GUEST MUSE: Brian Beutler

Heaven is a Fully Flushing Toilet
by Brian Beutler

I clogged my toilet the other day.

Under almost any “normal” circumstances I wouldn’t so boldly state something so foul and embarrassing. Fortunately—for you readers, anyhow—a few bits of good old fashioned luck made this sad occurrence exceptional. (Let me apologize now if this is crossing the usually negligible line of good taste… I just figure enough of Paco’s essays are devoted to the topic of all things “poopy” that, realistically, nothing I could add would be considered tasteless by comparison.)

At first I was swelling with a strange feeling of pride at having created, for the first time in my life, something so ponderous and robust that neither the eroding power of water nor the disruptive force of a jostling, counter-clockwise swirl could tear apart. I felt exactly how I assume the Wright brothers felt like when, after hundreds of attempts, they built a contraption that didn’t succumb to the forces of gravity and wind… and it actually flew! This called for a celebration! Yup, a celebration straight down to the local pharmacy to buy a plunger.

Which leads me to the second reason this event is worthy of telling, and then perhaps retelling. The truth is, I inadvertently told a Salvadoran clerk all this before any of you, and so I overcame much of my shame long ago. You see, though this event could have just as well occurred at any old time of day to any old chap, the gods of malice and odors decided instead to let (mis)fortune fall at exactly three minutes ‘til midnight to a lonely guy who didn’t own the silly contraption required to fix the problem—and whose only crime was an over-indulgence in happy-hour favorites like tacos and spicy wings. So, after my brief celebration (which involved dancing in front of my mirror alternately raising and lowering my twirling index fingers), I sprinted down to my friendly neighborhood CVS to rescue my apartment from the... uh… putrid (some might say “poopy”) smell. Yep… there goes my last ounce of dignity. Actually I have several more ounces to go through. Here’s a few of them.

When I arrived, standing in front of the door, which had been locked for all of four minutes (it was now 12:04), was a demure young woman who, in broken English, told me to come back in the morning. I managed to bite my tongue (which is something of an inaccurate cliché… perhaps lesser known clichés from the American Compendium of Clichés would do… “Hold my nose” might work. Maybe even “Submit to my subconscious affinity for the smell of my own poo”) about the whole, well, affair and sleep through the nausea. But I secretly cursed her existence and her ‘by the book or they’ll deport me’ attitude and put her on the enemy list. Yes, right under PETA, the Natural Law Party and Carlos Santana.

At eight the next morning, the jig was up. At the counter working the register was my new nemesis, as sweet as ever.

Buying a plunger from a woman who knows how desperately you needed it a full eight hours ago is oddly confessionary. Her inner monologue SCREAMED out “You clogged your toilet didn’t you? Yes, you clogged your toilet a full eight hours ago and have been living with the repercussions ever since. You didn’t even try to mask the urgency by buy buying a pack of gum and a diet coke along with your declogger. You loser. Haha to your pathetic smelly existence. That will be $10.”

After a healthy soak, my favorite progeny was all too eager to come undone. I won’t get into the details of that, but will advise any future plunger-users not to press too hard. The plunger will invert. You may have to put your hands on it then. Sweet Zombie Jesus the INDIGNITY!!!!!!! I’ll put it this way: Circus freaks don’t know shame quite like I do.

Well, that was my first problem of the past week with things that go “Flush.” The next one is – thank lower-case god – much less incriminating. Here’s what happened:

The old building I work in is scheduled for a total renovation at the end of the year. In preparation, the managers have decided that unnecessary repairs will not be made. Since the building is being gutted anyhow, why bother?

So, first on their list of things not to fix were the urinals in the men’s bathroom on my floor. This begs the question: How do you discover that your urinals don’t work. Answer: Well, sir, first you pee in them, and then, instead of hearing the familiar sound of pee being whisked away beneath the Dixie® rubber and the urinal cake, you watch in futility as pressing the flusher does absolutely nothing.

