Bear with me, and I’ll explain everything to you so you fully understand. You’re enjoying your favorite cup of coffee on your favorite coffee shop’s patio. If you were to close your eyes you’d smell dust fresh off a dew evaporation. You’d hear children — happy children that you know are being cared for and supported — nearby in a way that feels abstract and intangible, like, of course, there are children but they’re not mine because responsibilities are not for me. Not by a long shot. Not here with your eyes closed smelling dust, feeling warm air on your mostly exposed body that is mostly exposed because you’re young and your body loves you still and it hasn’t started to look at you with side eyes for all the dumb things you put into it yet. The warm air is hitting your skin like a water balloon hitting a cactus in one of those slow-motion videos on the internet where you see the water’s tension in all its brilliance and fidelity holding the line, staying a water balloon even without the balloon, and hugging that spiky plant like it were its savior. Your eyes are closed, you smell this, you hear this, and you feel this. And your favorite coffee is right there. And you open your eyes and it’s only the morning. You sip your coffee. The layer of ice you woke up with between your eyeballs and your brain thins, and everything becomes clear. So, you journal and you feel with absolute certainty the future is imminent and you are in control.
Then, slowly, like the way you might hear high heels on the opposite side of an empty museum, the feeling that you might have to pee comes into existence somewhere in your mind. Nothing urgent. Very faint. But there’s that clicking in the background that you don’t care about because it’s not significant to the beauty that’s right in front of you as you take another sip and continue to fill your journal with ink that wasn’t on those pages when you woke up but are there now and each stroke of your pen feels like it’s saving your life. There’s no effort. You’re drenched in the water balloon of the warm air and your body has become the center of something special and it’s all happening right in front of you like you’re the lucky one. There are children in the distance and they’re happy and safe. And you, you are getting to be part of this morning, and you take another sip. You’ve never really thought about children, and you aren’t really thinking about them now. They’re just there, and conceptually, you’re thrilled.
Yes, I have to pee, you think, but that’s fine. I can go later. The now is for me and I am in full bloom. Still, that clicking becomes near. But it’s chic. Like, ma’am, are you walking toward me? It’s only the possibility of having to pee, and possibilities are intoxicating today, so you try to divert your attention away from this sensation. But, you can’t help but start to wonder about the approaching feeling. This woman, I mean, first of all, how impractical to wear heels in a gigantic museum, even if it is just a daydream, and yet that’s precisely her charm. Her feet should join a symphony, you think. The rhythm she walks, it’s as if the ocean were a marching band. You feel yourself get taken somewhere in her steps, in her riptide. All your abilities to think of anything else have already surrendered to the approaching clicking sounds as if all the cells in your body were cowards. And you’re taken. She has taken you into her depths where all horizon lines are more ocean. You’re floating now, and you realize this is all cosmic, and what was once your point of reference for scale now seems senseless. You’re now part of all that ever is, was, and all that ever will be.
You take a sip of your favorite coffee and a clear thought forms. You have to pee more than you ever have in your whole life. Somewhere in your brain one of the guys who watches every single second of your life checks all the tape and is able to confirm this is. This is the worst you’ve ever had to pee. You personally step in to crosscheck the guy: What about the New Year’s Eve party where there was only one bathroom in that big loft and so many people had to use the toilet that the party was also the line, and you went in there with that girl and she peed first, and you hadn’t met before and she introduced herself to you while she was peeing. It was more thrilling than if you two had had sex, to watch this girl pee and have her watch you pee without having known any personal details about one another. While you were peeing someone violently knocked on the door because they had assumed you two were having sex, but you just had to pee so bad, and you and that girl were talking about how long it was taking you, and she was impressed because she hadn’t ever peed as much as you were peeing by a long shot, she said. She surprised you and asked if she could hold your penis while you went, and you said OK, and she said she’d always wanted to try that, and she confidently stood behind you and grabbed hold, pretending she was peeing from her own penis. You had never thought about how unique of a feeling it is to feel the pee come through your penis because you’d always taken for granted the way you can feel the thrum of liquid moving under your fingers. Little lug lug lugs pushing out of your body. Not everyone gets that opportunity.
But the guy in your brain confirmed that this sensation you’re feeling currently, here on this coffee shop patio, was in fact more urgent than that time, and you agree.
You close your notebook to preserve your secrets, and you quickly debate if you should put it away in your bag. You don’t want to just leave all your secrets out in the open like a salad bar for someone to help themselves to. But, it crosses your mind, so quickly that thoughts aren’t even registering as thoughts, that if you put your notebook in your bag and then disappear to the bathroom, someone might think that you’ve left entirely and that some poor soul, you, abandoned their bag. The likely decent person who stumbles into the scene will seize the table, bus your nearly empty coffee back to the counter, and say to the staff, “I think someone left their bag.” And the coffee worker will go, “Oh, yeah, I’ll take that.” It’s not far-fetched. So, later after peeing when you return to your table and discover that there in your place is a reasonable and thoughtful person, you’d be forced to go to the counter and say, “Did someone turn in a bag? It’s green, and has all of my secrets inside.”
