Corona Falls

As soon as I retired, I shifted into budget mode. I asked myself what I could do to reduce costs and maybe at the same time save the environment.

Myself answered, “think about paper.”

My first idea was to stop using paper towels. My aunt Kay made hand-drying towels using old cut-up bath towels with strings attached that looped over a kitchen cabinet knob. So I set out and hacked up a bunch of ancient towels, stitched seams in them with my Viking sewing machine (the same model Kay had), and I attached loops of seam binding to them to hang on suction cup hangers in the kitchen. In two and a half months, we have gone through just two rolls of paper towels, thank you very much

But then there was toilet paper.

Do I have your attention, Corona virus losers who are now Googling “corncob wipes?” So I decided to get ourselves a bidet attachment for our toilet. This was the end of December, before the words “social distancing” became a catchy phrase.

I bought one for thirty bucks. I could have bought a used one for less, but, hey, c’mon, I have SOME dignity, don’t I? All the You Tube videos looked like it was a simple, ten-minute installation, so in just a few days, the butthole washer arrived.

True to form, I installed it with nothing more than a screwdriver and a pair of pliers. I had seriously debated earlier about buying one that was more complicated and would give our puckers a heated douche, but decided that, hey, this is Florida. The tap water here is never that cold.

So just as I was putting the tools away, nature called, so I sat down on the toilet seat and gave it a, how you say, shot. 

My life has not been the same since.

That fountain spray of water couldn’t have been aimed more perfectly. Immediately I thought, “How did the makers of this device know exactly the right trajectory that would both feel arousing in an analingal kind of way and cleanse better than a pressure washer on a sidewalk?” It was amazing. It was tingly and effervescent, as if someone was feeding my anus a Perrier with lime. I was liking it too much, and I found myself dancing around on the toilet seat so the spray could hit other areas. Think Hokey Pokey: You but your butthole in, you put your butthole out, you put your butthole in and you shake it all about. I didn’t want to even get off the toilet, but I forced myself to. I have an addictive personality and didn’t want to spend the whole day there. Plus I had to figure out the drying issue. 

I had read on a no doubt unreliable website that in Europe, people keep small towels next to their bidets to dry the drippings. I thought, well, maybe I’ll stich up some butt-drying towelettes one day, but for now, I just unrolled a few squares of toilet paper and patted my boyhole. Amazingly enough, there was no brown mark. 

There are times, as an old man, that you have poop episodes which frequently involve wiping and smearing for hours. You have to flush multiple times so as not to stop up the toilet and back up the septic tank. Sometimes you have to do the Bunny Hop out to the garage with your shorts around your ankles because you mistakenly thought two rolls would be enough. Often you think you are done wiping, but then another milky turd slips through and you have to start from “square” one. With the bidet, you can flush out your hole until eternity and only wipe once, when you are sure there is nothing more to get rid of. Score one for ecology!

Americans, as a (w)hole, don’t know what to make of bidets. They think that they shoot up dirty, bacteria-infested used toilet water into your b-zone, but the truth is, bidet water is the same stuff that comes out of the tap that you would drink from if only you weren’t some sort of giant-Lexus-SUV-driving, white-priviledged, entitled, designer-water-drinking, environmental pariah who doesn’t give a shit about the plastic problem we have on earth.

Wait, I am getting off track here.

So we have been enjoying the bidet titillation for a couple of months now, and then, out of nowhere came the Corona virus, and people are now Desperately Seeking Charmin. Since I retired and got off a lot of my anxiety meds that I needed so I wouldn’t murder my supervisor and supervisor’s supervisor and chief of police, suddenly, I am less anxious about everything.Could those meds have been making me anxious? Nah, it was just the paper-wiping holes I had to work for.

Other Bill still has toilet paper supply anxiety, even though he too is a proponent of the bidet by a, um, wider margin. So because I am retired and we joined Sam’s Club so we could get free drugs, he sent me off earlier this week to ensure we could get to the year 2525, if you were still alive, without having to re-purchase toilet paper.

