I'm a Regular Wagonleader
Once I had moved out of my mother's house, I never again lived with someone who's response to running out of toilet paper was to go out and get more toilet paper. Some substitute is always found, some stand-in paper product of a decreasingly Aloe Soft consistency is utilized until someone gets desperate and finally waddles, painfully, to the nearest Teeter or Kroger's or Wal-Mart or Trader Joe's (for the organic stuff) for actual toilet paper.
I guess I have to include myself in this roll-call of hygiene apathy, but somehow I don't. Somehow it is always someone else's turn to buy TP. Oftentimes enough it is. You know I have purchased the TP last because it is something which is unscented, practical, and advertised to be as powerfully knit as mideval chain mail. Nothing pisses me off like the TP tearing in the middle when I'm busy with it, becoming about as useful as a work glove with hole in it jammed in a pile of goat manure.
"It's alright, Andy," I would say in a southern drawl, "I gots me mah gloves on."
What's worse is TP that rolls off into those little pills and gets stuck when it is allowed to absorb any moisture at all. You know exactly what I am talking about. Do not lie.
When living with DJ I suppose our joint failure to buy toilet paper on time is more understandable. He is a Man, and Men can sometimes do without toilet paper for impressive amounts of time, like how long Shamu can go so long without something as vital and pressing as air. They can do this especially if they have their own stock of Kleenex somewhere in their bedrooms, which they always do. I, on the other hand, like to think of my acts during periods of toilet paper desperation as models of ingenuity and resourcefulness bordering on what people must have done back in the covered wagon days just to avoid having the trots to death.
"We best go on and jam this wagon axles up there till we's can find some tissues, Maude," the wagonleader would say to his wife regarding his damp, leaking children. Because, as Oregon Trail has taught us, you ought always to buy three each of wagon wheels, wagon axles and wagon tongues. Whatever those were.
Most of the time, however, we just turn to paper towel. On one dire occasion, we ran out of paper towel the morning that both of us were leaving for Thanksgiving break. When I discovered our plight, I had just consumed three and a half cups of coffee, and knew just as certainly that there was no way in hell I was going to buy toilet paper just to shit once before I left town for two weeks, even though I was pretty sure the stuff was nonperishable and I might be able to use it when I got back.
To make matters more complicated, we had a third roommate of sorts with us for the days leading just up to our departure, the sort of roommate that comes in periodically form out of town to increase the breadth of their sexual circles and maybe avoid getting the same disease twice. The sort who affects a British accent and reappears at six am the following day, shirtless, smelling of Papov's and on this particular occasion, sleeping with his face mashed against the toilet.
This was about seven am on the morning on which we had absolutely no paper products. We had a lot of bristol, but that stuff is seriously four ply, and the vellum tooth is a little bit grating if you know what I mean.
I had to pee very badly and our houseguest was immobile, monopolizing our only toilet with his face. I discovered him this way without even knowing he was in the house, and slowly registered that he had indeed made himself a more comfy nest of filth and sin by wrapping himself in my bathtowel.
Normally I am a very understanding person, but I had not had ANY coffee, and this man affects a British accent.
I kicked him.
"UUUUUUUNG!" Said my bathtowel.
"Who ARE you?" I said. "Move. I have to pee. Now." this was before I had discovered our additional complications, but the strange man in the room seemed more pressing.
"I can't. I will be sick," he said in British, "Just go here, I"ll turn away."
He rolled, laboriously, onto his other side. If I straddled him properly I would be able to drop anchor and pee with the back of his head nestled betwixt my feet.
I kicked him again and got my roommate, his friend, to move him. Then I discovered our Other Delimma.
Knowing I would leave town in just a few hours, I began to think of other things of relative absorbancy and cleanliness, cleanliness obviously taking a backseat to just not getting my hands wet. We were actually indeed out of toilet paper and paper towel, and though I considered just using a entire maxi pad for the purpose, that gets very expensive very quickly.
Instead, as I sew, I realized I had a lot of scrap muslins left over from something stupid I had been making, a vomitous floral print obtained from Wal-Mart simply for the purpose of making a mockup dummy dress for sizing. The dress had been a replica of the statue's dress from the cover of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil; the Savannah Bird Girl. I had made it for a clinically insane photographer who was dressing a black woman up in the little white girl's dress, some kind of bona-fide artsty farsty social commentary. It never fit right since the statue was wearing a dress made for a twelve year old girl and his model resembled something more of a Venus figurine unearthed in rural Africa. He didn't seem to get how he had to pick either between the authenticity of the plain pioneer's dress or making actual room for actual breasts.
He was pretty annoying in retrospect, and so the thought of this took the place of the thoughts I might otherwise have had about the cleanliness of the material.
