Happy New Month!

It’s March! And my first post! I warn you that it will be nothing spectacular. The title IS a precedent, and this is my journal after all.

I have an inordinate amount of fear or apprehension about being caught with my pants down… literally. I take every precaution to ascertain that the least amount of people ever can attribute that stray fart or that relieved sigh following the tinkle (or splash) behind closed doors to me. Call it silliness or some milder form of OCD or whatever. Does it really matter as long as I am plagued with it? There’s something constantly new and exposing about excretion; about the indignity involved in producing waste matter. It’s so unglamorous. But it is out of our control. Really really. Our body is responding in those times to one of the many primal urges it still retains and that leaves me raw, exposed. Human? Lol. Some people probably don’t give a shit (seriously, no pun intended). I give one too many as far as shits (literal or metaphoric) are concerned.

I bring my vulnerability up because today, I stepped into someone else’s quite unintentionally and if I had had but a moment’s notice or warning, I mightn’t have. Not because the person in question fills their time with my petty, air headed musings or because they feel some profound insecurity (which is really what this is all about) about using the loo in public. No, this was the sort of vulnerability I surely must share with another human being or seven billion.

The million dollar question: What do you do with skid marks in someone else’s loo? It’s their loo, it’s their space. The question here isn’t about ownership, its about reaction.

Does your view of that person shift for a nanosecond or for a lifetime? Not a passing judgement, not a hygiene call, your view. The fundamental way you understand them or see them.Do they become more human, more relatable? After those first few seconds of stark revulsion, do you appreciate the humanity in being the uninvited witness of that vulnerability? Do you appreciate the true meaning of six degrees of separation behind the toilet walls?

I did.

I mean, fuck it. My irrationalities will be here tomorrow and probably after that. But for the love of God, I can find an appreciation for that human being who takes a dump and means it. We are human. We shit. We shit and then we die. That is my bible of life’s vicious cycle.