As a new customer to the big box world, I often lose my shit (in keeping with the theme of this essay) when I go into Sam’s Club. I always get migraine auras walking through there. Horrific hot white light and tons and tons of plastic that I know isn’t going to get recycled, will end up on Plastic Island in the Pacific, where no one gets voted off. 

Normally when I’m there, in order to avoid the headache, I just beeline to the pharmacy, pick up my free bottle of antidepressants and get the hell out. But on that day I had a mission to procure rolls of old school flushable anal cleaner for Other Bill. That involved wandering around 134,000 square feet (look it up) of overlit retail space.

Because it was the early days of Corona, (well, early for Americans, because Cheeto-head initially said the whole thing was fake news), I saw that no one was leaving Sam’s Club without an Eiffel Tower of toilet paper and a pickup load of bottled water that came from the same source as my bidet but packaged prettier. I was too embarrassed to ask where the TP was, so I had to roam aimlessly to try to locate it.

Sam’s Club has no sense of organization. They have tube socks next to the coffee which is next to the 6 pound bag of feta cheese which is next to the iPad that is bigger than your living room TV, which is next to boxes of 3,000-count tampons, which is next to a 20 pound opaque tube of what they call ground beef that you can’t see but could just as easily be wet topsoil. It’s like the stock people are all on meth and just find a hole anywhere to shove stuff in.  

Weeks later, dehydrated and reminiscing about my doctor who used to give me Percocet for migraines, I finally arrived at the almost empty aisle of toilet paper, and with the help of a sweet old lady in a wheelchair, we hoisted up a shrink-wrapped load of 45 rolls of septic safe generic toilet paper. 45 rolls! Who buys that? Who has room for that? I have never bought that much toilet paper at one time in my life.

I called an Uber and had them deliver the huge package to my car. I gave her a big tip and a good review because it wouldn’t fit in my trunk, and she helped me tie it down on the roof of the Civic. When I got home, I had to shoehorn the huge package in through the garage door, and then I swallowed a fist full of free Lexapro and called Other Bill on the phone.

“Honey, you’ll have to park outside the garage in the driveway when you get home tonight. But I can guarantee you you’ll have a clean butthole for years to come.”

And after I calmed down, I thought that maybe we should get a second bidet for our other toilet. When two men in their mid-sixties with unpredictable colons live under one roof, you can never be too careful. I looked all over the place online, even at analdouche.com, and the cheapest one I could find was $47. For a used one. 

Price gouging during a state of emergency is illegal. I’m calling the cops. But not the chief of police. That bitch hates me.

I love retirement.

A Gift from God

Every day around 4 pm, I take our dog, Jackie, out for her second walk of the day. We live in an older part of the city where blocks are bisected with alleys where people can throw their yard clippings and store their garbage cans. It’s so much more civilized than having to haul cans to the street twice a week. 

Jackie and I like the alleys. For her, there is always something interesting to sniff or to attempt to snack on before I pull her away. I like alleys because I don’t feel inclined to pick up her poop with a bag. It’s an alley. It’s a wasteland. 

Or is it?

I have found many useable discards during our walks. On one walk I found two dozen big plastic storage tubs with lids. We brought them home. One day we will pack them with our possessions and move to an assisted living facility. It’s called planning ahead.

Old Handi-Cart

Another time I was very excited to bring home a big plastic wheelbarrow-like device that tilts down so you can rake leaves into it. They used to make these things out of steel, and they were called Handi-Carts. Now they are plastic and are made by, I dunno… Tupperware? My alt Mom, my Aunt Kay, had a Handi-Cart, and we spent endless hours throwing weeds and such into them and wheeling them back to her alley in South Denver. So more and more, alleys are kind of sentimental to me.

Plastic-Cart

Oh, and then there was the time I found a potted marijuana plant in the alley behind a former house-flipping neighbor whose home was frequented by the police for domestic disturbances. We won’t discuss what I did with that. Suffice it to say, like more than half of the things I buy to plant in the yard, it died.