"My. I AM resourceful," I thought to myself as I finished my deed, the drunken houseguest already banging on the door again with urgency. It turned out he had some Things to Do which would probably also ultimately result in the need for toilet paper.
As he went in I offered him some of the unused Muslin. He looked at me quizzically, and I smiled.
I guess I have to include myself in this roll-call of hygiene apathy, but somehow I don't. Somehow it is always someone else's turn to buy TP. Oftentimes enough it is. You know I have purchased the TP last because it is something which is unscented, practical, and advertised to be as powerfully knit as mideval chain mail. Nothing pisses me off like the TP tearing in the middle when I'm busy with it, becoming about as useful as a work glove with hole in it jammed in a pile of goat manure.
"It's alright, Andy," I would say in a southern drawl, "I gots me mah gloves on."
What's worse is TP that rolls off into those little pills and gets stuck when it is allowed to absorb any moisture at all. You know exactly what I am talking about. Do not lie.
When living with DJ I suppose our joint failure to buy toilet paper on time is more understandable. He is a Man, and Men can sometimes do without toilet paper for impressive amounts of time, like how long Shamu can go so long without something as vital and pressing as air. They can do this especially if they have their own stock of Kleenex somewhere in their bedrooms, which they always do. I, on the other hand, like to think of my acts during periods of toilet paper desperation as models of ingenuity and resourcefulness bordering on what people must have done back in the covered wagon days just to avoid having the trots to death.
"We best go on and jam this wagon axles up there till we's can find some tissues, Maude," the wagonleader would say to his wife regarding his damp, leaking children. Because, as Oregon Trail has taught us, you ought always to buy three each of wagon wheels, wagon axles and wagon tongues. Whatever those were.
Most of the time, however, we just turn to paper towel. On one dire occasion, we ran out of paper towel the morning that both of us were leaving for Thanksgiving break. When I discovered our plight, I had just consumed three and a half cups of coffee, and knew just as certainly that there was no way in hell I was going to buy toilet paper just to shit once before I left town for two weeks, even though I was pretty sure the stuff was nonperishable and I might be able to use it when I got back.
To make matters more complicated, we had a third roommate of sorts with us for the days leading just up to our departure, the sort of roommate that comes in periodically form out of town to increase the breadth of their sexual circles and maybe avoid getting the same disease twice. The sort who affects a British accent and reappears at six am the following day, shirtless, smelling of Papov's and on this particular occasion, sleeping with his face mashed against the toilet.
This was about seven am on the morning on which we had absolutely no paper products. We had a lot of bristol, but that stuff is seriously four ply, and the vellum tooth is a little bit grating if you know what I mean.
I had to pee very badly and our houseguest was immobile, monopolizing our only toilet with his face. I discovered him this way without even knowing he was in the house, and slowly registered that he had indeed made himself a more comfy nest of filth and sin by wrapping himself in my bathtowel.
Normally I am a very understanding person, but I had not had ANY coffee, and this man affects a British accent.
I kicked him.
"UUUUUUUNG!" Said my bathtowel.
"Who ARE you?" I said. "Move. I have to pee. Now." this was before I had discovered our additional complications, but the strange man in the room seemed more pressing.
"I can't. I will be sick," he said in British, "Just go here, I"ll turn away."
He rolled, laboriously, onto his other side. If I straddled him properly I would be able to drop anchor and pee with the back of his head nestled betwixt my feet.
I kicked him again and got my roommate, his friend, to move him. Then I discovered our Other Delimma.
Knowing I would leave town in just a few hours, I began to think of other things of relative absorbancy and cleanliness, cleanliness obviously taking a backseat to just not getting my hands wet. We were actually indeed out of toilet paper and paper towel, and though I considered just using a entire maxi pad for the purpose, that gets very expensive very quickly.
Instead, as I sew, I realized I had a lot of scrap muslins left over from something stupid I had been making, a vomitous floral print obtained from Wal-Mart simply for the purpose of making a mockup dummy dress for sizing. The dress had been a replica of the statue's dress from the cover of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil; the Savannah Bird Girl. I had made it for a clinically insane photographer who was dressing a black woman up in the little white girl's dress, some kind of bona-fide artsty farsty social commentary. It never fit right since the statue was wearing a dress made for a twelve year old girl and his model resembled something more of a Venus figurine unearthed in rural Africa. He didn't seem to get how he had to pick either between the authenticity of the plain pioneer's dress or making actual room for actual breasts.
He was pretty annoying in retrospect, and so the thought of this took the place of the thoughts I might otherwise have had about the cleanliness of the material.
"My. I AM resourceful," I thought to myself as I finished my deed, the drunken houseguest already banging on the door again with urgency. It turned out he had some Things to Do which would probably also ultimately result in the need for toilet paper.
As he went in I offered him some of the unused Muslin. He looked at me quizzically, and I smiled.