these shared spaces where one and all might venture to donate their wee-wee to a community sewer, but I’d simply never been forced to exercise so desperate an option.

My clenched woo-woo howling in wordless distress, I abandoned my empty tea jar—the sticky glass at present paved with black houseflies. I carried my Darwin and went in search of relief. The landscape offered nothing in the way of cover. No options existed save for the ominous cinder-block bathrooms, their exterior walls painted a dull ochre. So advanced was my condition, so distended my bladder, that I had no hope of successfully retreating to my nana’s spartan albeit semihygienic commode.

The beckoning public toilets seemed to boast two doors, each door occurring on a side of the building opposite the other door, both doors painted a dismal brown. Mounted at eye level beside each was a sign lettered in an alarming sans-serif, all-caps typeface. These read men and women, respectively, suggesting the genders were segregated in their public-toilet-going pursuits. I waited for confirmation, hoping to follow a woman into what seemed the appropriate door. My plan was to mirror some stranger’s behavior, thus avoiding any major faux pas. I especially worried about under- or overtipping any attendant. Etiquette and protocol constituted no small part of my Swiss boarding school education, but I remained oblivious as to how one ought to comport herself while tinkling among bystanders.

Even at school I eschewed using the shared lavatories, preferring always to return to my room’s en suite water closet. Among my worst fears was that I might suffer from a shy bladder and find my pelvic muscles unable to sufficiently relax.

My skills as a naturalist determined my course of action: I waited for a female with full bowels to arrive. Initially, none did. After a few agonizing minutes, even more women didn’t arrive. I racked my brains for any teachings about how such facilities did business. For example, was a patron compelled to take a paper slip printed with a number and wait for her turn to be called? Or perhaps a reservation was needed. Were that the case I was determined to cross the maitre d’hotel’s palm with silver and secure myself an immediate piddle. The idea of money chilled me with terror. What did the natives of tiresome upstate use for currency? A quick rifling of my denim pockets yielded euros, shekels, pounds, rubles, and several credit cards. Still, as no butterflies had arrived, no widdle-burdened women arrived. I wondered if such public pooping establishments accepted charge cards in payment.

Eventually a stranger obviously brimming with caca hurried from a parked sedan to the women door. I readied myself to follow her lead, by now almost knock-kneed with my rapidly accruing wee. As the poo-burdened stranger reached toward the door handle, I stood so close at her heels that I could’ve been her shadow. Grasping the handle she pulled—but with no result. She braced her shoulder against the door and pushed, then again pulled, but the brown-painted door refused to budge. Only then did my eyes follow her gaze toward a paper card affixed to the door with adhesive tape. It bore the handwritten legend Out of Order. And, hissing a genital expletive, the woman turned on one heel and stalked back to her car.

Unbelieving, I seized the door handle but succeeded only in rattling some unseen bolt which held it fast. Ye gods!

During my vigil several men had entered and exited the men’s bathroom on the opposite facade of the building. Now, confronted by the options—to express my wee-wee like a base house pet on a scratchy dooky-laden lawn, fly-menaced, in full view of all the leering truck drivers and lead-footed soccer moms in tedious upstate… or to waddle back to my nana’s farm, my denim slacks drenched like an infant’s… offered those two humbling choices, I availed myself of neither. My alternative would be to abandon every tenet of civilization, to surrender every moral and ethic I held dear. I’d violate humanity’s most fearsome taboo. I felt a stray drop of wee-wee trickle down my leg, wetting my denim slacks with a small dark spot. Thus, clutching my Beagle book as I would a shield to cover my shame, I lowered myself to the depth of an outlaw, a heretic, a blasphemer.

I, an eleven-year-old girl child, crept off to use the men’s room.

DECEMBER 21, 9:00 A.M. CST Entering the Labyrinth of King Minos

Posted by [email protected]

Gentle Tweeter,

As I sat in the toilet stall of a long-ago upstate public restroom, my worst fear was not of being grabbed and manhandled by some drooling Mr. Pervy McPervert. No, the reason my lungs contracted and my heart thrashed like a netted Galapagos finch—even as my bladder unleashed its torrent of scalding widdle—owed more to the terror that I might be arrested. My presence in the men’s bathroom violated sacred societal taboos. It seemed certain that I would be severely punished—and, on some level, I prayed for it.

Don’t ask me why, but that terror felt as exciting as Christmas Eve, and I anticipated that unknown punishment as if it were a solid-gold pony.

Not that my parents ever celebrated Christmas.

If I were caught here, dared I hope that I’d be pilloried? Some stone-faced magistrate would lash me to a