Bathroom Monologue: Tim is Dead

Tim is dead. His fingers dab the cologne that gives her hives across his collar. His hands ruffle that collar in the way she always fixes when he’s in front of people. His wallet, usually home to a few token twenties, bulges with deceptive singles. Timothy observes Tim’s corpse: dressed a little too crisp, hair a little too mussed, wearing a seven-o’clock shadow that he really ought to shave off before the party. Not a thing about the dearly departed would meet his mother-in-law’s approval. If his mother-in-law would always use his full name to oppress him, then he will give it to her with a smile calculated to be just phony enough to bother her without being able to call him on. It took four of her Christmas Eve Bashes to kill Tim. This Yule, Timothy reigns supreme.

This piece popped into my head reading the first line of Michael Tate's story, "Darkness Surrounding."

Bathroom Monologue: Dawn Defines

She defined love for me every morning at 5:00 AM. My parents couldn't afford an alarm clock, so we rose on hers. I knew at least three other families - one in our tenement, two in hers - that did the same. While my brothers fought for the hot water, I scurried over to the window. I called her Dawn.

She was appropriately blonde, the downiest stuff you ever saw. Nostalgia’s probably colored my memory. It does that without asking. If you asked my little self, she was incomparable, an angel in threadbare linens. Most mornings I didn't catch sight of her before she got out of bed and into the bathroom, but I tried. I was at that age.

Six days a week I did catch her exiting the bathroom, though. She might look out their window, but never up for a Peeping Thomas a story above and across the alley. In those early rays of yellow and orange, her skin was raw and pinkened from the freezing shower. And then she'd put bobbies in her hair, pinning and hiding it all up.

I'd take my breakfast at the windowsill and consume her ritual. Guess observance was my ritual. Dawn’s was to wrap her breasts, mashing them into her ribs so as even I got uncomfortable. They had to fit into her husband's old uniform. She'd lace the boots snug, pull on the too-fat gloves, and button things up to her chin. The tools waited for her by the door as she made sure he had his bedpan and a glass of water.

Don’t remember a morning where he got up. She'd kiss him on the forehead, then squat under the weight of his pack and embark for the mine. Someone had to, to ensure he'd have food and medicine tomorrow. Some nights she'd come back so coal-stricken you couldn't tell her apart from the dusk. All that radiant beauty, scrubbed pink and strapped down. Tomorrow after tomorrow.

Nowadays, that's what I think love is. It's what you'll do to yourself for someone else. I've had four women tell me I'm wrong, and all four walked out on me eventually. But you know, I drove into hurricanes and stayed through cancer-scares when they needed somebody most. So I don't regret. I did my part getting us to dawn.

Bathroom Monologue: The Dark Lord's Rayment

The fibres were harvested from wildebeests and werewolves. It was dyed in the blood of warlocks, each slain because he was born on this day, so that whosoever wears it will inherit their power. The tinted lenses in the mask enable the owner to peer into other realms of reality, protecting him from astral predators. In his case, wielding a whip fashioned from the Devil's own tail, such vision will allow him to ensnare the invisible predators to his will. For a mere $13.99, he will become the dark lord of this town.

That is how it seems to John Wiswell, age eleven, standing in the costume aisle of the local department store.

Bathroom Monologue: Clothes Make the Man

His pants split at the crotch. In the middle of a firefight with the Motley Brothers, crouched behind what was a surveillance vehicle, the cotton gives way and ruptures from belt buckle to ass cheeks. In a moment, his tighty-whities are exposed to his superiors.

For the first time in four months he reflects. Those pants cost more than what he made in a year at the old job. You could sell all the ties his father ever wore and not come up with half of what his current one costs. No one in his family can even spell the material his vest is made out of. It saves his life twice before he falls over.

