#108: Scratch and Stiff

HUMOR

I speed-walked to the coffee shop to meet Samah to write. I wasn’t late. I just have an ingrained fight-or-flight response that makes every activity I experience feel like an emergency. Plus my butt was really itchy, so I was scampering to find a discreet spot to get up in there.

(Note to the editor: We need more casual synonyms for scratch. I mean, gouge? Lacerate? I’m just trying to scratch a little itch. Rougher than a tickle but not a scrape or score or gash! Somebody get on this. Thanks.)

Obviously I didn’t want to scratch ass bare-fingered in a culinary establishment. If not a health code violation, it’s at least decorum deviance. So I made my way to the bathroom line.

Promptly after positioning myself in third for the throne, a man danced up behind me. He asked in anguish, “Is this the line for the bathroom?”

I nodded. He crossed his legs, keeping his abdomen stiff as he shimmied in crisis. This guy clearly had to pee. Bad.

But how do you say to someone, “You ‘bout to piss yourself, mate?” I added a British accent there to soften it, so if you didn’t read it like that the first time, please go back to the top of this paragraph and begin again, thanks.

The guy started to pace in his khakis. If he had an accident, it was going to be a public event, even with the help of the hand dryers.

I didn’t want to embarrass him by being like, “Wooooow, somebody really needs to excrete some urine in an immediate way. Embarrassing!”

But what could I do? The karma of going ahead of a polkaing pre pee-person doesn’t sound awesome or enlightened or, you know, good. I didn’t need to hustle in there to claw some crack. My itch would get scratched one way or another, without any stains or spills to worry about.

He slowly descended into a quarter squat behind me, his limbs pretzeled to protect his — I can only assume — bursting bladder.

I had to act. Bravely, boldy, gallantly, I turned to him and said, “You can go ahead of me.”

He let out a dangerous sigh of relief. Another muscle relaxed and he was surely in dribble territory. “Really?!”

“Of course,” I said, a hero.

He looked like he might cry, and I wanted to hug him. But that would’ve been weird and may have squeezed out the piddle he was desperately holding. “Thank you! I have to go REALLY BAD.”

I smiled instead of saying, “Yeah, I know.”

He did his thing in record time, and on the way out he held the door for me. “You’re kind and beautiful.”

I said, “Aw thanks,” in that oh, I don’t know about that way, but I totally knew about that.

Then I marched right in and scratched my ass.

A list of other people I wanted to hug (but didn’t, ugh) in the coffee shop:

• The older gentleman in zip-off cargo pants who bent to pick up Samah’s dropped headphones but couldn’t reach

• The middle schooler, changed into gym clothes, with her two uniform-clad friends using Siri to text “Mama”

• Another middle schooler, a pre-growth-spurt skater boy wearing jorts that hung to a capri length, who asked the man next to us, “Uh, is anyone using this chair? Alright, thank you sir,” in the politest way you can still sound too cool at 13

• Jorts boy again when he announced too loud, “JASON, MY MAN. I DON’T USUALLY SEE YOU AROUND THESE PARTS!” while repeatedly dabbing him up. Jason seemed like a quiet kid, reserved, clearly not invited to the cool-kid jorts crowd he shuffled passed. But when Mr. Jorts himself said, “SEE YOU AROUND!” and Jason dragged his sneakers across the concrete in the opposite direction, there was no snickering from Jorts and his friends. It was a friendly exchange, the too-coolness diminished. Allow this to serve as my official endorsement: Jorts Kid for Homecoming King 2029!

• Jason, obviously. What a sweetheart

Do any of you regularly want to hug strangers in public or am I in my luteal phase?

Two pee posts in a row? An astrologer told me my writing was destined to shine a light on the dark side of life, the undercarriage of existence. Perhaps it’s fate that forces me to put the ass in Respectful Smartass. Who am I to argue with a preordained propensity to toilet humor? The bottom line is everybody creates shit. I just put mine on the page more often. Thanks for reading!

ily bye,

Ariana