A few summers ago, I was staying with a girl in the Valley for a few days, crashing on her couch. She was already gone to work when I got up in the morning, so I made my way back to her bathroom to grab a shower. Her bathroom was cluttered and girl-messy, but nothing really out of the ordinary.
Until.
I lifted the lid of the toilet to pee and instantly flinched back, clutching my hands together as if I'd seen a rat or a ghost. I could barely process conscious thought; my mind was a swirling series of questions. What is that? Wait, is this why things have been going the way they've been going? Is that a string on the end? Did I know there was a string? Why didn't she flush this down? Does the string get annoying? Why do I feel like I'm 12 again? Why do I feel like something died in here? Why the hell didn't she flush this down?
We all got a little older that day, I guess you could say.
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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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True Story
Comments
Re: True Story
by
melanie knox
on Wed 27 Sep 2006 07:34 AM PDT | Profile | Permanent Link
I love this story. I love imagining you living this story.
Re: True Story
by
mary beth
on Wed 27 Sep 2006 09:10 AM PDT | Profile | Permanent Link
i'm impressed that you even wrote about this. most guys are so uncomfortable with the subject that they pretend like it doesn't exist.
Re: True Story
by
Dan Carlson
on Wed 27 Sep 2006 11:26 AM PDT | Profile | Permanent Link
Mel: Imagine me with my hands clutched against my chest, standing frozen in my tracks. Like that.
Mary Beth: Maybe I'm enlightened. Probably not, though. Seriously, she couldn't check to make sure it flushed? Come on. Re: Re: True Story
by
mary beth
on Fri 29 Sep 2006 10:53 AM PDT | Profile | Permanent Link
i know! most girls are super paranoid about these things. hmmm, guess she was really laid-back. ha.
Re: Re: Re: True Story
by
julie
on Mon 02 Oct 2006 01:59 PM PDT | Permanent Link
No mystery here - this has happened to me before, horrifying as it was. We girls often use the bathroom before showering and then don't want to flush since it will make the water temperature change radically. We try to remember to flush after the shower's over, but sometimes we forget, and... that's probably why you saw what you saw.
Re: Re: Re: Re: True Story
by
Dan Carlson
on Tue 03 Oct 2006 05:28 PM PDT | Profile | Permanent Link
Well, in the interest of sparing your future male visitors the sight I saw that day, I recommend flushing the toilet before the shower. It will take all of 30 seconds for the water to return to normal. Read a magazine or something. Otherwise leave the toilet lid up as a horrible reminder of what needs to be flushed when your shower is done.
Re: Re: Re: Re: True Story
by
Anonymous
on Wed 18 Oct 2006 05:17 PM PDT | Permanent Link
So funny - I totally presumed she'd taken a dump! Maybe she was just testing you to see if you could handle the 'pon.
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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?
O lost, and by the wind grieved, ghost, come back again. — Look Homeward, Angel, Thomas Wolfe Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives. — John Stuart Mill We are all under the same mental calamity; we have all forgotten our names. We have all forgotten what we really are. All that we call common sense and rationality and practicality and positivism only means that for certain dead levels of our life we forget that we have forgotten. All that we call spirit and art and ecstasy only means that for one awful instant we remember that we forget. — G.K. Chesterton We were, for the briefest of moments, something greater than the sum of our uncertain parts; we were youth itself, in all its painful glory and sharp joy. — August Van Zorn There is a time in the lives of most writers when they are vulnerable, when the vivid dreams and ambitions of childhood seem to pale in the harsh sunlight of what we call the real world. In short, there's a time when things can go either way. — Stephen King Los Angeles, give me some of you! Los Angeles come to me the way I came to you, my feet over your streets, you pretty town I loved you so much, you sad flower in the sand, you pretty town. — Ask the Dust, John Fante |
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