An Alternate Abstinence Argument

"Hey kids. You don’t know me because I’m not famous. I’m overweight, my fashion sense is dreadful and my beard is unkempt. I bring this all up because I fuck. Almost everyone I know fucks, and I don’t know many cool people. Fucking isn’t cool. It never has been and it never will be. It’s jamming an extra finger of meat inside a pink hole. Ignore premature ejaculation, rape, syphilis, chlamydia, HIV and the anxiety over whether your period is late for the next month – fucking is downright uncool because of who does it. Your mom fucks. She fucked to have you. Think about that the next time you’re swapping smut stories. Think about your mom moaning your dad’s name. Yeah. Fucking. Fun, but uncool."

Bathroom Monologue: The Balrog Looms

Joel and Elijah knew they were in trouble even before they left for the bathroom. New kids can sense trouble like that. There’s being an awkward new kid at an empty table, and then there’s being an awkward new kid at an empty table with your brother while all the boys at all the surrounding tables stared and glared at your kippah.

Elijah fiddled with his. At this school, they were probably only used to the Pope covering his head. The two boys couldn’t even eat with all those eyes on them.

“Can we go to the bathroom?” Elijah asked.

Joel looked disgusted. “Together?”

Elijah looked warily around the cafeteria. Some kids had gone back to their mac and cheese, but others still stared, including a giant of a boy at the jock table. He loomed like a golem, or like Tolkien’s Balrog, a giant monster floating behind an army of goblins.

“I don’t want to go anywhere around here alone.”

“Fine,” Joel relented. He didn’t want to be here either.

They got up together, putting their uneaten kosher meals back into carefully sectioned plastic containers Mom made them reuse.

The air was different in the hall. The lack of staring made it easier to breathe, and talk. They went straight for the bathrooms, flanking each other.

“Mizdayen baha--” Joel began, but Elijah stopped him.

“Speak English. We need to practice it better to fit in.”

Joel scoffed. “This is stupid. I told Mom that a Catholic school was--”

This time Elijah didn’t have to stop him. The cafeteria doors did. They were several yards behind and made no noise, but the boys could sense them opening. Joel looked back. Young jocks billowed out, looking around. One spied them and elbowed a comrade. Then they were headed to the bathroom too.

Elijah went straight for the bathroom. That had been the plan a minute ago, and in his panic he didn’t think to change it. Joel grabbed at his sleeve, looking back and seeing that the Catholic boys saw that they were clearly going in. Elijah went in anyway, and so Joel went after him, holding onto that sleeve.

They went for the last stall, and Joel actually followed Elijah inside.

“Shouldn’t we…?” Elijah tried to ask. When words failed, he pointed at the lock on the door. Joel inhaled quickly, then reached out.

The stall door swung open. Three boys stood in the opening, blocking the light from the window. In the moment, they seemed much bigger than Elijah. Joel didn’t know what to say.

“Hey, occupied!” Elijah cried out, trying to stand in front of his brother.

“What are you fags doing?” asked the middle of the three boys. He had dirty blonde hair, the same school uniform as his friends, and the same sickly smile.

“He your boyfriend?” taunted the one on the right. He reached in. For what, Joel had no idea. Elijah pushed the hand away from them, but that only invited more hands into the stall.

“Fuckers think you’re tough?” said the one on the right.

“I’ll show you tough,” said the middle boy, shoving Elijah so hard that he knocked into Joel and Joel fell onto the toilet. The boys laughed.

A huskier voice poked through their laughter.

"What they fuck are you doing with these newbies?"

The Balrog came around, standing directly behind the middle boy. He was a head taller than any of them and, this close, seemed equally fat and muscular to Joel.

The boy on the left laughed.

"They're Jews."

The Balrog looked down. He also wore their Catholic uniform, and to boot wore a rosary over the jacket. Then he looked back up at the bully with an expression that the rosary didn't matter right now.

"So?"

Middle boy sounded indignant. "So they fucking killed Jesus!"

The Balrog stuck his tongue in his cheek. Why licking the inside of his mouth was intimidating, Joel couldn’t say. He could have peed himself, though, when that boy looked at him.

"Were you guys alive when Jesus was born?"

Joel couldn’t answer. He couldn’t say anything right now.

So Elijah did. "No.”

The Balrog nodded. “Ever met Jesus?”

“No.”

"You kill anybody?” He paused, and so did everyone else in their stall party. Then he added, “Ever?"

Elijah shook his head sternly.

"No."

The Balrog looked down at the middle boy.

"Looks like they didn't kill Jesus. Why don't you go fuck off for a while?"

Joel moved his lips, but words were not in his service today. The three jock boys flowed like one stream of water, out of the stall, and then out of the bathroom.

With room in the stall, Elijah stepped away from his brother. He smoothed out his clothes, looking like he was going to address the giant.

"Thanks."

It seemed like words weren’t much in his service, either.

"Not a problem. It's a habit I picked up from God. Act scary as shit, for good motives." The Balrog held out a hand to shake Elijah’s. “I’m Noah.”

“I’m Elijah.”

He reached to shake Noah’s hand, but Noah withdrew it. Elijah froze.

