The View From My Office

Bathroom Story

I sat at my desk yesterday afternoon as the clock approached leaving time.  I felt an urge inside me that a person would normally feel after eating food, and then that food is digested in chemical reactions, thus creating different states of matter; mainly the focus here would be on gas.  So I decided to take my problem to the restroom on my way out of the building to pick up the kids and go home.

When I arrived at the restroom there was a man using one of the urinals, and as far as comfortability went, I wasn’t feeling any when it came to releasing my intestinal hostage and I decided that I would wait until he left, but so as to not seem awkward I decided to use the urinal.  I stood beside him and took my time as he was also taking his and my goal was to leave after him rather than race him to the finish.  Even after I was technically done I stood a while longer just faking the situation while he took his own sweet time and eventually finished.  I called it a draw and chose instead to outlast him at the sinks as we washed our hands.

You know, I always wondered how many germs actually manage to get to the private areas, and how many of those transfer to my hands while in the restroom.  Is washing hands always needed?  I say yes because I enjoy washing my hands every thirty to forty-five minutes of keyboard use as those keys spend all their time touching germy hands.  My restroom friend went to sink number three – my favorite sink since it is least likely to expel boiling lava hot water – which forced me to go to sink number one.  I moved deliberately slowly and thoroughly rinsed my hands before reaching for soap.  My restroom friend was using the same technique as I monitored him through my peripherals.

I then decided that today was the day I would follow the flu prevention flier and lather my hands for a full thirty seconds in order to take longer and outlast this man.  I noticed that my friend kept looking at me.  He was not looking directly at me, but looking at me through the mirror, as if monitoring my progress the way I monitored his.  I made sure to soap every square centimeter of my hands, reaching partway up my forearms and getting every spot between each finger.  My friend somehow was taking exactly as long as me.

As the pressure that originally sent me to the restroom was building inside of me I became frustrated and started the rinsing process.  Again I made sure to miss no single cell of skin as I rinsed off the soap.  My friend, who was quickly becoming my nemesis, continued to monitor me through the mirror and also rinsed his hands for a deliberately and wastefully long time.

My last chance was drying my hands.  I tore a paper towel off the dispenser and waited until it returned another.  Then I tore off the second and waited for a third.  After I acquired the third paper towel I started drying every inch of my hands.  I was not to be successful, though, as my nemesis was taking a fourth, and then a fifth paper towel and was sure to outlast me in the drying competition.

I gave up and left.  I walked out of the restroom and down the hallway to the stairs.  Pressure built even quicker as I participated in even the slightest bit of physical activity.  My need to find privacy was more urgent and I knew my first chance to relive the pressure with a minimum negative impact to others was when I reached my floor in the parking ramp.  I walked with a group of people to the ramp and waited for the elevator that would carry me to the 8^th floor.  I became noticeably uncomfortable and twisted on one leg while I stood.  Eventually the elevator arrived and I boarded with several others who would no doubt (and certainly did) make me stop on nearly every earlier floor and delay the release of my pain.

Finally I reached the 8^th floor as the sole occupant of the elevator.  I walked out the door and made a quick check to see if anyone was there.  Then I let it go.  It was wonderful and disgusting.  It sounded worse than the noise a cat makes throwing up into an overflowing toilet.  It even lasted a full two seconds, which, if you think about it, is actually a really long time for such an event.  And it was so, so relieving – for the first second.  Unfortunately, in my hurry I didn’t notice the sound of someone rushing up the stairs next to the elevator.  Someone was a mere 15 feet behind me when I did it.

I told myself not to turn around.  Just keep walking, keep walking until I get to my car.  I couldn’t help it; I had to know who it was.  What if I know them?  What if I see them later and they make a weird face at me?  Who is this person that now has the upper hand?  Please don’t let it be one of the women in the cubicle near mine, but don’t look back!  I turned around anyway.  It was my restroom nemesis.  Damnit.

Faces

I stood up at my desk and looked around the room while leaning back and giving my spine a stretch.  The shades were not down on the windows like usual, so it was easy to observe the overcast day outside.  It had been dropping a nearly freezing rain intermittently since the sun rose behind the layer of clouds.  I never expected much from Tuesdays, so the disappointing weather shouldn’t have fazed me, but I had an undeserved sense of what Mother Nature owed me since only a week earlier it had been so warm.

                I regained my posture and set off to the restroom.  As I walked by the end cubicle in my row I noticed Vince’s desk, while fairly clean, was actually littered with far more coffee paraphernalia than a single person could possibly use.  What application could he have for two different single serving French presses?  At least the lazy person in me could see having multiple reusable mugs, as one may not have been cleaned after the prior day’s consumption and there may be little time or motivation to clean it when you could just fall back on the second one.  But in order to use the French press you would have to take it to the break room to acquire the near boiling water necessary for its brewing powers, and the sink one would use to clean it was in the same room.  I decided not to think too much about it as I knew I could understand the inner workings of his brain no more easily than he could understand mine, and I was quite aware that no one understood my “quirks”.