The shoulder-holster strains against his pectorals. Its that too-tight model that had reminded him for four months that he has two man-killers strapped to him at all times. Reaching for the steering wheel. Reaching for his wallet to pay for coffee. Even reaching to take a piss abrades the bicep, reminds the arm and alerts the hand that it has stopping power at its call.

He feels that memory course through his muscles. It's so thick that he has the second gun drawn before he has finished bouncing off the pavement. He rises, sweat evaporating through an imported porous button-down so that he can only smell a hint of himself as he draws a bead on Frank Motley. In a twitch, he will become the funniest story their outfit has ever heard. The man who slew a drug lord with his ass showing into the wind. As the bullet travels, he can only think that the clothes really have made him this man.

Bathroom Monologue: The Box From Y.

“You have to wear all of it.

-Y”

That was all the note read. Not even, “Love, Y.”

Not even, “Don’t get your soul swallowed, Y.”

But at least he hadn’t rambled at him about being a good cowboy this time. So his son was growing up a little.

Leigh laid the white note aside and cut the white string on the white box. White packing chips spewed put, raining down on the hotel room’s burgundy carpet. He swept a gnarled hand through the box, sending out a torrent of chips until he felt leather.

He pulled out two bandoliers. They swayed before his chest, the material smooth under his fingertips. He held them to his nose and inhaled the musty smell he associated with stale wafers. Treated with holy oil, so his prey wouldn’t be able to grab onto them. In the worst of times, they doubled as whips.

He set them aside and fished around in the box. Unmarked boxes of tinkling bullets. He popped one open and admired the silver casings. Each head had a little cross carved on it.

“Yes sir,” Leigh told his absent son. “I will wear every one of them until they are put to use.”

He found a heavy lump. Styrofoam chips clung to the wrappings as he lifted them. He couldn’t even brush them off; too much static. So he unfolded the bandanas to admire the twin revolvers. Pearl-handled, silver plates over sterner stuff. Freshly built to order. They vibrated under his palms. New friends calling to his muscle memory. He kissed one on the hammer the way he’d used to kiss Y on the top of the head before bed.

He lay them down on his bed and frowned at the box. It was an awful large box, even for this precious a cargo. He swirled his left hand inside the remaining chips, imagining some new-fangled body-armor vest, or some very old-fangled crucifix to ward off what Y.’d been afraid of as a little boy.

He pinched something thin. It gave, then rebounded when he released. He lifted it halfway out the box, then scoffed and dropped it. It rustled in the chips.

Using his middle finger, he poked Y.’s note, and then all those damnable bullets.

“Really, boy?”

He bided a long moment before taking it out of the box. The interior was padded. The band was stiff, but looked resilient. He’d never actually seen one of these – didn’t know they actually made them. Maybe Y. had made it himself. It was that thought that convinced to wear the white hat into town.

Bathroom Monologue: More Important Than Art Itself

Art began as an imitation of Life. A little simplified, a little streamlined, altering things to appeal to Life more than, say, going out and living. Paintings gave the illusion of depth, but remained two-dimensional. Statues gave the illusion of life, but remained static. Television gave the illusion of objectivity, but managed to be more subjective than Life itself.

Life saw merit in Art. It also saw the David’s amazing abs and all the clever, clipped dialogue on sitcoms, and began to lose track of itself. If Art was an imitation, then it was a representation. If it was a representation, then maybe it was accurate, or even ideal.

So then Life started imitating Art, wearing its logos on t-shirts, quoting from books and movies, dressing up as protagonists and the sexier antagonists at Halloween.

Art was scared shitless. Now Life was catching up to its creativity and sexiness. How was it supposed to maintain attention if Life was just as interesting, or worse, if people thought it was better?

So Art got a boob-job and a make-up girl. It got special effects teams and computer animation to make things way cooler than life ever did. It saw how living were scared of dying, and so it rubbed itself in impossible fight scenes that made death seem not just implausible but downright unlikely for whoever Life liked. And soundtracks. My God, the soundtracks.