Noah looked from Elijah to Joel, then around the stall.

“You wash that hand and then I’ll shake it.” He grinned, apparently thinking this was hilarious or cool or both. He jerked his head and took a step towards the bathroom door. “Come eat at my table. I’ll introduce you to some people.”

Bathroom Monologue: Rice Allergy

Rice hated that cat. They heard him swearing at it every time he went down stairs to feed it. He kicked gravel at it when it came near him on the driveway and insulted his sister’s choice of pets. They said he really loved it, deep down, somewhere. One time his sister thought she’d caught him petting the cat with a blanket wrapped around his hand, but he denied it later.

He had wicked allergies. Rice was cursed with asthma so severe he couldn’t run or live in a room that wasn’t vacuumed daily. A dozen things could trigger harsh attacks, but the worst was cat dander. The normal person had a cat dander allergy index of 70, at which point they would have almost no irritation if a cat fell asleep on them. Rice had a cat dander allergy index of 1620. His index sounded like a year in modern history. If he lingered even for sixty seconds after giving the cat its food he became so violently sick and remained congested for a week.

He said that didn’t figure into the feud. It only meant the thing was forced to live in the basement, which was fine with him if it had to live at all. No, he simply loathed that loaf. Hated that it didn’t contribute to the household finances and was always meowing for attention. It’s food cost more than his did. If no one else was home and it cried for food, he’d whip open the door and kick at it. Then he’d go get its supper.

Cat dander was just one allergy, though. And allergies were just one of his problems. He was made from frail stuff. In his twenties the doctors found cysts in his lungs. They grew no matter what chemicals he was bombarded with.

Until that morning, he didn’t know that doctors actually told you that you had a month left to live. He’d thought TV made that up.

His sister rushed home when she got his message. She found his shoes by the door. Strangely, she found his socks a few feet later.

He wasn’t in his room, nor in the kitchen. Going downstairs, she saw his jacket cast over a chair, along with some bags from the pharmacy. A trail of Benadryl bottles lay leading to the basement door. There was another tossed on the steps leading down to the basement. Like all the others, it was empty.

The light was on. She called his name, but he didn’t answer. The cat meowed instead. It didn’t come to her like it normally did.

Rice lay on the basement floor, limbs splayed akimbo. His feet were bare and his eyes were open, but didn’t move in response to her presence. The cat lay on his chest, licking his chin.

Bathroom Monologue: Ultimatum in the South

We’re leaving at 3:00 AM. That’s the earliest time when multiple flights start leaving, and it has to be multiple flights. Then they won’t know what city you’re departing for. It could be Cuba, Peru, Haiti or Costa Rica for all they know. We’re taking one with a ten-minute stopover in Brazil, except we’re not getting onto that connecting flight. We’re going to walk into the first bathroom we find in Sao Paulo-Gaurulhos International and change costumes – clothes, shoes, ditch the fake beards and pull a second, smaller set of luggage out of these big ones. We’ll stuff the old things in the trash, then spend twenty minutes in the back of a café, until flights north start up. As soon as we hit Texas, we take a taxi into a city and we disappear. I’ve got our tickets for 3:00 AM here, and the fake passports. There will be no I.D. or money trail to follow, and once we hit the ground they won’t know where to look. The U.S. is developed, but Middle America is an abyss. It’s either this, my man, or Interpol gets you at 5:00. You know what they did to the others. What do you say?

Bathroom Monologue: The Morning Scrubber

Hey Cheryl, this is Marcus. Calling at about... oh, 6:49. I know that's past Bank of America’s business hours but I just figured I'd leave a message. You set up a PayPal account for me a while ago. I just checked on it on bankofamerica.com at about, oh, 6:48. I used to have fifty-nine dollars and forty-one cents in there, which I've earned off fiction sales and all the times my grandma hits the PayPal donate button under the guise of an adoring teen fan. God love her. Well, it seems I don't have fifty-nine dollars and forty-one cents anymore on account of something called a "Monthly Maintenance Fee" that was fourteen dollars. Now I don't know what kind of maintenance program Bank of America runs, but I'm assuming there's a janitor who comes in every morning and cleans the money by hand. At the percentage of my money he costs, I'm assuming he keeps the money in pennies and cleanses them thoroughly. I'm envisioning a guy with a little toothbrush and special cleanser scrubbing any potential grime out of the nooks of all the zeroes on all my pennies. Sometimes I get change that was minted years ago but looks shiny and new – I’m assuming that’s his work. If you could, let him know I appreciate it when he comes in tomorrow. Also, if you could, please lay him off. I know it's a bad economy and jobs are scarce, but I'm willing to let you keep my money in dollar bills instead of so many high-maintenance pennies. He’ll understand since he’s apparently devoted his life to pennies and won’t want to see them circulated, even if they are circulated to purchase penny-cleanser. Also, unless he’s already used my fourteen dollars to buy new cleanser, please make him give it back. Thanks!

Bathroom Monologue: Zine Works

Dale's cell vibrated on the desk, scampering over the surface like the plastic was coming to life in little bursts. He set his teeth and vengefully finished the paragraph, taking not just enough time to get back on track, but more than enough to get the wording to his standard. Finally he hit the period button with a little too much force, and picked up the phone.

