Viewer Excretion Advised

August 2007
Brooklyn, NY
The House on Humboldt Street

The bathroom on the third floor is a little messy. The tub is coated with a film of filth, as if muddy goats had been receiving regular ink baths. A miraculous array of hair—diverse in color, curliness, and body region—huddles in thick colonies in every nook. The bathroom door bares its own unique battle wounds. Known to occasionally stick due to ambient humidity, the door now has a gaping, jagged hole, now covered with a flowery curtain swatch. During the Halloween party, a girl had become trapped inside and was rescued by her heroic friend threw himself against the door, then painted to resemble wood but easily shattered, like the glass that it was, from the force of his drunken charge.

On this particular evening, the toilet is clogged. Housemate Cherished Armoire*, after noting the golden soup of urine, fecal matter, and toilet paper, is inspired to idealistically or foolishly move his bowels anyway into this ailing appliance. As he flushes, the liquid and solid contents of the bowl do not spill out onto the bathroom floor, but retreat ever so slightly down the septic pipe, exposing the fragrant, newly minted excrement to the air currents of the house. He tumbles down the stairs to retrieve a plunger and clattered back up to take care of his body’s folly. Housemates Lego-Man*, Austin, and I are sitting downstairs in the dining room, quietly chatting. From upstairs we hear a blood-chilling cry, the shriek of an old Greek hero as his son plunges the dagger, which bears the family crest, deep into his father’s eye. Moments later, Cherished Armoire tumbles down the stairs again laughing manically, tears streaming down his face. “I just threw up,” he chortles. “Right in the middle of the floor. I was tried to unclog the toilet…and it just smelled so bad that I couldn’t handle it so I puked on the floor. Chloe and Vince[more housemates] were having sex upstairs and when they heard me vomiting…they stopped. I think Chloe asked if I was okay.” He can barely get through it, he’s laughing so hard.

“I’ve gotta go clean up that vomit,” Cherished says. “I don’t think I can go back to that bathroom.”
“Well, what are you gonna do?” asks Austin. The look in his eye suggests that he will not allow Cherished to take another breath unless he makes all of the stuff that used to be inside and is now outside go away right now.

“I’ll deal with the toilet,” I say. I proudly march upstairs, through a gauntlet of my housemates’ horrified stares, and size up my adversary. His stench hits me first, the cloying, sinister sweetness of another man’s waste. My breathing instantly switches from my nose to my mouth and I try not to think that I am sucking in shit air through my mouth. The plunger has been left in the toilet, as if a dragon had been abandoned, merely half-slain. I look only to verify coordinates for my brain to direct my hands to do their work and I watch the contents of the bowl, smeared thickly with stool, froth and churn as I create sufficient suction force. I deftly pull up on the plunger and there is a victimless splash. Nothing has changed save that the excrement is now more thoroughly mixed. I go at it again, and this time there is a satisfying slurp as the bowl drains for the first time in many days. I flush twice for good measure and triumphantly bring the plunger outside where it will be cleansed by dusty Williamsburg winds.

When asked why I did it, I mostly shrug my shoulders and say I don’t mind doing things like that. I studied the social implications of feces and other taboo subjects at college, so I might as well put some of my theories into practice. Perhaps I’m practicing for the scatological reality of fatherhood or testing the limits of my stomach. If anything, I’m proud to be remembered as the one who was good at dealing with shit.