But Life started carrying around those soundtracks on iPods and turned masterpieces into wallpaper. It was grabbing whatever Art it felt like and lining its birdcages with it. It was actually doing this because it now defined itself by Art and wanted it around all the time, but Art thought this meant it was being devalued. For fear of being tossed away, Art got another boob-job and began market testing its music.

Bathroom Monologue: Pit Stop at La Guardia Airport, OR, No Foot-binding Jokes Allowed

Did you see that blonde Asian girl back there? Her walk worries me. She’s wearing heels far too high for her body. Sure her legs look great, but they also look ready to snap off at any moment. From her amiable expression, I doubt she realizes we can see her garters with every step. And her steps – it looks like she’s hiking through brittle snow. How she stumbles.… Her foot doesn’t rest when it touches the ground, but shifts or makes a small stumble. An inelegant microstumble. It forces her to lurch, her feet looking for proper purchase. When she stops her toes push together, forming a right angle with her feet. She keeps shifting, but doesn’t so much as frown. Can she enjoy this?

Bathroom Monologue: How John Screws Himself Over From Ever Getting Published in * NAME OF MAGAZINE WITHHELD BY REQUEST *

First we tear off the extraneous folds of the unraveling cover, because it’s fucking annoying to have it drape down to the floor every time I accidentally open this thing. Next we scorn the airbrushed anorexic actresses and models that lie across the page in fashion that should cost $39.95, but probably runs nearer to the operating budget of a small island nation. During the unfortunate task of actually opening this mammoth stack of advertisements we skip the first ten or twenty pages, knowing they’ll all be trying to sell us something rather than point us to an article, and sadly shake our heads when we realize “ten or twenty” wasn’t hyperbole, but underestimation. When we can’t find the index, we’ll just flip through and hope to spy a couple of white pages with columns of words. Skimming the pages is perilous for while it will allow you to avoid being affected by most of the vapid, over-art-designed bullshit that makes up the majority of this “magazine,” you may miss one of the rare pages that actually features the work of a writer, or even less often, the work of a journalist or author. Look here – an eight-page article on the next Star Wars videogame, which will apparently open up a new universe in “gaming.” A couple of pages in and this eight-page article is broken up by another ad featuring some repugnantly “beautiful” woman in mood lighting that we can’t stand to look at long enough to find out what fragrance she’s hocking. We wonder if even television, that wasteland of integrity, would break up a news story or a skit on Saturday Night Live to bring you a word from their sponsors. We wonder if this is a news magazine or an overindulgent catalog. Then, nearing the end of our primary function here in the bathroom, we wonder if glossy paper wipes well.

Bathroom Monologue: Inspired by Sonny Sharrock’s “Little Rock,” which I heard playing since I left my door open

"The rogue samurai's most notable feature was his hair. He had way too much damned hair. You couldn’t read his eyes through it. You couldn't even see his face, or his shoulders. It was teased to Hell, partially dreadlocked, and a general ugly mess that dwarfed his torso. Seemingly random patches were dyed, as though he’d fallen asleep in a pool of bleach. Most people fled in fear of his hair before they even realized that he was chasing them with a sword."

Bathroom Monologue: Labyrinthine

When you think about it, the labyrinth is one of the worst excesses of resources in human history. A giant, subterranean maze with walls so thick that the Minotaur couldn’t pierce them and so tall that he couldn’t climb them. Then Theseus killed him. I’m not casting aspersions on this entire nation of people who were too dumb to stab the man-bull in his sleep, but that makes the construction even dumber. I like to think that the labyrinth was put to use after that, rather than just being a tomb. If you’ve ever looked at the schematics of an apartment building and a hedge maze, you’d realize the maze is a ceiling and a few doors short of rent control. True, the labyrinth was underground, but that should have been in vogue for alternative lifestyles. If Jordache jeans can become fashionable, so can subterranean penthouses. Witches, lepers and hippy artists would have jumped at it. And several kilometers of fashionable real estate beats the Midas touch, especially when those touched turn to gold at the first of every month.

