Bathroom Monologue: “May Jesus kick your tires.” –Me on the way to the bathroom, in a really cheesy Irish accent

“May Jesus kick your tires” is an old Irish blessing, wishing you the best luck with your new car. It should be a relatively recent blessing, what with automobiles being about a hundred years old, but it dates back at least a thousand years. Scholars suggest the original speakers were referring to wagon wheels, even though kicking them was closer to attempted sabotage in that time period.

Bathroom Monologue: Lead to gold, gold to pawnbroker, pawnbroker to mansion

“Actually my racket is turning gold into lead. All the other alchemists were so busy with the traditional stuff that they get caught, robbed or executed. I take their gold and turn it back to lead for shipping. They head down to the Cayman Islands and sign for their load of sixteen tons of lead, turn it back to gold, and they're rich in safety. I'm also very popular with the thieves. Once I turned the crown jewels into so much scrap metal and marbles that we smuggled them out in garbage bags. The one guard who stopped us thought we were dumping crap merchandise from the gift shop.”

Bathroom Monologue: Cheater

Close your eyes and imagine… you cheated. If you can read this, your eyes are open.

Bathroom Monologue: Ezie/Zeke

“No, if you’re nicknaming me, don’t call me ‘Zeke.’ The world has enough Zekes. Call me ‘Ezie.’ My dearest love used to call me that. ‘Ezie.’ ‘Ezie.’ She was an angel, you know? She had the tiniest wings. So little most people couldn’t even see them. I thought they were ugly things, and always made her cover them up. Eventually she cut them off. I didn’t force her to, didn’t ask her to, but I knew she did it for me. There were so many times after that, after we’d finished rutting or dancing, when she’d look away and down. You could tell what was on her mind. Sometimes she’d put a hand up to her shoulder.... Someone else murdered her, but I did the worst thing anyone ever did to her. So call me ‘Ezie.’”

Bathroom Monologue: Frat Girls

Not a sorority of lesbians. A fraternity of lesbians. The brotherhood of sisters that swing that way. Fi Delta Strap-On. They competed against male frats in the Spring. They held very similar hazing rituals, and you don’t want to know where they held the olive. True, their brotherhood had a less stable roster than others, since people don’t realize they aren’t men in the middle of the semester. Quitting FDS meant a lot of harshness. Sexuality is a tender subject for young people, and converting out of FDS meant a lot of social problems. Problems that only the guys at the Sorority of Queens could understand.

Bathroom Monologue: “Wait ‘Till We Get Our Hanes On You” –Television Commercial

Lawrence finally snapped when he heard a commercial from the other rooms, back-up singers repeating, “Wait ‘till we get our Hanes on you.” That was clearly a threat, and a perverse one. Were they going to strangle him with a pair of underwear? Smother him with a t-shirt? They’d said “on you.” On top of him? Would he walk out his front door tomorrow and have six tons of 100% cotton boxers dropped on him, crushing him to a cushy death? He’d be damned if he’d be beaten by some global organization of old people grown rich off of child sweatshop labor, even if its spokesman was Michael Jordan. He sent the basketball legend a series of frantic e-mails, begging for help, or at least for him to call the goons off. Meanwhile Lawrence took to an all-polyester-and-hemp wardrobe and knocked down the wall between his kitchen and the driveway to create a shortcut to his car. He’d dare Hanes to airdrop tons of downy-soft death on him now.

Bathroom Monologue: Tell your life story in X-number of words.

1: I’m.
2: Went in.
3: Couldn’t stop thinking.
4: Challenged myself and lost.
5: Couldn’t stop hurting or working.
6: Laughed in pain’s face. A lot.
7: Didn’t laugh at Death. Laughed with Death.
8: Moved out of womb, daycare, school, home, life.
9: Traded faith in myself for faith in the world.
10: Felt inadequate. Convinced myself everyone else was, too. Feeling better.
10 again: Saw peak of the mountain, decided I preferred the middle.