Wet Nerd!
By Bryan May
The door
whizzed open, I could hear a woman arguing, and then the
door shut. As it opened a second time, the clamor was
louder, and when I looked up from the sink, a few beads of
water dropped from my face onto my checkered shirt. “Damn
it,” I mumbled. This is the ninth consecutive day where
I’ve had no appetite, and I am inhaling and holding it to
near collapse to avoid another anxiety attack. If my food
ever does become ready, I doubt it will do anything to
settle me. It will be thick paste in my mouth, foil on my
fillings, a rock in my throat, a boulder in my stomach.
Today was not an afternoon meant for rattling away on a
computer; inside an office building where the drones are as
fabricated as the promises they give to their clients. I
reached for a paper towel, and behind me, the door was being
held open by a woman who was attempting to corral her ornery
little boy. “Mommy, I want food!” “Honey, I got you a
hamburger. Now go to the bathroom and then we’ll eat.” Her
tone was the forced into calmness, bubbling variety, where
the water was about to boil and spill everywhere, scalding
all inhabitants of the room if she were pushed any further.
“Stupido mommy! I said hot dog!” “Gilbert, get in that
stall and go pee-pee.” Gilbert? For a little kid? That
bothered me. I hope by now you’re wondering either why was
a woman in the men’s bathroom, or why was I in the
women’s bathroom. If you were wondering if we were in
France in a unisex bathroom, we were not. It was a bathroom
designed for boys and men, not for girls or women. I recall
being a small lad, dragged into the women’s bathroom by my
mother. It was strange, but that’s just the way it is
done. If I have a little girl, you won’t see me romping
through the women’s. Those are just the rules. The adult
stays in the designated bathroom, while the child does their
business and pretends not to care. Most of the time they
probably don’t care anyway, I was simply a precocious one,
interested in giant 80’s perms and ruffled socks well before
the standard. “Go ahead, Gilbert. Our food will be
ready.” “Stupido hamburger mommy!” I tore the towel from
the dispenser and covered my face, because the tone that
accompanied that statement was outrageous. I was directly
in the line of site from the stupido mommy, who was waiting
outside of the stall while her little boy was messing
around, not even urinating. I could see his size 3’s
running around the stall, shouting “stupido” feverishly and
engaging himself in the Indian pee-pee dance. If he has to
go that badly, why doesn’t he just go? And didn’t the
mother notice that her son was running around? Was she
that haggard? That spent from the divorce and
the death of grandfather and Gilbert scrawling “Stupido” in
black sharpie on the new SUV? I turned away, towel still in
hands and hands still over face, red with withheld laughter,
and smiling teeth baiting the brown, recycled paper to smile
back.
Recycled.
I know it has been reconstituted, and heated to seven
billion degrees, and disinfected, and all of that. Even
still, I am not particularly fond of the notion of putting
my face in used toilet paper. That made me smile larger,
and catapulted me even closer to laughter. Finally the
noise began to seep out the sides of my face, little hisses
at first, and then a full on laugh. Was this kid’s Spanish
“stupido” that funny, or was I that desperate
for some levity? “What’s so funny? Something funny?”
Gilly was racing around the stall, and I was standing in
front of her with a paper towel over my face, so she had to
be talking to me. My face shrunk back down to standard
issue, and not even a grin was detectable. I inhaled and
peeled the brown sheet from my face. “Excuse me?” I uttered
it in a hurried and not overly confident fashion. “You
laughing at me and my kid?” She was a raging beast,
frazzled and angry, ready to deliver pain. Her fullet
[female mullet] was coiled and she was ready to strike, set
to issue venomous blows upon my lean frame. “No.” “What’d
you say?” “I said, ‘no.’ No, I was not laughing at you or
your kid.” But as I completed my sentence, the kid kicked
open the door, delivering a blow to stupido mommy’s
backside, and unleashed a stunned yet even more enraged
woman. Gilbert’s gray shorts were soaked with urine, and he
continued to jump around as droplets split time by either
running down his leg or flying off and splashing either
mother or the ground. “I swear, you better not be laughing
at me! Gilbert, damn it, why did you pee-pee your pants?
She grabbed him and shook him and then pressed him against
the wall. Stay here, stand here and be quiet while mommy
goes to the bathroom.” She pointed at me and yelled, “make
sure he stays right there.” A mother cursing at her child?
Slamming him into walls? Ordering me to keep tabs on the
super soaker? Using a men’s bathroom for her feminine
needs? What planet was I on? These aren’t the rules.
That’s like God creating a man,
and creating another, and the second man takes it upon
himself to take the life of the first. Like a person who
has been given everything by their mate, from compassion to
understanding to laughter to warmth, and then abandoning
that person because the affection frightened them. Revert
to the budding stages of a relationship, or even better, the
first date, when you and your partner-to-be agree with
everything, laugh joyously and become overwhelmed with
uncanny coincidence. Then, as the months mount, the
laughter subsides and is replaced by an unsettling lack of
comfort. It was there before, where has it gone? How about
working at the Salvation Army or Goodwill, and robbing the
institution of its most prized merchandise as you close up
at night. If I were in charge, all of those would be
against my rules. But I am one of the only who abides by
the rules. From inside the stall, where she was fiddling
with her purse, she was yelling at both of us, and making
sense to neither. It got to a point where I was ready for
the consequences, from a full on fullet brawl to management
bursting in to see us screaming through the cowering pee-pee
dancer. “I don’t know how long you’re gonna be in there,
but I have to get back to work. I’m in here washing my
hands, and you come charging in to take care of your
feminine needs and have me watch your kid.” Then I
stepped up the decibels. “One day you should learn the
rules,” I screamed. “The rules dictate that the adult takes
the child into the bathroom of relative sex to the adult.
Not the relative sex to the child. Get it right.” The
fidgeting was getting louder and more intense. “Shut up!
Go into the women’s bathroom and get me a tampon from the
machine.” Gil and I exchanged an incredulous glance. I
think even he, at four years old, identified the
preposterous nature of the request. “What? Aren’t you
listening to me? I’m talking about the rules. If you had
obeyed the rules in the first place, you would be in
the women’s bathroom right now, able to get a tampon for
yourself. No!” “No? Don’t tell me no, DAMN IT!”
This was no mumble. “Gilbert’s father is gone, I’m not
taking him into the women’s bathroom to get molded into some
pansy! My son is not a pansy! She emerged from the stall
and stuck a bulbous finger in Gilbert’s face, her fullet
looking raunchy and her face downright evil. “If you move,
I’m gonna whoop you silly.” Glaring at me with seething
intensity, she headed off toward the women’s bathroom
without another word.
This is
what is happening to children these days. But what could I
do? Gilbert scooted over to me, grabbed my hand and widened
his eyes. “Mommy monster hurt me. When she comes back, she
hurt me more.” Social workers and months passing,
investigations and legal disputes, orphanages and foster
homes and "you're allowance is less than our 'real kid's"
and all related belittlement. These are against the rules
as well. Against my rules, at least. This is
behavior that I cannot permit. I am the caretaker. I am
the one who is in charge of instilling the morals. We will
teach one another what there is to know and what is
important in this life. “Come on, Gil. Let’s go get a
stupido hot dog with mustard and plenty to relish.”
