Public Restroom Diaries: The Hot Girl & The Gassy Old Man

I’m at the health foods store picking up some organic mac and cheese. I try to eat really healthy.

I have to pee but I’m not anxious because I know they have two bathrooms here.

I walk around the corner to the bathrooms and see that there are 2 people in line ahead of me. I debate going to the other side of the store to check the line for the other, secret, restroom but I don’t feel like taking such a big risk, there could be more people in that line and by the time I get back to this one the wait time could have doubled. I decide to stick it out.

For some reason, I don’t feel boring for this.

There’s an old man in front of me who looks like he will die at any moment, and a young boy in front of him with his mom waiting off to the side embarrassing him just by being alive. I can hear the old man’s quiet farts like a gust of wind blowing through the flap of a leather bag.

Even worse, I begin to smell them. I feel I might lose consciousness at any moment but I focus hard and endure. I’ve always had a legendary nose growing up and often that wasn’t a good thing. I was able to smell my high school girlfriend’s first period before she knew she was having it.

I’m surmising that this old sack of loose skin has been eating nothing but egg and fish sandwiches for the last 80 years of his life. With every small shift of his body another nasal attack comes straight out of his butt and into my undeserving face.

I can hardly stand to breathe through my nose because it’s bringing tears to my eyes so I start breathing through my mouth because I don’t smell it as much this way. Sadly, I remember my 7^th grade science teacher telling me that breathing through my nose was preferable because it filters the toxins from the air before entering my lungs.

Alternatively, she said, breathing through my mouth was the same as eating all of the air around me.

Currently, I am eating this man’s farts and the alternative is, to smell them. I am torn and ready to abandon the line when the boy comes out of the bathroom and Backdraft goes in, playing a sweet percussion tune out of his behind.

Everything is looking up until an attractive 30 something female gets in line behind me. It’s awkward enough in the company of attractive women because I’m never sure how to act.

In a tactical play, I stare directly past her like there’s no possible way she actually exists.

I’m a little concerned because I think I’ve become immune to the smell of Old Man Fart by the time she gets behind me. Had she turned the corner 30 seconds earlier she would have understood the whole situation: young boy who hates his mom, flailing old man shitting his pants, and awkward male uncomfortably staring at the wall.

But she doesn’t have any of this intel, minus the last part.

I know she’s blaming me for recent blow to her sinuses.

The old man has been in there for about 4 minutes now, shitting tuna fish sandwiches all over the place, making it so no one  will be able to enter the restroom for a few hours without throwing up in the trashcan.

I’m getting anxious because I don’t know what my move is going to be.

If I go in there to pee and come out, then she goes in – she will pin the crime on me whether she has all the facts or not, it’s just how women are.

I think about my options. I could go in there and take off my shirt and wave it around trying to push the smell up into the exhaust fan so the smell dissipates enough to be undetectable. But that’ll take some time, enough time to put me in the pooping zone. Then I’ll have to leave my pee in the toilet to prove I wasn’t. But she’ll need to possess some basic CSI forensic awareness to arrive at this conclusion and I’m not sure what kind of skills she possesses, it might just confuse her more.

Then I think about bolting in and out in less than 30 seconds eliminating any doubt in her mind that I couldn’t have possibly had time to poop. But I’ve seen online articles about sniper pooping – people that are so fast and accurate with their stooling that it leaves no trace on the toilet paper. She could think I was one of those people.

The door opens and Old Man Farts comes out in a fog of distrustful fumes. I’m prepared to have a nervous breakdown.

I take one step towards the bathroom and then stop. I turn around to face her.

“You know what, I forgot my basket by the produce. You go ahead,” I say to her.

“Oh, are you sure? Thanks,” she says with a smile.

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