Conventions of an Innocent toilet
By Hiadel, aka Hayes The Hayes
Draft 2
Dear Officer Rodney,
If people honestly think that they are innocent of a crime does that make them invulnerable of a crime? I say this because I truly feel beyond a doubt that I myself am innocent.
It makes me wonder though, do comics that think they’re funny actually sound funny? That would make laughter and jokes a constant drum in their hearts. Supermodels that pose would send morse code through their eyes at the camera, “I am beautiful”. Then again, it might not be law. A shriveled man in his eighties who thinks he is the sexiest thing alive won’t draw looks of affection at a bar. At least I don’t think he would be very successful; it is hard to say how wise this man might be in the ways of women.
Anyway; let me begin my story.
It started last night , that one night you know so well. I was all cozy watching people beating each other up on TV when the time of the hour struck me. “Click”, the second hand passed and my natural senses told me that it was time to use the bathroom and hit the sack.
When the damage had been done it wouldn’t away. Answering the weak squeaks I opened the heavy lid to the top of the toilet. There wasn’t any water inside.
Let me provide some insight. In a typical toilet (unless I somehow own an exotic species) there is a tank of water that sleeps in the white hulk that one would lean back against while handling business. Once the silver lever is pulled water comes from the back to rinse out the bowl, then is replaced with the help of... some type of floating ball mechanic attached to a plastic tube. I was never sure how that part worked. I’ve fixed the mouth that drinks the water away to the bowl, but not much more.
My brain wasn’t going for it that night. I had work the next day and needed some sleep. Deciding to forget about it and call someone later I walked away. Hopefully the plumer wouldn’t cost too much.
The time strutted a little bit farther and I was back in my TV dwelling. A bloody face was being carried away on screen, that much I could remember only because of all the yelling.
I was not alone. On my couch, the throne of the dwelling, there was a man silent with fresh black hair. On his left wrist lived a silver watch that ticked its life away.
There was only one reasonable question to ask.
“Do you know how to fix toilets?”
Again I had the lid to the hulk of the toilet off, only with this man by my side. He eyes wrinkled a few times at the brown water marks on the inside, the hanging ball that was supposed to be lifted by water, and the damage dealt to the inside.
After a few minutes his diagnosis was complete.
“I know a friend who could fix this. If you take me to his place I could probably hook you up with an answer.”
Bitterly I accepted. The sooner I could get the toilet fixed the sooner I could go to sleep without an odor leaking in the house. It was getting late anyway.
As soon as all this had happened we were on the road. My head was filled with thoughts of how we’d go to a beat down apartment complex and stumble upon anyone or anything.
These thoughts were interrupted by a short detour off the main road to a gas station. The man with the silver watch told me he needed to pick something up. When he returned with two cases of beer, I had questions of course.
“They’re for payment. He only accepts Coors light.”
With those words I drove the wheels of the car down the road. We passed the highway and the library and were encroaching the boundaries of my town’s small university when the man gave the order to turn off the main road.
The bushes were neatly cropped and inside the tailored wood houses I could picture old professors asleep in their beds. Here, in this neighborhood down the way, I parked my car in the dark. Myself and the man got out and started walking down. We stopped outside of this white house. From outside all I could see were closed shutters with the light that sat above the front door.
“Wait right here.”
With those two metallic cases he walked down the stone path and up to the front door. He let himself in and after a brief burst of mixed sound the white screen door bounced back and closed.
I did what he said; I waited patiently as I could on a dark road (what was that street called again?). Time ticked away as I fought off a small fly and watched as small amounts of traffic passed by.
Wait, traffic? I suddenly realized that there were much more cars parked down on this side of mystery road X than at the top of it.
I was about to start counting the stars, plants, and other mundane objects that were more clustered in this area when a man, new with different hair, walked out of the house and stood at the doorway. It broke my concentration back into the correct lines; yes the house, something must be happening in there.
By the time I reached the front door the new man had vanished back inside. A lone cigarette butt lay on the stoop slowly dying to the night.
At this point I wasn’t sure of anything. The man with the silver watch was a mystery, I was about to walk into a stranger’s house, and my toilet was still broken. There could have been a million reasons why I wanted to get this night over with. I inserted one and walked in.
Inside the white flat people were jumping to the mix. There was a dance floor in the benefactor’s red living room, filled with people busting all types of things. In corners sat bath buckets with ice; the perfect paradise for all those Coors Mr. Silver had apparently supplied.
“Dude I am so drunk.”
I stopped in the hall as I passed these two dudes in matching Addidas shirts.
“No you’re not.”
“Hell yeah I am. Totally crunk.”
“Haha no you’re not dude. You can still realise that you’re going over the top.”
“So?”
“Not drunk enough.”
And at that moment two women walked out of the red room and towards the kitchen. No words needed to be exchanged. The two dudes followed.
Passing by another doorway someone handed me a can. The top was on tight, so nobody rufied it, right?
A bottle opener was passed and as the lid came off I could feel a mist come through the room. It entered through the arch doorways and was totally invisible to all but me. The mist enticed me, lured me to find its visible face. I happily followed it into the red room.
“What’s up? How’s it going? Having a good time? Have I seen you before?” The greeting rounds began. A man in a yellow hat. The basketball stud. Two twins doubling up on pink blouses. Another man in a thong. A few girls dressed up as sluts, or wait: were they thinking they were imitating?
Here and there a woman would walk by and I’d notice her shape. I was never able to draw a circle around those hourglasses though, they always seemed to walk away.