"Hello?" he said, sounding unnecessarily annoyed.

"Dale!" The voice on the phone screeched. "Dale! I'm trapped in a magazine!"

"Fred?"

"In a magazine! No idea how!"

"It's okay, Fred. Calm down." He rubbed the bridge of his nose. This should not have been logically acceptable to him, but they both did a lot of drugs. "Look around yourself. What magazine are you in?"

"There are a lot of words, and a huge picture."

"What's the picture of?"

"I think it's a woman. Or an armoire. It's abstract."

"That could be any magazine. What about the words? What are they writing about?"

"Mostly ads. I think part of it's a story. Really short."

"Fiction is dying in print."

"I'm trapped in a magazine! Help!"

"Is there anything else in there?"

"Uh. A cartoon?"

"A cartoon?"

"Black and white. It's a lion on a cell phone."

"Is the caption ironic?"

"No duh it is!"

"Is it ironic but not funny at all?"

"How'd you know?"

"I just resubscribed to The New Yorker. I think you're on my coffee table. I'll get you in a minute."

Dale switched his cell off and looked at the monitor. He read the paragraph to himself a couple of times. Fred could wait – he knew better than to read Dale’s stuff without asking.

Bathroom Monologue: Petri Dish Sister

I'm sorry, she's never heard of your home country. My sister has all the culture of a Petri dish. That is to say, she's entirely made up of culture, but doesn't know what it is and has no idea there are others outside her circle of plastic. She's also like a Petri dish in that her culture's rather disgusting and probably bad for you: top seventeen things you didn’t know your lover wanted; reality television about real wives and desert islands. But she's got a heart of gold. You won't find one of those in a Petri dish. She means well. When she says what you just ordered is gross, she’s not insulting five hundred years of your country’s culinary culture. She’s just worried for your health.

Bathroom Monologue: Analysis of the Hagakure

I find no greater meditation on what kills a man than in the Hagakure, an Asian instruction manual to the samurai. It is for the disciplined and the sociopathic alone, yet provides insight into everyone’s mortality in our social world. Consider:

“Meditation on inevitable death should be performed daily. Every day when one’s body and mind are at peace, one should meditate upon being ripped apart by arrows, rifles, spears and swords,”

While medicine has improved since the Hagakure was first written, it is important to note that none of these are certain killers. People survive getting pegged in archery range accidents every day. E.R.’s routinely save gunshot victims. And if a gun isn’t a certain killer, then neither is the sword it rendered obsolete.

The Hagakure continues:

“being carried away by surging waves,”

Undertoes are more dangerous than swords, but people still survive being dragged out to sea.

“being thrown into the midst of a great fire,”

In 2000, a man in Pennsylvania charged into a burning house after hearing the cries of children. He rescued them from the second floor, but half his body was covered in second degrees burns from sheltering them from the flames. He died in 2007 of drug overdose. Fire, even a great one, is not a certain killer.

“being struck by lightning,”

The heavenly killer, yet there are people who survive lightning strikes. The main danger is the current travelling left and reaching your heart. In 2009 a young British couple were struck by lightning while holding hands. Both survived.

“being shaken to death by a great earthquake,”

San Francisco alone has shown us earthquakes are not necessarily fatal.

“falling from thousand-foot cliffs,”

In fact, people have survived falling out of airplanes. Any height is dangerous, but not necessarily lethal. Like lightning, it has to do with how the impact travels through the body.

“dying of disease”

At one time the flu or a fever seemed certain death. Today we are fighting back HIV and cancer.

“or committing seppuku at the death of one’s master.”

Which brings us to that last. Suicide means to kill oneself. To do anything other than kill yourself is not suicide; just a suicide attempt. So seppuku is the only thing on this list that will certainly kill a man. He may survive bullets, flashfoods and lightning, but he cannot survive himself.

Bathroom Monologue: His Name is Victor

Listen to the audio version or download the MP3 of "His Name is Victor" here.


No one suspected anything of Victor. That was part of the witch’s curse: he couldn’t even say what he was. His powers were gone and he was forced to take a lowly position. He came every day precisely at the minute of his shift, took off his cloak and put on the blue smock and nametag. How it mocked him with its exclamation points.

“HELLO! MY NAME IS VICTOR!”

To this store he was just another checkout counter jerk. Just another man sweeping up refuse and waiting for “break time.”

“Break time.” Once break time had meant breaking the laws of nature! It had meant subverting minds and conjuring demons from beyond. It had meant breaking time itself, in his bare and unholy hands.

Now "break time" meant eating store-brand granola and watching funny Youtube videos on the manager’s computer. Some were admittedly clever, even to his venerable wit. When his sorcery returned and he unleashed the hounds of inferno upon the earth, he would make certain those content providers were spared.

He would not bend. He wore the cloak and ankh, no matter how unfashionable his neighbors thought it was. That was the embarrassment. But that witch would pay, for the Pharmacy section had an amazing array of chemicals. Belladonna in stomach medicine, wolfsbane in pain relievers – he’d never admit it, but there was a thrill to stirring Tylenol into his cauldron's brew. It was so wrong. And soon that woman who had wronged him would be brought to justice, because of his unending vengeance, and because of every day low prices.