Unfortunately for us male tenants of floor five, management decided to put plastic bags over the urinals (and by the by, aren’t urinals weird looking?) without draining the stagnant peepee. Hours, days, weeks went by and I became all too nostalgic for the smell of fresh urinal cake. In fact, any other type of inferior urinal pastry would have been an improvement. During the minute or so I spent in that bathroom each weekday, I would yearn for the scent of urinal éclair or urinal croissant or urinal soufflé – urinal anything – to replace the profound thickness of old peepee-lugie-chewing-gum-pube mélange that by then had outstripped even the day’s most impressive flatulence.

Somebody finally complained and, as punishment for his petulance (whoever he was… bastard), the building has removed the urinals from floor five altogether. This makes for a sad conundrum when the ollllllll’ bladder must be emptied. I could, I suppose, use the toilets, but that tactic is taken by most of the other men on the floor so often that to follow suit requires stepping into puddles of yellow nasties.

The other option is to use a men’s room on another floor… and take the stairs... My feelings on this particular solution can be summed up with three words, exaggerated for your reading convenience: Soooo muuuch effooorrtt... And the morning’s coffee isn’t waiting around for me to agonize. So, I’ve decided upon a wholly unoriginal pattern. Yellow nasties first, stairs the next time. That’s right, switching it up. Keeping it fresh. Zzzzzow!

Nothing of this sort, I don’t suppose, ever happens to ladies. I’ve learned that the way society treats men and their bathroom habits is about the same as the way it treats men and their penmanship. Kindergarten teachers enable our sloppy handwriting by doing nothing if our letters are formed neatly (except perhaps wonder if we’ll turn out to be gay). Yet they congratulate girls’ efforts by rewarding their bubbly cursive with candy and smiley faces on their “A” papers.

Yeah, fuck you Ms. Nelly… bitch!

Likewise, women’s bathrooms sparkle as if anointed by the Queen, and are adorned with skylights, bright tile and two-ply; far nicer than the concrete outhouses offered to us men. And how do girls respond to this gift, this never having to deal with repugnance and disease? They twirl tampons around like lassoes and whip them onto the walls. They do this in teams and hold races to see whose will slide down fastest. And then they make condescending remarks about the failed state of the men’s room as if we had a choice in the matter. Oh the contradictions.

I’ve gotten off track… this was supposed to be about me and my problems, right? My tragedies occurred only days apart making me wonder if the porcelain gods (to whom I’ve been told we pray when we puke) are out to get me. Two events do, after all, make an undeniable trend, or so math and science agree. Therefore, I’d like to take a moment to speak with Jorge, the Zeus of Toilets and Urinals and (since we’re talking about porcelain here) Mom’s China:

“Jorge, I thought we’d bonded. Remember the night of unending booze when I knelt before your most tortured minister in the skankiest bar in all of Berkeley? Remember how, despite the cracks in its rim and the unflushed toilet paper and the love puddles and the rest of the awfulness, I promised never to treat one of your children with such disrespect? Remember how, after disposing of a few beers and some dinner in your gracious bowels, I cleaned up after myself?

“Why would you do this to me? Why Jorge, why?! I can accept only so much abuse, so keep this in mind, sir. If one more toilet tragedy should befall me this month, we’re through, you and I. If I’m on a date and you fail me, letting her (and the entire restaurant) know I had an ‘episode’; if my tiny bathroom floor is covered in soiled water and the floods extend to my cheap nylon carpeting; if I, in my stumbling drunkenness, slip and hit my head on the edge of any of your subjects… be warned. I will be ruthless. I will enter no bathroom without a cartoonishly large hammer or some other device to destroy the front-lines in your white, chair shaped army. I will put inconspicuous electrical tape over the auto-flush lasers that make life easier for your beloved receptacles. I will purposefully misaim. And I will upper-deck as many toilets as I can! (For a definition of ‘upper-deck’ please email Paco.) This I promise you: I will have my revenge!”

That’s all!


Brian Beutler is a regular editor of Paco's Wasting your Time, an intern at the Washington Monthly and the author of his own journalistic blog: Up and Coming. On a more personal note, Brian prefers his beverages from straws and has remarkably effeminate wrists.