Through all the commotion and people the mist guided me around the red room where was at its strongest. Here, where it made no sense at all, the mist lifted my eyes so that I could glance across the room and make contact with another.
“So do you know anything about fixing toilets?” I asked (lightheartedly of course) her after I had walked across the room.
She smiled. “Haha, no? Why do you ask that?”
I struggled as I tried to recollect my story. A green light came on in the red room at that moment; a new song.
Again my face couldn’t find the words. Thankfully she noticed what the mist was whispering in my ear and without saying a word her soft hand took mine and led me onto the dance floor.
I never knew before that day that circles and triangles could mingle so freely. Truthfully I can’t remember much about size, texture, curves or even quantity. For all I know I could have walked up to an entire Sorority and asked that same question. There could have been three, six, or even a dozen people dancing around me allowing me to enjoy the mist. That was a good time; what happened in the red room.
Like all good things there is closure. Those delicate hands left eventually and my body was propelled into the kitchen.
The cooking room was manned by a white man and black man, both armed with a pan over a fire and hoards of hashbrowns. They had been cooking for what seemed awhile: on the counters they had plates piled high with it.
“Come and geeeet it!” The black man shouted over the mix. Immediately people came pouring from all over the house to fill up the wooden table and stand around the walls of the kitchen.
The two men heated the plates once again and cleared the way to the table. Setting several plates down they unloaded forks and the whole house attacked away. People twirled forks and slogged the hashbrowns down, then passed them on to others. The sight of it all was amazing: a community going to work on the delicacy. The few that didn’t have forks found small knots and shoveled it with their fingers. It was worth it.
A man, who I only heard to be called by the name of Dexter, sat opposite from me at the watering hole. We were both forkless and left to prowl the table with our fingers. As forks started to thud against the woodwork we both kept at it, both of us ignoring the exits.
Then, at what must have been two in the morning, our eyes met and I knew my stomach would never be the same. It was an evil look: a look of never dying hunger and lust for more hashbrowns.
“So you think you can eat?”
It was on.
We stopped and never looked back. Soon all the hashbrowns on the table were gone and the two cooks had to scramble the fire up again for a few extra rounds. One plate: shattered. The next: annihilated. We were both on an eating frenzy. Soon the tired bellies around us were drawn to our craze and a small stage formed between the two of us.
“Eat, eat, eat!”
The knots in the hashbrowns never tasted better. I was a starving man in the desert, the fattest kid on the playground who has been on a diet for a month!
Both our hands grew weary as the crowd surged. I could see it as much in his and in mine: the trembling of fingers wrestling with the belly.
His stopped before mine thankfully. His eyebrows wrenched and his fingers dropped the knots and went to his stomach. With a full bite still in my mouth I stood up and raised my hands. Victory had been achieved.
Men patting me on the back, women looking up at my dirty mouth, and the mist all accompanied me out of the kitchen and back into the heart of the party.
I don’t know how many drinks I had, how many more shapes came into my life dancing, or if any of that stuff happened at all. For all I know it could have been a dream, Officer Rodney.
The final chapter of this story started this morning. I woke up and the mist was there, slowly fading away with the rising sun. There was that special type of water on all the blades of grass, and when I opened my mind to where I was I couldn’t understand any of it... again.
I was naked in the back lawn of the benefactor’s. There were small articles of clothing littered along the sloping lawn, occasionally dotted with a few other partygoers who had crashed through the night like I had.
They were fortunate though. At least they had clothing to shield their dignity.
Quietly I stood up and walked by the debris. The man with the yellow hat had an empty can in his hand, his hat sloping down to cover his face. A basketball floated in the pool. The man with the thong was snoring on a pool deck chair with the two pink twins at his side, also asleep.
That was some crazy stuff that happened that night. I couldn’t tell you how happy I was that I had seen the crest of the day and knew that soon, once I had acquired clothing, that my life would turn to some type of normal again.
Streaking across blocks I used the cover of the shrubs and other green fixtures of the neighborhood to shield my mistake. First I headed for my car... but then thought of how I didn’t have my wallet and keys.That measured up to nothing. I resorted to find a set of clothes that I could use temporarily. I would sneak around the neighbors yards and pray that one of these old professors did their laundry the old fashioned way: by hanging it out to dry.
After a few minutes of this I crossed another road and while clicking open a garden fence I saw a white van parked in a driveway. The words escape echoed in my mind. I could picture myself sliding into the front seat and seeing the keys still in the ignition.
Quickly I started to run my feet across the mulch and grass. I turned sharply across the corner of the white van and opened the prodded door further.
Then I froze, and read the side of the van.
‘Sam’s Plumbing’
At the end of the strip of colored letters stood a man with a tool kit belt and an old woman. I didn’t dare ask the question that had filled my head the previous night. I only ran.
That’s really the end of it Officer Rodney. I ran away, and sooner or later one of the squad cars picked me up as I was running down the block.
I still think I’m innocent though Sir. Was it my fault that a stranger had crept into my house late at night and mislead me? I think not.
------
The man who had been naked this morning put down his pen and took the crisp white pages and started to turn and bend them. Through the black bars an observer could see him sitting at a lone bench in an even colder cell. That is, if there was anyone around at all. If you were small, almost microscopic, you could slide into one of his ears and hear his current thoughts. There would be a man running through hallways. It would be a small man, but naked all the same.This naked tiny man runs down halls of the mind and eventually ends up at a door. Turning the knob and pushing the wood forward, he can see what the mist is. The man who can’t fix toilets would love to bribe or strangle that man into telling him what the mist looks like, but the small naked man can’t say.