Bathroom Monologue: New Goddess in Town

More than forty people showed up for the house warming party. So much coffee was consumed that Ted had to run back over to his place to pick some more. When Cybil, their new neighbor, started collecting cups, he got up to take an armload as well. He was never comfortable in big roundtable discussions and they were gabbing about the Emmies anyway.

Cybil carried the tray of cups with a veritable bounce in her step. She had more energy than any middle-aged lady Ted had ever met.

“I’m so excited to start on Monday,” she chirped as they entered the kitchen. “I worked in claims ages ago. It’s second nature to me.”

“Where did you do that?”

“Oh, Greece. Didn’t your wife tell you? I spent almost my whole life over there.” She set down the tray and beamed. It took up her whole face, and despite her age, only the faintest crows feet appeared around her eyes, like she’d never made an expression before today. “Please thank her so much for helping throw this party. I wanted to start off right in this town.”

He waved her off. “It’s no bother, really.”

She shook her head until he looked her in the eye. “Really, it is. I’ve moved so many times and people always get the wrong impression about me. I’m a goddess, you see, and though I’ve done nothing to earn it, my name has such a bad reputation that I had to have it changed. ‘Cybil’ is a family joke.”

Ted leaned against the sink, eyeing her. She seemed nice and all, but a goddess? Maybe she was a New Ager.

“A goddess? Really?”

She shrugged with a little smile, then turned into an owl. She flew up to the counter and pecked at some peach cobbler.

Ted wasn’t sure, but that did seem like a thing in the realm of gods to do.

“Okay then,” he said, putting his plate down. “That shouldn’t be a problem. There’s the occasional bigot, but this is a city of many religions. I live next to a Baptist church, and for goodness sake, I was raised Scientologist.”

She turned back into a woman, in the same blouse and skirt. The plate of peach cobbler was now in one hand instead of on the counter.

“You’re a good man, Ted Jefferson. I’m a great judge of people, so that should mean a lot to you.”

Ted nodded plaintively and arranged the cups next to the sink.

“Thanks. But you didn’t mention your name. What’s a name so bad that a goddess would abandon it? Not that I have anything against Cybil.”

“You wouldn’t,” she said around half a mouthful of cobbler. She blushed, then swallowed it and finished. “You have an Aunt Cybil.”

“You are good,” he said. He was uncertain if he did it out of intimidation or kindness, but he began rinsing coffee cups.

She beamed again, those eerily faint crows feet reappearing. “It’s a thing. But even if I didn’t know, I’d bet you didn’t have an Aunt Nemesis.”

Bathroom Monologue: Lesser White Shark

Known in some circles as the “okay white shark” or the “pretty good and slightly beige shark,” the Lesser White Shark is a bitter creature. Evolution gave the Great White a cast-iron digestive system and jaws so powerful that people name novels after them. In contrast, the Lesser White Shark is the only beast in the sea that requires a retainer for its painful overbite. Because evolution is kind of jerk, it did not give these sharks the intelligence to build retainers. Only incredibly compassionate human environmentalists dare make retainers for the sharks, and these environmentalists are dwindling in number since the Lesser White Sharks immediately use their corrected chewing to eat their human allies. These environmentalists are not extinct solely because the Lesser White Shark is simply that piss-poor a predator. After eating their fill of environmentalists, this breed tends to congregate near the surface, some few hundred yards away from a Great White, and complain. It is also the only shark that has evolved the desire to complain, though again, since evolution is kind of a jerk, it has not evolved a method of expressing this. The sharks will circle each other, presumably snarking bout the Great White’s ego and love life, until one of them gets hungry or their moms call.

Bathroom Monologue: Wereman

“Wereman, sir. I am a wereman. For most of my days and nights I am a North American grey wolf with a nice coat and a decently attractive mate, though I suspect the alpha male is going to fight me for her soon.

“It is only during the full moon that I shed fur and the four-legged lifestyle, and am stricken with this form. Balancing on two legs is only the start of the problem. Suddenly being snaggletoothed matters to me. I’ve got to find not only clothes, but fashionable ones. I’m self-conscious about how I speak, about what strangers think of me and who will win the upcoming elections. It’s no wonder that I have a drinking problem every full moon. I can’t wait to morph back and lose this blasted reasoning lobe you humans carry around and spend so much time on.

“You’ve got all the instincts but none of the fun. The females are just as bad. Human females do not appreciate you sniffing their tails, at least not until you've done foreplay, and I can't wrap my mind around that ritual in just one night a month.

“Being a werewolf sounds dreadful. To only escape this purgatory of self-criticism and human society for the four-legged life during full moons would drive a man mad – not from the people he mauled, but from desperately wanting not to change back with dawn.”

Bathroom Monologue: Ultrasound Reasoning

I don’t know what’s wrong with my kidneys. Woke up in the middle of the night once in November with excruciating pain that left me vomiting and spasming on the bathroom floor. The next day I was fine.