Your coffee will be bussed, long gone, and the day will have taken a rough turn that will require some effort to bounce back from. Once you lose the flow, it’s like regaining trust. That is to say, very hard to do. Trust lost is a trauma that never fully goes away. Is there anything more sacred the human body can feel than trust? You decide to leave the notebook on the table. You choose trust today, or really you intuited trust because your thoughts are moving so fast that your cells and molecules have been given power of attorney and have guided you here without your brain having to even create a thought. In your brain all there is is pee. Pee is the only thought and the only feeling. Now not even the children can be heard. Not even as a concept. At this moment not only can you not hear children, you’ve never even heard of children. You are a fetus floating in the womb of pee, your entire universe.
You stand up in a way that makes it seem like you're standing up just because. Casually. Not to draw attention to yourself as a person in the midst of an emergency. You’re just being a human being who has to let their body momentarily become a drain. There’s no point in communicating to everyone that you’re just a fetus floating in a womb of pee. Everyone has mouths, and soon because of it, they’ll have their own alarms going off, and they’ll understand. They’ll stand casually in a way that makes it seem like it’s just because. Nothing to see here. Just a human being having to acknowledge their body.
You slink your way to the bathroom but the door's locked.
The bathroom's not in a secret place or down a hallway. It's more or less in the middle of the coffee shop, so you're on display. Again, you're not embarrassed to be in line for the bathroom, but one thing you do hate is you just hate being obvious, and it's obvious you're waiting for the bathroom. No mystery here and you love to be mysterious. At least you love the idea of having secrets. At least the fun secrets. Like the time you were at the beach with your friends and you jokingly threw a stick at a seagull, but the seagull for some mysterious reason didn’t move and the stick struck it directly, killing it. You all looked at each other and you yelled, “Why didn’t you move, Seagull!? You’re supposed to move!” And your friends and you laughed and buried the bird in the sand and had a funeral where you all fell into the character of mourners and shared solemn words. Mostly about how the seagull was a good bird, but didn’t hold up its end the deal of moving when it was in danger like it was supposed to. Later, you told your roommate about it and she was abjectly repulsed by your story, and you thought, “This was more fun when it was a secret.” Right now standing for the bathroom in the coffee shop feels like your roommate telling you she didn’t like your story. She had gone on about violence and killing an innocent animal, that she was sensitive and could never have found it funny and joined the funeral, and it made you feel judged. You were sensitive, you thought. But now you weren’t sure and you felt a weight attached to the moment that wasn’t there before. Standing here you feel human in a way that’s a judgment. This act of waiting in line is creating a feeling in you that you’re being held hostage. Not just held hostage by your human body, but by ancient laws that have required — nay, dictated — precisely when and where a human can be an animal and drain their waste — their waste! It dawns on you that you’re in the waste line. You remember the posture of a dog defecting and how you’ve always wondered why they look ashamed while doing it, and you think of what your roommate told you, and how you’re standing in this line, and all the dots connect at once about your shame and about being an animal. There is no comfort. There is only the shared posture of you and that shamed dog being told it’s time to drain.
You contemplate shaking the handle of the door again as if maybe the first time you tried you had simply not done it right. Like, maybe this is a different type of door handle that works in a way you’re unfamiliar with. Or, maybe you had momentarily forgotten earlier how door handles work, and now that you’re really thinking about it, you could do a much better job trying to open it. And while these thoughts are being had by the cells and molecules in the back of your brain, the front of your brain has started to focus on breathing because your genitals are in pain.
You hear the first sound you’ve heard since the sound of children playing left your ears: The quick snap of metal. The door unlocking. The quick feeling of release.
The door opens in a way that feels infinite. Like doors have always been opening and doors have never been shut. You remember the steering wheel of a bus you sat on once, and how the driver had an enormous belly and the wheel pressed into it, and when the driver made a right turn the steering wheel rubbed his belly to the left, and when the bus straightened out, the steering wheel slid through his hands and back across his big belly the other way as he took everyone to places he wasn’t going, but they were. His belly rubbing back and forth like a Buddha taking everyone to enlightenment all across town. This is how the door opened. With the generosity of a Buddha who had no interest in enlightenment of his own, but insisted it was for you.
And then you see her. And you make eye contact. And you forget that eyes are eyes, and not swimming pools to dive into. And you wish that her face were a mountain and that you were a cartographer and you could spend the rest of your life creating map after map for future generations to understand. You would name her cheekbones after beautiful things your mom told you about and sleep soundly in the hammocks of her pores. Actually, no, you don’t wish that. You wish she were a mountain and you were the same mountain because you’re tired of being separate. You’ve been separate in this body your whole living life and right now for the first time, you’re realizing this singular body has reached its limits and you want oneness with something else. With her in particular. Deep in your heart, there’s the perfect thing to say that is true and meaningful and could act as a key that could unlock this moment for the two of you and you could enter into it together and find peace. But she breaks eye contact with you in a way that communicated shame and you feel alone.
