Other people’s toilets

For the first time in a month I didn’t sleep on the boat on Friday. But the toilet experience has been pretty much the same as on my boat, the only difference being the lack of plastic bag, because my friend’s toilet was FREEZING. I don’t know how she has been handling this for 10 years. Habit I guess. But at least I have managed to have a poo in peace, no idiots knocking off bottles of whisky during the important act.

People sometimes find it difficult to poo in toilets other than theirs. I used to be like that. But with time, I have learnt to trust other people’s toilets, to stop giving a shit about my shit ending up there and worrying about what other people may think about me shitting in their toilets. But there’s an exception: I generally can’t shit at a guy’s home if I don’t know him well. And that is why I think I fell in love with the man who doesn’t love me. The morning after the first night I stayed over I took a shit in his bathroom. It was not one of those fully satisfactory shits when absolutely everything comes out and you feel content and light and ready to take on the world no matter what. But it was good enough considering that usually, as I said, I don’t shit at men’s places early on in our relationship. I don’t mostly because I can’t. Even if I feel like it may happen, a series of shameful thoughts trigger a nervous response – the least ideal emotional state for a shit to happen – and after short consideration I lose interest and conclude that taking it back home is the best option. And so it happens that I happily drag myself and my intestine full of shit to a cafe to have a romantic breakfast, but all I want to do, really, is go home and take a big one while reading a poem chosen at random from one of the contemporary anthologies. So you may understand that when that morning I managed to poo in his bathroom, I had no doubt it was an auspicious sign. But it turns out it wasn’t. Taking a shit is not enough apparently. For a relationship to work, it needs a bit more than that. It needs both people to give a shit. They need to like giving their shit to each other. Maybe I should have post him one of my bags. Maybe if I did that, he may post me one of his bags back. And maybe then we will be together. Or maybe not. Never trust this kind of shit. Never.

This is a nice song that has a beautiful line about shitting in other people’s toilets. I’ve been listening to it quite a lot recently.