Then on Christmas night it came back, out of nowhere, like Santa had left it for a present. Vomited so badly it somehow got in the tub and on the wall five feet behind me. The next day? My insides were stable again.

It came back again for two nights in January, then three in February, if you count the leap year day. In March, as though to celebrate my birthday, it hit ten consecutive nights. It had no relationship to what I ate and it was nothing like kidney stones or renal diseases the doctor knew about. He sent me down to imaging for a picture of my insides. Not an x-ray, but an ultrasound.

I should have known.

Sure, I’m a man, but I’ve always hated children. They’re insidious nine-month infections. My belly didn’t swelled up like a pregnancy, but there’s only one thing you use an ultrasound for. All the inflammation, all the pressure on my belly – the little bastard must be kicking. Maybe Brazilian barbecue was a bad idea. I eat really fast sometimes. Maybe I ate a whole life form and it’s growing in there. Maybe it’s got a cottage in the shade of my liver. Either that, or alien abductions. They’re always trying to do weird things to humans. All I know is that when the ultrasound comes back, if this is a kid, I’m hitting the gym. I’ll be ready when the bastard pops out. He’ll be in for the fight of his life on his birthday.

Bathroom Monologue: Spider Ruins Man

He was bitten by a radioactive spider. Unfortunately, due to the radiation, the spider grew to gigantic proportions. The bite took off his entire upper torso. His poor aunt and uncle had to bury just his legs and belt buckle, once they had a mortician and exterminator go over his remains. You know, to make him classy and check for radioactive egg sacs. Just terrible. No idea why the story is so misrepresented in the press.

Bathroom Monologue: Natural Man

“A question is only a question for so long as it remains unanswered to the satisfaction of the thinker. Then it becomes a beginner, or often, the first line of an annoying lecture. This is the nature of man, for whenever he figures something out to his satisfaction he will assume it is universally correct and go about annoying, berating and eventually killing his fellow man to illustrate his correctness. The nature of man can only be subverted by one power: the nature of woman. This can subvert with amazing efficiency, draining bank accounts and taking up unreasonable amounts of spare time. You will not kill anybody over your certainties tonight if she expects you home by 3:00. The nature of woman has kept the nature of man on its leash, and that is why homosexuality scares so many people.”

Bathroom Monologue: “If it didn’t happen, it can’t happen.” –Some dude on Lost, on time travel

Listen to the audio version of "If it didn't happen, it can't happen," or download the MP3 here.



They knew how to alter the flow of energy and even speed particles faster than light. A mass inside the tube would travel so quickly that it would appear outside before it even reached the tube’s end. The math guys went nuts over it. Soon the president declared we’d have a man in the past in the next ten years.

But nobody showed up in the past, as far as the people of the present could tell. A monkey was sent back but never found. Figuring a monkey appearing somewhere wouldn’t make enough historical impact that they’d know about it today, the association sent a lone man back next. Then they waited ten minutes and checked the history books and Google, but there was no trace of a time traveling man.

He sure wasn’t here – the science guys checked for his particles, and not one bit of his matter existed in our time anymore. Hopefully it existed in the past, though the math guys kept their eyes on the future in case our brave time-traveler popped in there. Until that indeterminate future came, they prepared their apologies to his wife and figured out who else they could blame. And until that time, they had theories on when and where their chrononaut was.

The first theory was that he’d simply traveled too far back in time and been eaten by a pterodactyl. The math guys questioned this given that their battery power was, theoretically, barely capable of propelling a mass a few hours. A weekend at the best (and most Heisenbergian).

The second theory pointed out that the earth wasn’t the center of the universe. Very angry scientists pointed out that they knew that, and remained very angry until a high school SciFi nerd continued explaining that as the earth was moving around the sun, if someone were to travel to the same spot twelve hours ago, he would find himself floating in the middle of space, not in Florida.

Telescopes were alerted to look for the floating frozen remains of the brave chrononaut. Observatories did more business for a couple weeks. No remains were spied.

A third theory soon emerged and hung over the heads of celebrities hoping to purchase time travel vacations. This one was called “The H.G. Wells Principle.” This one was also posed by a guy far too young to be anything but annoying to tenured professors. He posited that for the present to exist at all, the past could not be disturbed from how it transpired. Obviously the world that created the time machine could not exist if you went back and killed all of the math guys’ parents or prevented pivotal events like a World War I. But not only couldn’t you prevent Archduke Ferdinand from being shot - you couldn’t prevent the wheels on his car from turning. It wasn’t just that you couldn’t do something that prevented you from going back there – it was that you couldn’t change anything about it because it had already happened exactly that way. If it didn’t happen, then it couldn’t happen, which meant a time traveler couldn’t bend a blade of grass or disturb a particle of dirt. He couldn’t dispel the air around his body when he materialized, nor breathe it in, nor fall to the ground and disturb dirt particles as he suffocated. His body could not exist in past space. On the Wells Principle you couldn’t alter the past, and by being in the past at all you would alter it in some infinitesimal way – which meant if you traveled to the past, you’d have to cease to be.

A large sum of money has been offered to anyone who can mathematically disprove the third theory. Much of that money comes from the chrononaut’s wife.