And you’re left with that loneliness like a baptism in reverse. She felt shame as she looked at you. She did not share your desire for peace, or oneness. Only to flea your presence which she did with no sign of hesitation. You weren’t raptured. You were left behind. Where the gnawing and gnashing is. Where there are still bodies, and they’re still lonely and separate.
You go into the bathroom and lock the door. The quick snap of metal. You’re secure. You’re safe. You’re alone, which is its own universal oneness you realize. You breathe. But, all at once you understand why that woman wouldn't look you in the eye. You are in the midst of a fog of smells that’s so potent it reminds you of when you were a child, and you realized that other people’s poop smelled so much worse than yours did. You remember your father taking shits in the bathroom that your mom always yelled about being just for guests. It was the most conveniently located bathroom in the house, and you like your father before you, and your brother, also like his father before him, used it anyway almost exclusively. And after your father would take a shit, you and your brother would try to wrestle each other into the bathroom and close the door, as a game, where the loser had to suffer the smell that you thought might be lethal. But that woman, whom you had just wished you were the same mountain as, had done what your father had done, and circumstances had done to you what your brother had done, and now you were locked in this room to suffer.
But, you don't care because you're all of a sudden peeing and the rapture has returned. You are feeling your body create the closest proximity to an actual miracle, which is physical relief that is able to produce complete and total emotional relief. Now it’s you, not the woman in the high heels in the museum, but you who belongs in a symphony, conducting a fugue that rips you from an existential drift into the cosmos and firmly places you back on this planet earth, not like a flag but like an exclamation mark. You are a human being and this is where you belong and you know it with your whole body. Your body hears the sound of water beneath you as if through a funnel aimed directly at your DNA where it has communion with your ancestors who spent their lives listening to water beneath them, surviving, sometimes brilliantly, sometimes barely, but always near the sound of water, and always surviving.
Then the door handle shakes and you’re back in the room, but you’re still peeing, and someone is trying to get in. You wonder how long you’ve been peeing. For the quickest moment, you wonder if you’re going to pee for the rest of your life. You know this is an absurd thought because you’ve never heard of anyone who was always peeing, but this morning, with this pee, you have already lost track of time and you think maybe it’s possible you could pee forever. You wonder what the logistics of that might be. There’s no hint that you’re almost done. Just the gentle lug lug lug under your thumbs. The skin is so thin on your penis, you think. Penis skin is the cashmere of your body, you think. Your chest is like an acrylic blend. Durable, thick, but wearable. Your legs are like a wool. It would be itchy to wear your leg skin, you think. Your arms are a soft cotton. You wish your face and hands were like a baby blanket, but realistically they’re like worn underwear. Reliable. Built to last. Your feet, you think, are like a cheaper cashmere, like from J. Crew instead of a place that specializes in cashmere.
The door handle shakes again and you realize you’re still peeing, and now you’re looking for the end, like a person on a subway platform who pokes their head into the tunnel to see if they see a hint of a light. And there it is. The end is near. And you feel the stream settle, the moment winds down. The Earth starts spinning a little slower. You return to your breath. Thoughts of peeing for the rest of your life have vanished.
You rinse your hands and then make sure they’re dry enough to return to your life. You open the door. Life is a strange miracle, you think. You feel affirmed as you re-enter the coffee shop, the day’s flow still intact. You smile. You have a body, and that alone makes you feel not alone in this giant mess of feelings and molecules that we call our universe. You re-enter the coffee shop, and with you comes the smell of the woman you were for a moment a mountain with. The smell of her shit wafts out with you as if you in fact become one with her. And the fog of her is now you, like a ghost in a house, for all to forever associate one another with. And right there in front of you is a new stranger, who, somehow, someway, is also just desperately striking in appearance and who was definitely not standing here earlier when you were. And you look at her, and she looks at you, and you want to find the words that you know could unlock a mysterious place where you two could join each other and find an understanding. But instead, she looks embarrassed for you, but in a way that’s polite, which is even worse. She’s embarrassed that you have to be known as the smelly one. That today, in this coffee shop, everyone will look at you, and say, this one has smelly insides and he always has had smelly insides and always will have smelly insides. Her eyes dart away from yours, presumably forever. You hear the door shut behind you.
You walk back to the patio and you sit back down with your coffee and your secrets. You open your mouth and more coffee goes in. You breathe in and the air starts to feel warmer. In the distance, you hear the children and they are still happy.
This is possibly the best thing I’ve ever read. But to be safe I’ll put it in my top 5.
Still my favorite thing ever written and sharing it with more people