Truth is, I'd rather be alone at a crap shoot; so I view anyone coming in while I'm conducting business as a trespasser. To me, this understanding — that a restroom with two stalls belongs to the shitter in the master stall — is the fundamental exemplar of Squatter's Rights.
Recognizing this principle, I will often climb the stairs to the restroom on the next floor rather than infringe on the sacred domain of someone in the master crapper. This is not Shamefullness, I would argue, but consideration. It's an application of the Golden Rule of the Restroom: doo unto others as you would have them doo unto you.
But while I prefer to shit alone, I have learned to abide stall neighbors and to carry on business despite them. I can handle the sounds and odors of routine battle that waft o'er and ‘neath the thin steel that divides the three meager feet between toilets. And I have no problem returning fire. But every now and then someone moves into the buffer stall with an offense so potent that I raise my white underwear and surrender the throne.
This happened yesterday. It was early afternoon, and I had had firm possession of the master stall for about ten minutes. Elbows on knees and cradling in my hands Dave's book — which I have vowed to read in its entirety while on the pot — I was halfway through both my shit and chapter nine when Carroll's Jabberwock Came whiffling through the tulgey wood, And burbled as it came!
I knew it was the Jabberwock because he'd interrupted my rest at the TumTum tree about eight months earlier. On that occasion, I had endured his company for about four minutes before hightailing it. But in those four short minutes, he somehow had rewired my amygdala. For a few months after, I'd been jumpy as a Muslim in Guantanamo, dreading another closed-door session with this creature. During my recent trip to Australia, I'd managed to bury the disturbing memories, and had not thought of nor dreamed of him since returning.
What had he done eight months ago? It was not his anal artillery that had crumbled my defenses, nor his chemical arse-nal. What drove me to exit with a perfunctory wipe was his breathing.
It was inhuman: the sound of a huge, hungry animal on the hunt. Ordinarily, I want the stink of my shit to register with my neighbor. It's part of how I, as the occupant of the master stall, mark my territory. But on this occasion I was sickened by the vision of my ass-essence being vacuumed up through this beast's nasal passages and into his greedy lungs. And scared. Was he taking in my scent to memorize it? Should a famine come, would he track me down? Beware the Jabberwock, my son! The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
It was this Hitchcockesque pant that I instantly recognized yesterday afternoon, even before the restroom door was fully opened. I froze on my seat -- partly in fear, party in denial, and partly in the hope that the breathing would advance no further than the closest urinal. But it came to rest in front of the master stall, where I imagined him pressing his moist forehead against the door to consider his options while he continued to filter all air in the room through his mucous-coated cilia with each compression of his diaphragm. I could see only his large, scuffed work boots, but I could tell from the mammoth space between them and the heavy wear on the insides of the soles that the feet they contained were straining to support a frame three times the mass they were designed for.
After a few moments, he retraced his steps back to the guest stall. Once inside, he stutter-stepped to turn himself around, locked the door, and then let himself fall backwards onto the seat. The moment of contact was marked not only by a beefy thud, but also by his left foot rocketing off the floor and shooting out briefly into my air space.
It was this incursion that finally shook me from my stupor. I tucked Dave's book under my chin, freeing both hands to peel off toilet paper as fast as the spindle would spin. Paper was still rolling onto the floor as I exited the door, and I was still latching my belt. I backhanded a wave towards my co-workers and raced the ten miles home to jump in the shower.
I hardly slept last night. Each time I closed my eyes I saw a head bobbing on a goitered neck, sweat dripping from the forehead into deep, vacant eyes, down the creases of the nose to mingle with sweat beading above a thick upper lip, and from there flowing like the Styx to join the drool pooling behind a sagging lower lip.
It's midnight, and I'm watching Letterman. I'm putting off going to bed, hoping that writing this will help exorcise these images and silence the sounds of vibrating monster adenoids.