Pai Guan visits Stories That Lift

"Pai Guan Saw Little" is up at Stories That Lift today. The tale is an updated version of one of the older Bathroom Monologues, following a blind boy who wants to travel the world. You can read it here.

Bathroom Monologue: The Trolley Fallacy

There’s a popular philosophical dilemma about trolleys. It’s popular, and not only amongst trolley drivers, who get so little publicity to them that I assume they’re thrilled for the attention. My apologies to those trolley matrons, but the dilemma is actually bunk.

It begins on trolley tracks. You’re standing there, waiting for the trolley. It comes screaming down the tracks. The people on board are waving frantically and hopping off. The driver is fighting with the controls, but the thing is sparking and he clearly can’t regain control.

A ways down the tracks are two construction workers. They have jackhammers and noise-blocking earmuffs on. They are at work and don’t see the trolley. There is no way you can get to warn them before the trolley runs them off. At this speed, it’s certain they’ll be killed or paralyzed.

You’re on the platform. The only other person around is a vastly obese man. If you push him onto the tracks, the trolley will slow and stop before it hits the two men. If you do that, though, he’s almost certain to be killed or paralyzed.

This is the dilemma. Do you shove him onto the tracks, murdering one man to save two? Or do you stand still and let the two men die without directly killing someone yourself? Is the direct murder of one man worse than allowing two to die in eyeshot? Is inactivity worse than activity here?

But the dilemma is bunk, at least one it comes to me. You see: I’m obese.

I can jump on the tracks, killing or crippling myself, and sparing three lives all at once. In a rare twist of fate, being fat actually lends me ethical weight. I’m unsurprised that philosophers have ignored my rotund brethren in this fallacy of a dilemma. The overweight are so often pushed… aside.

Bathroom Monologue: One Day in Chatham, Kent

They reappeared one day on the street outside No. 2 Ordnance Terrace in Chatham, Kent. They reappeared at just the right moment that the six-year-old Charlie Dickens was playing with a doll by the road.

Jules stepped out from the time machine and grinned.

“Hey there, Charlie.” He waved, and when the boy shied back, he waved again. “Don’t worry. I’m a big fan of yours. You could say I’ve got some great expectations for you.”

They boy said little, watching him. He didn’t seem to mind.

“Is that your home?” he asked, pointing to No. 2.

“Yes, sir.”

“So austere. That sure is a bleak house.”

“Jules, come on!” his partner called from the time machine. “You’re wasting time.”

“Who’s that?” asked the boy.

“Him?” Jules grinned. “Oh, you could call him our mutual friend.”

“Jules, seriously! We are not wasting time fuel so you can drop puns.”

Jules straightened and looked at the once and future literary magnate. “Alright, Charlie. You play nice now. Maybe I’ll come back some December and we’ll sing a Christmas carol.”

“Jules, get the fuck back in the time machine!”

Jules climbed back in laughing to himself. His partner pulled a lever and the carriage disappeared - like David Copperfield.

Bathroom Monologue: Knock on Wood

Knocking on wood is nice, but the savvy individual knocks more than once. One tap ought to provide a certain unit of luck, often demarcated by the politically incorrect term “rabbit’s toe.” But you need an entire rabbit’s foot of luck to get anything done. Normal people knock twice to assure the pine that they have knocked and not merely bumped into it with their hand, yet this equates only two rabbit’s toes – not a full foot by lupine standards. Savvy individuals will knock three or four times, since no one really knows how many toes the little fuzzy bastards have. One civilization developed a machine to knock wood for them, assuming perpetual luck units would be gathered. Unfortunately this is a lot like thinking your car is exercising for you, and the wood-knocking devices wound up the lucky ones. All life on the planet went extinct, and now the battery-powered tappers dominate the planet. One would have expected them to die out when the batteries ran dry, but somehow they’re all still going.

Islamic Gorgon

She fussed with the shawl, but one or two snakes poked out regardless of what she did. They got so uncomfortable under there.

“But it’s better than the alternative,” she told the little dryad boy sitting next to her. “I’m not a very religious woman, but the head covering attracted me. Far fewer cases of petrifaction this way.”

“Oh,” said the little dryad boy. “But aren’t they mean to girls?”

“Stereotypes are dangerous at your age.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay. Honestly, I’ve had more trouble with monster hunters than fundamentalists. In both cases, though, my stoning beats theirs.”

The boy couldn’t tell because of the shawl, but he thought she winked. Then the train started.

Notice: John Away For Surgery, Donation Drive Begins

Dear Readers,

This will be the only post on my health. I am not going to pester my readers. I will respond to private e-mails when possible, though shortly I will be in the hospital, and I expect to be out of commission for a while following surgery.

On November 20th I am scheduled for necessary surgery to remove my gallbladder due to gallstones. The stones worsened all year, leading to frequent attacks that lasted twelve hours and included excruciating pain in my back, abdomen and spine. Often the attack only “ended” when I passed out. Longtime readers know that I struggle with a neuromuscular syndrome. These gallbladder attacks exacerbate that syndrome, such that I am bedridden for as long as a week after one. You can imagine how agonizing they got when these attacks happened every two days.

