Writing On The Dark Side

“The Most Exciting Life of All: Fear & Loathing In A Public Toilet”

Brain Child Magazine, Winter 2002

I wish I could tell you that I am one of those mothers who have some sort of exciting life on the side. But after I drop my son Matthew off at his school, tucked into the hillside of Carmel Valley, I spend my three hours looking at the clock so I won’t be late for pick-up. A lot of the other mothers hurry off to real jobs in real clothes that need to be dry-cleaned, for meetings and lunches and important deadlines. I go home in my tumble dry jeans and sweatshirt to handle the ins and outs of stay-at-homehood. You know, the dishes, the laundry, all the household upkeep. It’s the sort of stuff that may be necessary and even appreciated around my house, but it’s not a life they base Superheroes on.

I am always the first mother there for pick-up. I sit on the wooden bench and wait for the kids to come out. This is one of the unheralded joys of motherhood. The march of the kindergarten children covered in sand and mud and paint and markers and whatever they had for snack that day. The children proudly carrying their works of art, usually too big to fit inside their backpacks, their eyes searching for their mother’s face. And that moment when your child sees you, when his delight and relief is so rich you can actually feel it.

My son is always trailing behind in the parade. His Pokemon backpack drags along the ground, his sweatshirt and papers falling out, his soft brown hair shining in the sun. He is always wearing his metallic red sunglasses. We bought the sunglasses on a trip to Los Angeles when he was three, and every day since they have gone with him wherever he goes. Some kids suck their thumbs, some kids have blankies. Matthew has his red sunglasses. When he sees me, he raises them the way a movie star might and then runs to me, despite his teacher urging him not to. Safe in my arms, we pile into the car where he unloads his treasures: a cupcake half-eaten, an empty juice box, a pebble from the playground, and a picture of an umbrella that he drew with the letter U written next to it.

“How was your day?” I ask expectantly.
“Can we not talk about it?” Matthew says. He sounds exhausted.
“Okay,” I say.
“It’s just that I had a really hard day. My glasses kept falling apart.”
“What do you mean?”
I ask and look at Matthew in the rearview mirror. The lens has fallen out of one side of his glasses.
“We can fix that when we get home.”

Then halfway down Valley Road, Matthew says, “I really have to pee.” He is holding his penis and wriggling around a lot in the back seat, and I know that means we have about a two minute window to actual peeage. I know I have to pull into, God help me, a public restroom. While some people are afraid of things like spiders or heights, for me, hands down, it is the dirty public restroom that makes my skin crawl. We pull into the Valley Hills Shopping Center and make a beeline for the bathroom next to The Wagon Wheel, a great breakfast place that has been there forever. You have to grab a bathroom key that is tied to a huge iron skillet in order to open the door. I grab the skillet and open the door. Matthew knows my fear. He knows the public restroom rules: Do not touch anything.

We walk into the stall, hands by our sides. As he leans over to pull down his pants and pee, the other lens from his glasses falls into the toilet bowl. And the lens disappears into that black hole at the bottom of the toilet bowl. The horror on his face, the shock in his eyes, and the tears rolling down from under his empty frames make me start to laugh. Not like I think any of it is funny. It is the kind of shaky laughter when fears and nerves and nausea knot together in your stomach and it is the only sound that comes out.

“Don’t worry we can go to the store and buy new ones,” I choke out. “Nooooo, I want these glasses,” Matthew sobs, holding onto the empty red frames like a baby monkey clings to its mother. I knew it. It would be like telling me, if my engagement ring had accidentally fallen into the toilet, that I could go to the store and get a new one. The thought of people shitting on my treasured ring is too awful to imagine. So I start looking around for a hanger or a rubber glove or any object other than my very own hand that can fish out the lens. But there is nothing but me and that dark hole. My biggest fear is reaching in for the lens and, instead, bumping into a big morning coffee shit that never got fully flushed—not to mention encountering microscopic bacteria, a flesh-eating virus, or a freaky toilet-bowl disease. Then, even if I am brave enough to actually reach my hand in, how in God’s name am I to allow my child to place the tainted lens anywhere near his eye? All of this is racing around in my mind while Matthew is pulling on my pants leg sobbing, “Please get it for me, Mommy. Pleeeeeeease.” It’s as if I can hear my mother’s voice shouting in my ear, “You will not put your hand into that bowl, child! You flush that dirty lens down the bowl and march him right out of here!” I can see her wielding antibacterial cleanser and hear her vacuum cleaner running in my head. And my own voice is in my head, too, saying, “You have to do it, you have to get it for him.” All of it, her shouting, Matthew’s crying, my struggling, all of it beating faster and faster and louder and louder until I can’t hear anything and in that silence of complete terror, I do it. I reach in and feel for the lens.

It is over so fast. I immediately run the hot water in the sink and scrub the lens and my hand like I am a surgeon sterilizing before surgery. Matthew is so relieved and so shocked that we both start laughing. Real laughter now, relief laughter, joyous, brave, thank-God laughter. We return the skillet key and walk back to the car together. Inside the car I snap both lenses into place. And then Matthew smiles at me with this combination of enormous pride and deep gratitude like I really am a Superhero who saved his day. Right then and there I decide I am living the most exciting life of all.