i am indisposed

I don’t know any of the girls at the bar, nor am I one of the pretty-boys with spit shined shoes and well coordinated pant-shoe-belt combinations. Rather than drinking alone or going up to a hottie who happens for the moment to be sitting alone at the bar I go to the bathroom or the payphone thinking that if I always look like I just got here and am scopeing out a target it’s better than sipping a beer or a cocktail alone. But people keep coming and going in a place like this. Every half hour or so there’s a whole new crowd, so it’s not like you can miss anything.

But I’m not stupid, none of those girls in the spaghetti straps out there are in love with the guys in the collarless shirts, who run from one to the other asking if their father is rich cause they’ve been running through his mind all night, or some other perfunctorily discharged pickup line. I can read the writing on the wall. Most of it anyway. A lot of it is scratched into the paint on the partition separating one toilet from another. The guy on the can to my right is on the phone trying to hook up with some other girl at some other bar. You have to wonder how things get any better or worse from here.

Some of it is written in ink and most of the words are ‘fuck’. A great number of the rest of them are ‘suck’. Mostly giving instructions that aren’t being followed. There are etchings of penises all over. None of them look the same, or vaguely like a real member. These are the things that guys, aroused, inebriated and alone, write on the walls in the bathrooms. It’s not something that we’re proud of, but it’s not something that we can control either. And in our unending quest for a legacy, we etch them with a knife or the pointy edge of a lighter so they can’t be erased, not to indulge out prurience, but to leave a lasting impression. These are the things on our minds. Even if they’re painted over, you’ll see that little cock-n-balls there on the stall door and remember us.

Most of the words that I haven’t already mentioned are for, good and time. Most of the rest of the symbols are Arabic numerals. Always three in sequence then a dash and four more. It’s obvious what they mean. I take my phone out of the pocket of my pants which are down around my ankles. I can see two feet next to me and two more on the other side. I have signal. So I dial the number carved over the tissue dispenser.

“Hello.” It’s a man’s voice.

“Yes, I’m calling from the toilet at Chesties.”

“Which one?”

“Second one,” I admit, nestled on the palindrome of the three toilets, the same forward or backward.

“In the middle?”

“Yes.” Ah, he knows this seat.

“Ok,” he says and then, “Hold on a sec.” He yells for someone named Honey and then he mumbles something with his hand over the phone.

“Hello.” It’s a woman’s voice. Just kind of low and inquisitive.

“Is this Honey,” I ask.

“My name is Susan,” she says. “You’re still on the can?”

“Yes,” I say feeling very out of place all of the sudden.

“This will only take a minute,” she assures.

I want to hang up like maybe she’s tracing the number to give to the cops to find out why she gets so many calls late at night from lonely fucks like me in shitty bathroom stalls.

“Flush the toilet—you’re finished right?”

“yes,” I say self consciously.

“Ok go ahead and flush without getting up or turning around.”

I do it just like she says. When the noise ends and it all calms back down to just the noise of the guy next door over the phone I hear a bell ring.

“Your future is uncertain,” she says. “Everyone’s is, but in different ways. I sense that things are coming and going in your life,” she continues. “Even you, you seem always to be on the move.”

I don’t say anything.

“Know when to sit down and when to stand up,” she tells me. “Know what to follow,” she says, “and what to let go.” And then she hangs up.

-M