While I do not have an exact figure, estimates for the surgery run as high as $10,000. I’m paying with my life savings, but $10,000 is simply out of my means. Today there is a Pledgie donation button in the upper right hand corner of the site. If you want to help, this is how you can do it. Pledgie is a secure service that accepts PayPal and credit cards. The donation goal is set at $5,000, the amount I lack. Any and all donations will help with the surgery. I've worked with the hospital to negotiate a break and have been offered a discount, potentially as high as 25%, but only if I pay in full and within a month of the surgery.

Some will naturally ask why I am uninsured. Remember the neuromuscular syndrome I mentioned? I’ve had it since 1993. This has caused two related problems: I can’t work regularly because of it, and it so gravely affects my health that the only insurance policies available to me are both out of my means and would cover almost nothing I need done. Useful health insurance simply became unattainable. The result has been almost a decade of not being able to see a doctor more than once a year no matter what was wrong. There’s more to that story, but this post is not about sympathy or a history of health problems.

I do not expect my readers to pick up even a tenth of this bill. It’s my bill for my problem. But as I said before: if you want to help, this is how. Feel free to link to this post and/or use the Pledgie button wherever you like.

I will take the button down in a few weeks. It is not a permanent part of this site.

I will respond to any comments or e-mails as soon as I can. Naturally I will be out commission around the time of the surgery.

The Bathroom Monologues will continue. One went up at 9:00 AM this morning. I have queued sixty stories into the system so that even if I’m bedridden for an exorbitant amount of time, something will still go up every day well into January. I’m trying very hard to suppress a joke about dying on the operating table and still posting monologues into the New Year right now.

Thank you for reading.

Cheers,
John Wiswell


EDIT: This post was originally ran in 2009. The year is now 2019, a decade later, and Pledgie has folded as a platform. As a sign of gratitude to its founders, I've included a link to their explanation of what happened here.

Bathroom Monologue: On Lex Luthor

"Joker's gay for Batman? Why? Just because he keeps chasing him? That’s proof of nothing. You want gay? Lex Luthor.

"This guy is only attracted to women related to Superman, be it his reporter girlfriend or the blonde wearing his logo and a skirt. Apparently Lex is smart enough to cure cancer in a weekend, but instead he spends all his life and cash stalking an alien with underwear outside his pants. Maybe that was a turn-on for him.

"Think about when Superman died. He was dead for like a month. A month. Lex stole the alien's DNA, combined it with his own, and made an illegitimate super-baby. Half him, half Supes. Some kind of Super...man. Anyway, Conner Kent: Wikipedia that crap. Lex filled the hole in his heart with their unnatural love child.

"Through the decades this guy went from a scientist to a millionaire to a billionaire to the President of the United States, pulling his hair out, begging Supes, 'Look down here! Look at me! I have a magic ring that gives me powers like yours, so now we can be together!'

"The Joker is a nutbar in a city of nutbars. Lex Luthor? Now there's your designated hitter. He’s probably had a crush on Kal-El since they were kids in Smallville."

Bathroom Monologue: "Is football any better than dogfighting?" -Malcolm Gladwell from Oct. 19 New Yorker

a) The goal of a dogfight is for one dog to hurt the other. The goal of a U.S. football game is for a human to carry the ball over there. A dog might possibly carry the ball over there, but one has yet to make an NFL starting line.

b) Related to a), American Football is played by human beings, who possess a degree of intelligence and sentience such that they can consciously consent to play.

c) Also related to a), more people die installing toasters than die in the NFL and U.S. collegiate leagues. The same cannot be said of the toaster-people-to-dogfighting-dogs ratio.

d) The NFL and U.S. collegiate leagues are stringently governed for the safety of their players and every game has medical staff on hand.

e) If a player appears injured, the game is not stopped by a gunshot so that the player’s owner can drag him to his car and euthanize him. Rather the game pauses, and if the player is indeed injured, he is helped off the field and examined by medical professionals.

f) The dogs in a dogfight do not wear several pounds of state-of-the-art protective gear including helmets that could stop a machete.

g) In American Football, a player that purposefully injures another can be penalized or thrown out of the game. In a curious relation to e), this player is also not dragged to his owner’s car and euthanized.

h) The loser of the first football game of the season still has to play at least fifteen more.

Bathroom Monologue: Fuel for Greatness, OR, "How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled His Greatness" -Joshua Shenk in "Lincoln's Melancholy"

Listen to the audio version or download the MP3 of this week's Bathroom Monologue here.

The gnome was puzzled as soon as he departed the esophagus. His fellow gnomes were shoveling what looked like solid sadness into great ovens that burned around the president's stomach.

A slightly taller than average gnome approached him with a clipboard.

"You one of the new men?"

"Sir, yes, sir." The new gnome straightened his posture. "Reporting for duty in service of my country, sir."

"Good, good," said the superior gnome. "Fetch a shovel and get to burning that depression."

"Sir, is it constitutional to damage the emotions of the commander in chief, sir?"

The superior gnome frowned over his clipboard.

"That's why we're here, private."

"Sir, I read that depression was the cause of his greatness, sir."