Bathroom Monologue: Gift Certificates, OR, Monologue at a GAP Bathroom

Stores love gift certificates. To you they’re goofy fun: $50 for $50? Maybe you get it on sale, and now it’s five bucks off. It’s free money! But it’s not free money to us, the stores. It’s not because you might lose it - then we got $45 for a tiny piece of plastic. Or maybe you’ll move to a place that doesn’t have our store. Or (check the fine print) maybe it’ll expire. Again, $45 for us. It’s free money that you’re giving freely to us. They make great gifts because half the time your friends and loved ones hate our store and won’t spend them. On the occasions when they (or you) spend that whopping $20 gift certificate, they’re guaranteed to be spending it on our goods, which we’re already selling at marked up prices. Even everyday low priced items are sold at a profit. Plus you never spend $20 even. If you buy an $80 shirt with your $50 certificate, you had to drop $30 out of pocket, and if you spend it at the same store, that store nets $80. If not, it splits it $30/$50 with the other store in the same franchise. We win.

Bathroom Monologue: Who Was I in a Present Life?

In 2007 I dropped 64 pounds, cut my 18-inch brown hair and shaved my mangy red beard to discover that, underneath the mess, I was strikingly bland. Still a little puffy and moon-faced, still with moles in unflattering places – still too ugly to ever be handsome, still not messed up enough to be intriguingly hideous. It turned out that, under years of fast food fat and a refusal to cut my hair, I was a default model. I recognized myself, but not as the person I used to be so many pounds ago. I recognized myself from BBC sitcoms.

I looked very much like a drove of pudgy, unappealing BBC sitcom extras. We never get a meaningful role. Often we don’t even speak. We’re lucky to be reoccurring characters in the backgrounds of office or sidewalk scenes. The more I catch myself in the mirror (and the BBC online), the more I realize what a successful and overlooked phenomenon my body type is.

Only one of us has tasted real success, as the guy who plays the “P.C.” on Mac commercials. Even he is a little too short and distinct-looking for our club, though, and we’re not noticeable enough people to be the butt of that many jokes. Bless that man. May he experience all the success that none of us have the look to achieve.

Bathroom Monologue: What Gets Onto These People?

At three years old she was playing in her mother's make-up. They gave her her own lipstick for her fourth birthday. She got a make up case and everything to go with it at six. She was tweezing her own eyebrows by 7 (mostly for show), and wearing nail polish and lip gloss to school every day by 8. At 11 she was depressed to need glasses, but thrilled to exchange them for contacts at 12 - she'd always wanted blue eyes. That same year she was devastated to need braces, becoming so depressed that her mom helped her dye her hair (blonde). She was dyeing it herself by 13. By 16 she went from shaving to waxing, and this newfound attention to her skin sent her on the pursuit of the perfect tan. By the end of high school she hit the tanning salon every week. It took a lot of cajoling, but she got breast implants as a graduation present (b-cups had been the bane of her existence). She picked up a few new tricks in college: hair extensions, crash dieting, and eventually, liposuction. When she was finally out on her own she got a collagen injection to give her the lips she'd always wanted, and perhaps to make her bastard ex- jealous. It didn't work, and she got depressed again. She got a nose job to make her feel like a new woman. It didn't work, and a few months of ice cream later she needed a tummy tuck along with the usual treatment. By that point artificial tans had damaged her skin so badly that she had to visit the spa twice a week, and abuse a host of oils and creams. After her car accident her knee was so badly damaged that the doctors built her a new one, out of titanium. Rehab went well, but her back problems worsened, and rather than have her artificial bust reduced, she went through therapy after therapy, and wound up with pins in her spine. Then in her ankles. Time got away from her in a haze of eyeliner and facelifts. It seemed no sooner had she bleached her teeth then she needed to replace a chipped one, and a short while later she needed dentures. And a prosthetic breast to replace the one cancer took. Every day of her last ten years she wore so much foundation and so many supportive undergarments that it took her three hours to get from bed to breakfast. Afterwards, the mortician was so lost that they had no other choice than a closed casket.