                By now I was making a turn down the hallway where I would enter the restroom.  I grabbed the handle with only two fingers – I was always wary of door handles and railings, having become fearful of all public surfaces as I had gotten older and more careful not to encourage nasty viruses to destroy my immune system.  I immediately felt the urge to wash my hands, but I figured it would be best to complete the transaction first.  The door swung towards me and I released the handle to step inside.  It was a rare occurrence that I would walk into an empty restroom on this floor, but this was such an occasion.  The lighting in this room was never bright - I guessed that was intentional due to what it may illuminate – but it seemed just a tad darker today.  Perhaps it was only my mood that was darker, a reflection of the outdoors that I had cursed in the morning for being a pitiless reminder that I live in the Midwest.

                As I approached the back wall of the room I felt my body get heavier.  It was a strange sensation that seemed to indicate the Earth’s gravitational pull had increased.  I exerted myself in an attempt to move my feet in the desired direction, but the weight of my own body hindered the progression until my feet were firmly attached to the restroom floor and I stood still with the pressure of another whole body weighing down on every inch of mine.

                My vision had begun to blur, but I was still able to espy what appeared to be a thick fog emitting from the wall ahead of me.  I twisted my head with great force to see the fog pouring from the other walls as well.  It sank to the ground upon entering, but filled the room quickly until I could not see anything but it.  The smell was faint, but reminded me of stale sweat, much like a farmer at the end of a summer day’s work.  If I wasn’t already panicking, I was aware enough to begin when the light in the room began to fade.  As it fell to a near pitch black I imagined that I had been displaced to field near a pond in the early morning with the mist settling in and the sun still hours from rising.  My panic subsided as I adopted this chosen reality and felt the serenity of what nature was surely enveloping me.  Was I imagining it?

                Then suddenly, as if I had awoken from a nightmare turned dream, I was back in the restroom, facing the back wall.  There I stood for a moment, rationalizing what I had just experienced and striving to convince myself that I was only imaginative and sane.  As I did so I could hear a humming.  Maybe it wasn’t a humming, but a choppy whisper in an otherwise silent room.  I looked right and left, but it wasn’t until I turned completely around and saw the mirror that I realized the sound was coming from my own throat.  I could see myself standing in the room, my own fingers grabbing at my neck and trying so hard to breathe in that my eyes were beginning to bulge.  It felt as if all of the air had been sucked out of the room and my lungs were desperately attempting to bring in oxygen in the vacuum.

                I struggled to breathe in, massaging my neck as if I could coax the air down my windpipe and into my chest.  Seconds felt longer and longer as I started scratching at my neck, hoping that somehow this irrational reaction would free me from my suffocation.  My vision had now started graying, and the infamous stars of unconsciousness began to appear.  I heard a pop.  I knew instantly that my convulsions in my endeavor to breathe had caused me irreparable harm.  My throat had collapsed, snapping like a wafer being bent to the point of submission.  The weight of this knowledge dropped me to my knees and then to the floor where my cheek hit with a violent slap.  The tiles of the floor were cool on my irritated and bleeding neck.  I stared at the grout between the tiles and felt a silly, yet primal urge to again wash my hands.

                The stress that had been put on my body forced a tear from my eye.  It swelled up and began it’s decent to the floor, but before it reached its destination I could see a figure – a person – standing beside me and looking down toward my crumpled form.  As I scanned up their legs and to their face I realized they were not alone.  It was my friends.  The stared back at me as more and more of them became visible to reveal my family members, my coworkers and others.  I could see so many faces, all of them familiar, and none of them helping me.  When I reached toward the nearest figure my hand entered his leg and he disappeared into a silhouette of sparkling nothingness.  I watched as a wave rolled over them all leaving nothing behind.

                Every part of my body ached for oxygen while I wound my body on the floor.  My animal instincts had taken over as the life inside me fought to continue existing.  I closed my eyes and opened them to once again see faces.  These faces, however, were not familiar to me.  I had been transported to another field; only this one was far from serene.  As far as I could see were bodies.  Human bodies piled, twisted and broken, and I was on top of the motionless sea of death.  I thought about crying, but I could not breathe and my eyes were out of tears.  How long had I been here?  How long had it taken me to get here?  Was this the end?  I wished I could go back and see the sky.  I wished even for the overcast cold rain to fall on my face.  Why had I cursed the weather earlier when I would now gladly take ten thousand days of it?

                I blinked again and began to float above the others.  I was rising slowly to heights allowing me to see a ten, then a hundred bodies, all of their faces looking up, all of their eyes dead and dark.  All of the eyes, except two.  I could see a gleam inside them, or rather behind them, as if there was a single flame inside and the light was escaping through the pupils.  This face, out of the unknown hundreds, was familiar.  This face was my own.  I saw myself surrounded and still; alone in a mass grave.  I continued to rise above the pile and distance eventually obscured the faces of everyone, including myself.  I could no longer see features of any body.  I could only see two small dots of light growing closer and closer together.  I felt the slightest breeze.  The lights went out.