"No, no. The fuel." The superior gnome came closer. "It's the fuel of his greatness. And what do you do with fuel?"

The new gnome kept his eyes forward.

"Sir, store it in something safe, sir?"

"You're a cute one. What do you do with gasoline? Burn it. What do you do with coal? Burn it."

"Sir, so what you're saying is..."

"What I'm saying is that if we want this president to get anything done we've got to find all his depression and set it on fire. Now come on. He's got to emancipate the slaves and win the biggest war this country's ever seen! It's going to take a lot of depression."

"And cause it, I'd assume.” And then he remembered to add, “Sir!"

The superior gnome pointed to the nearest oven, which billowed with a smoky melancholy.

"That is not our problem! Now fetch a shovel or start cleaning the stoves. The grease that builds up in there is figuratively and literally bad for morale."

Bathroom Monologue: The Drop Off Signal

Theodore sat near the elevator and bathroom on the third floor for fifteen minutes. For all fifteen he pretended to read from red composition book. “William Tell” was the name on the cover.

Sixteen minutes in, an old man in a brown blazer exited the elevator. He paused for a moment, looking at Theodore’s book, then came over.

“Is this seat taken?” Brown Blazer asked, tapping the seat to William’s right. Every seat in the row was empty.

“Slow day,” replied TheoWilliam.

Brown Blazer sat down next to him.

“That is a nice book. Do they come in blue?”

“The pens do.”

“Okay,” said Brown Blazer. He sat there for two more minutes, looking at his watch. The band was brown.

After the two minutes, he rose, tapped his left hip pocket, and went to the bathroom. A minute later he emerged, tapped his left pocket again, and departed for the elevator.

Theodore pursed his lips. He was tempted to go check the bathroom, but H.Q. had said the contact would wear a tan a blazer. Better to be safe and maintain his cover.

Bathroom Monologue: Punctuation Remarks

"!"

"..."

"?"

" :( "

"...?"

" :| "

"~!"

" :| "

" o.0 "

" :| "

"..."

" :) "

"I knew that would cheer you up."

Bathroom Monologue: Alternative Arthurian Lore Story Ideas

-Couples counseling for Arthur and Guinevere (Morgana as therapist?).

-Buddy comedy with Sir Dagonet and Sir Pelleas, as the latter tries to prove he really is married to the chick in the lake.

-Merlin pulls the sword from the stone by accident, and tries to glue it back in the same night as a dinner party.

-Random knight (Galahad? Gawain?) enters beheading contest against an immortal.

-Lancelot carves Jesus's name into a cup from the mess hall so his buddy won't invade the Middle East.

-Anna, Arthur’s childhood friend who we swear is totally not a Mary Sue, puts on young Arthur’s helmet and subs for him when the once and future king gets stage fright following pulling the sword from the anvil. She’s headstrong and so much smarter than those dumb old knights.

-The Black Knight sucker punches Arthur and claims the throne; follow his Clint Eastwood-like grizzled and angry reign.

-The Black Knight sucker punches Arthur and claims the throne; follow his liberal B.S. fantasy reign where he’s so much more progressive than Feudalists (Oscar guaranteed with this role!).

-Janitors of the Round Table, a trashy insider tell-all book from the perspective of people who cooked and cleaned in Camelot

Bathroom Monologue: You didn’t have to elope.

You didn’t have to elope. Okay, your mother never would have given her blessing to you marrying a… one of them. But I would have. You’re my boy. You would have made the decision no matter what I said – that’s obvious because you ran off and got married without asking me! And if you had to do it that weekend, fine. But if you called, I would have come. I would have been on the first plane to be there. I would have gone to your Bachelor Party. I would have paid for dinner after the reception. I will spend the rest of my life wishing I could have been there for this. And I’m not angry at you. You’re a married man now, and you’re going to have a lot more problems than some over the hill guy from the middle class being mad at you. I’m telling you this because I want you to call me. When you buy a house. When she gets pregnant. When my first grandchild is born. I don’t know what I ever did to make you think you couldn’t call me or shouldn’t tell me, but please: call. I will be on that first flight to see my grandson take his first steps or graduate third grade. Just call.

Bathroom Monologue: Livetweeting the Second Coming

For the next hour I will be LiveTweeting from the second coming of Christ. #tweetus

He brought doughnuts! #tweetus

Comes out to Queen. “It’s A Miracle.” Naturally. #tweetus

Be good to each other. Help the homeless. Usual stuff. #tweetus

Has a special guest? #tweetus

I think it's Gandhi. Can He bring back a Hindu? #tweetus

Police are here. Jesus is talking to them. #tweetus

We didn't have a permit for public assembly? Oh come on. #tweetus

How can He get a permit when He was dead until 4:00 PM? #tweetus

He asks everybody to leave peacefully. "Leave unto Caesar..." Awesome sense of humor. #tweetus

Says he'll see us all next year. Some of us sooner. He winked at me. That was disconcerting. #tweetus

Everyone seems pretty happy. Not what He used to be, but you knew what you'd get. #tweetus

By LiveTweeting, are you admitting all your other tweets are dead inside? #tweetus