"The United States gave the world Ronald McDonald, Mickey Mouse and Napalm" –An artist whose name the BBC didn’t repeat during that report

"That's a little unfair. I like The Sorcerer's Apprentice as much as the next guy, but you could have at least bumped the fast-food clown for the polio vaccine. Putting things that way, we could say that Britain gave us Monty Python, Harry Potter and the concentration camp. Or that Germany gave us the Volkswagen Beetle, the MP3 and genocide. I know it's fashionable to define yourself by criticizing others, but the only redeeming thing about fashion is that it goes out of style, and anyone left wearing last year's design looks like an ass. I think France gave that to the world, along with ridiculously unhealthy food and worrying about your figure."

Bathroom Monologue: This Monologue in No Way Endorses the Idea that Celebrities and Other Assorted Beautiful People have Actual Personalities

Beauty isn't always skin deep. Sometimes it's only a layer of cosmetics deep. So Candy Delilah could have told you, if you recognized her. While Ms. Delilah was a famous pageant queen, she was also the product of hours in salons and make-up chairs. Whenever she went out without make-up she was never recognized, and the few people who did look at her whispered to each other, "Oh my gosh, that that sow is totally ripping off Candy Delilah's style." "She can't pull that off." "The nerve." She was okay with the whispers. Delilah the fashion icon was a character for her, and she enjoyed nothing more than breaking character. It kept the autograph hounds away. It kept the drunks from hitting on her. And when the odd man did offer to buy her a drink, it meant a little more. The actual dates she got were more rewarding, for her and for the guy, who unknowingly discovered that the bubbly idiot supermodel Candy Delilah was actually an interesting person, under her skin.

Fifth Straight Night of Shredded Wheat for Dinner Monologue

I've got a new diet idea. It's a little drastic, but this just isn't cutting it. I'm going to go buy a gun. Then I'm going to use my remaining money to eat extra cheese pizza and huge hamburgers for every meal until I run out of money. Then I'm going to have one more meal, and when the check comes, I'll shoot myself. I expect I'll gain weight the first few days, but by the end, I'll probably drop pounds rapidly. Embalming fluid isn't very fattening, you know.

Bathroom Monologue: "$200" -Pricetag on a white shirt at Nordstroms

We're talking state-of-the-art. The rest of the art cries itself to sleep and dreams of being this artistic. Each atom of the fabric is handcrafted by quality union labor, woven across molecules in our trademark pattern of authenticity for ultrafriction. We're talking subzero friction, baby. The smoothest shirt you can get outside of antimatter markets. Your hand doesn't just slide off it -- it slides through it. It's almost like it isn't there. Every elite expert of every continent that fashion's ever cared about has been consigned to collect and condense every brilliant color in creation. This beats prisms like the sun beats a candle. Most eyes can't even process this kind of brilliance, though I'm sure you can see it. Look at those details. You only get that from our authentic weave. Now is that cash or credit? We're offering bonus store points for every hundred dollars spent on gold cards, you know.

Bathroom Monologue: The Tinkerer's Tip #7 on How to Lie Your Way into the Upper Class

No one you want to impress shops at Wal-Mart, ma'am. In fact they hold anyone who shops there in disdain. Any store you can think of is unacceptable. If they ask about a piece of jewelry or a tablecloth or a faux-16th century canopy bed, say you bought it at "a little boutique on the Cape." It doesn't matter how far away from the ocean you are; in fact, the further away you are, the more impressive your imaginary summer home will be. If you're worried your lie hasn't compensated enough, think of the most impressive store you know of and say something like, "I'm sure there will be knock-offs at Nordstrom’s next season, if they aren't there already." Oh, and shred your receipts.