I walked into the bathroom, striding past the sinks and ready to head for the urinal, and that's when it all fell apart.
I just had to pee, so I was heading for the trusty wall unit, which is when the urinal flushed and Andy stepped back from it. He was too close to it for me to move in, too, and was in fact tightening his belt and looking down at his pants as he staggered forward and toward me, looking more than a little like a drunk, with his sweater still hiked up a bit, revealing a dingy white undershirt. Granted, zipping up while walking away is not uncommon, but still, you need to watch where you're going.
I quickly ran through my options: (1) I could do some kind of box-step zigzag and head for the second urinal, which is inexplicably mounted at least a foot lower than the other one, as if we get a lot of 7-year-olds in here on business. But, as much as I enjoy peeing in the little urinal and pretending I'm a giant of frightening proportions, it's a risky proposition, having to do with angles and arcs and all kinds of physics I barely learned in 11th grade and have long since forgotten. (2) I could take a step back and allow Andy to buckle up and pass, freeing up the man-sized urinal for my use. However, this would be awkward with anyone, and I didn't want to say word one to Andy for fear of getting drawn into an endless conversation, which would entail eventually killing him and hiding the body somewhere in the building, and this is already a busy week for me, so I didn't think I would have the energy. (3) I could continue walking straight ahead and enter one of the stalls and sit there and do my business, cowering in a psychological cul-de-sac of neuroses and self-loathing. Since it was the path of least resistance, and I still really had to let flow, this is the option I chose.
All this happened in less than a second.
[Also, in case you were wondering, my knowledge of urinal etiquette was recently included here. Read up.]
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Los Angeles, California I'm a twentysomething white male with ambitions to be a professional film critic and generally spend my days getting paid to watch movies and write about it. I try not to think too hard about how I want to build my life around talking about other people's creations and not mine. A compulsive reader and stubborn cineaste, I take an often contrary stance to my more fundamentalist peers and upbringing by celebrating the pursuit of the good, and the Good, in life, love, art and film. If you watched enough episodes of a few TV shows ("The Hungry and the Hunted," "The Cut Man Cometh," "The Body," "Waiting in the Wings," "Out of Gas," "April is the Cruelest Month," "20 Hours in America," "Colonial Day" for starters), you would understand me completely, and you'd also realize that much of my worldview and philosophical insights are heavily influenced by fictional works/programs, and many of the good things I've said in my life are just a regurgitation of someone else's imaginings. I guess I was made to be a film critic. This Month
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Remembering speechlessly we seek the great forgotten language, the lost lane-end into heaven, a stone, a leaf, an unfound door. Where? When?
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