All I remember is the cold hard cling of the table, and then nothing. Or was it something - you know, when you're nearly asleep, and you think of something, you know, THAT THING, whatever the hell it is, that you ALMOST see, but then it runs away, and it's SO FAMILIAR - YOU KNOW WHAT IT IS, but you can't picture it in your mind - all you know is that you know is that you ALMOST HAD IT and so you lie awake for an hour or two trying to reconstruct the thoughts that bought you to the place where you thought whatever it was, when you KNEW that you were about to see in your mind FOR ONCE - whatever the hell it was.
Well, it was like that. Or maybe it wasn't.
Maybe it was like a fine red, room temperature, splashed on your flayed testicles just before the bomb fell, and you know that somewhere, maybe even next door, there's someone else - a lot like you - taking a dump in a handbasin with stainless steel surround.
And then the feeling goes, and you know it wasn't like that at all, but more like the time you stubbed your toe on the doorstep but didn't tell anyone, and the blood dripped under the dinner table and all over your brother's shoe and when he left the table he slipped and broke his collar bone, only the called it the clavicle, but you knew they were just saying that.
And so you live your life as best you can, but one day you're in the can having a dump, and you realise how good it feels, and then you start worrying that you might be a homosexual after all and you never knew it, and how are you going to tell the family and thank fuck you killed your dad on that hunting trip, cos he'd go to the fireplace and take down the gun he saves for your sister's weddings and blow you to kingdom come with it just for mentioning the word "gay", and your mother, how it would hurt her when you said those words "Mom, I really like having a dump", and how dissappointed she'd be with you, and the family would disown you, but secretly she'd love you still and come to your funeral when you died of aids like freddy mercury. And your brothers would all live lives of secret guilt because they feel the same way too, but they need the family SO much - they all die from the worry at about 37, way before you, and you're the only one living.
All because you went to the toilet once too often.
Shit, maybe it's best for all concerned if you just jump off a building right now, but then what if you impaled yourself on a car aerial or a parking meter as you went and you secretly enjoyed it and because of that St Peter wouldn't let you in heaven, and you went to hell instead and all the people from Sodom were there, lining up for you like in a men's prison where you're serving really hard time, but you didn't know what the judge meant by that, only you're coming to the realisation now - WHEN it's too late. Shit, what if that happened?
So you shut yourself in your home, only it's getting really dirty, there's 3 specks of dust on the floor this week already, and hopefully no-one will come to see you because they're so dirty, and they'll probably see right away that you're not "straight as a arrow" and go round telling your neighbours so they torch your house late at night to protect their kids and family because "that sort of thing is contagious, don't you know?" and you'll fry like an eyeball on a barbecue, never really knowing if what you dad told you about....
*BZZZZZZZZZRT!*