So this afternoon, Jackie and I were strolling down the first alley south of our house.  Every other day we walk down the second alley south of the house so she has more time on her feet. And she knows when it’s the second alley day, because if I try to trick her into walking down the first alley, she pulls on the leash and gives me a dirty look.

As we approached the end of the alley (and she still hadn’t pooped and had therefore forfeited her end of walk treat), I looked to my right and saw a banana box filled with Whitman’s Sampler boxes. Lots of them.

Continuing with the alley sentimentality theme here, a Whitman’s Sampler is a box of assorted chocolates. I don’t know why they are called Samplers, but it has something to do with embroidery and the fact that they have been in business since 1842. Sentimentally, my father always used to give my mother a one-pound Whitman’s Sampler box on Valentine’s Day. Dad was a very practical guy, so I’m told, and he told my mom, “Why piss away money on a heart-shaped box draped in satin ribbon and only get a half pound of chocolate, when, for the same price you could get a pound of chocolate, for Chrissake.” My mother, who ate candy like a child on Halloween when she gave up smoking, did not disagree. And my family, all of them, loved the word “Chrissake.” And I still do. I especially like that Spell Check can’t figure it out, for Chrissake.

So still stunned by what I saw, my first reaction was that someone had thrown away a bunch of empty Whitman’s Sampler boxes.  I used to keep my mother’s empty Valentine boxes to stash gumball prizes, favorite Hot Wheels cars, Super Mini-Balls, and my hand made Creepy Crawlers. At first I thought maybe I found a collection of vintage toys, but again, the boxes were all unwrapped. 

I peeled off the cellophane of one box and opened it to make sure it wasn’t filled with exploding manure, making me an overnight YouTube sensation. True to form, it looked like my Dad’s Valentine gift to my mom: glistening milk chocolates of all varieties. Only this was a 12 ounce box instead of a pound. It’s like now when you can get a 4 ounce six pack of Coke and can think it’s not bad for you. I counted the boxes. There were seventeen boxes of them. I was looking at almost 13 pounds of free chocolates. Needless to say, I didn’t do the math until I started this paragraph.

This was like one of those awful “Only in Florida” or “Flori-Duh” website offerings, I thought. How could this happen? “Man Wakens from Diabetic Coma Begging for Gumball Toys.” Am I dreaming? What do I do now? The thing is, time was of the essence. If I left the box there, I risked having someone else take possession of it. Naturally I thought, “You can’t eat this.” The chocolates looked normal, but what if it was laced with crack or PCP or cocaine or that stuff that killed Michael Jackson or even worse, CBD oil? What if it was really a box of Coronavirus? 

But then I though, “WWOBD?” What Would Other Bill Do? And then I knew what I had to do. I hefted up the box, which was easily 20 pounds. Banana boxes are double thick and heavy. Plus I had a 40 pound dog yanking on the leash, sending me tripping back up the alley in my flip flops until we finally made it home. I dropped the box in the foyer. Okay, so it’s not really a foyer. It’s a walkway where everyone sheds yard waste and tiny palm nuts when they come in. 

I was sweating like a rotting peach and jumped into the shower. Not long after I got out and dried off, I heard the garage door hum open, and Other Bill came inside, home from work.

I kissed him and said, “Come here, I want to show you something.”

“Is it something bad?” he asked.

“No. Well, maybe,” I said.

He looked down at the banana box, and his bright blue eyes bulged. He knew there were no vintage toys inside.

“Where did you get this?” 

“I found it when I was walking Jackie.”

“Who would do this?” he asked. The humanity! And then I realized I had done the right thing by schlepping it home.

Without even pausing, he dug into the tiny pleated cupcake holder of chocolate covered peanuts and snarfed them down. Didn’t even think about it being poison or contaminated. An hour later, he ate another. An hour after that, I had one. 

As of this writing, we are both still alive.