Toilet Paper
read by todd keisling
My name is Marty. Marty Shits-Himself. I'll give you three guesses as to what my problem is and here's a hint, it ain't my weight.
There are probably three other diseases that would have a clue as to how my life is. First is Bulimia. Second is Tourettes. The last is Munchausen’s Syndrome. I feel for these people the most. In a world whose foundations are built on lies these poor fucks represent a tsunami. A natural disaster over-turning everyone else's lives with their waves of bullshit. Their life is a metaphor for mine.
You know how many bottles of after-shave you go through? And that shit ain't cheap either.
You learn to rely on your nose. The average person inhales new smells once every six or seven seconds. Quite a large number don't even breathe through their nose more than once every minute. I peruse the odours in a room twice a second, at the least. This gives a heads-up of roughly five seconds to grab out whatever after-shave I have with me and spray like mad before rushing to the toilet for a refresh.
Don't even talk to me about curry.
You watch clocks more often. Right at the start, you use three weeks of your holiday just eating. Stopwatch in hand you time how long it takes for the aroma to pass from the plate in front of you to the couch, kitchen chair or bed behind you. You write precise schedules every week, indicating eating times, pissing times, shitting times, all marked out with neat highlighter, written to the minute. You stick it to your cubicle every single week for every sniggering prick in the office to see. Thai lamb, they say. Better stay outta your way 3:23 on Thursday, eh Marty? Every year or so I need to re-calculate my shit-list, as I so cutely name it. But I only get four weeks paid per annum, so guess what my holidays have been for the last three years. Yeap. Three weeks of craptacular fun.
Your body still rebels though. Give it half a chance and it'll digest a steak that was supposed to take seven and a half hours in six. Out it comes half-way through a presentation to the board of directors. People get used to having 'a short break so we might all refresh ourselves before we move on'. A refresh takes about twenty minutes, give or take. A lot can happen in twenty minutes. Wars have been won in twenty minutes. Twenty minutes is a long time, if you know what to do with it.
I work at a big shot accounting company. They sponsored me through the whole thing. Held raffles for my cause, gave me three week’s more sick leave pay than I should’ve got. They’re like a big, happy family. And I’m their big, stinky baby.
You get pretty sick of explaining to people how it happened. A car accident. You'd just come back from dinner and a movie. You lost your fiance and all of your dignity in the same metal-tearing kiss with a delivery van. No I don't like to talk about it. Especially not the piece of metal that lodged in my spine in just the right way as to block all nerve sense from my asshole and pisser. Yes that means I can't orgasm either. Go fuck yourself.
Every year for the past three years the CEO started this stupid bullshit motivational technique called 'See The Difference'. Basically it means we get a whole heap of presentations, pep talks and badly organised events where we get shown the difference that we're all making to The Company. Each year it culminates at the Christmas party in a grandiose display of hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash behind lock, key, glass and two no-neck security guards. Everyone goes to the display, duly ooh-ing and ahh-ing at all the pretty dollars lying in silver suitcases. Afterward everyone receives their very own envelope with a tidy little bonus in it. Personally I think it's a pretty arse-backward strategy but there's probably a psychological reason behind it. Associating our wealth with their wealth or some crap.
Did I mention that when I get shocked or surprised I lose control? Well, I say lose control, but that implies control in the first place. Things just get...sped up a bit. No people are going to be hiding in the dark behind my couch for my 50th. This fun fact resulted in a multitude of 'accidental' occasions of surprise from my co-workers. Leaning behind a door as I walked through and barking 'Hey Marty!' at my back was a fan favourite. Popping balloons next to my head at any of the birthday celebrations of the workers. Eventually you wear down your own ability to be surprised. Right now, if you suddenly sprung a tarantula on my face I wouldn’t even flinch.
Diapers for adults aren't that easy to get a hold of. My main supplier is through a Madame that runs a shop catering for the AB fetishists. For those not enlightened with this method of sexual gratification, it involves a grown man, usually suffering from a suite of insecurities about his mother, acting like a baby for some poorly paid, incredibly endowed, prostitute to nurse. The diapers come in when this grown man shits himself and gets the very same poorly paid prostitute to wipe it up for him and powder his hairy arse. I'm one of her top buyers. We're on a first name basis though I suspect hers, Lilith, might just be an adopted identity.
You might be wondering why this incredibly large, top notch firm of mine didn't just fire me once they realised I spontaneously shat myself half-a-dozen times a week. The simple reason is money. I could reach into my pants and hurl chunks of salmon and lima bean at my office windows and they still wouldn't fire me if I kept up the sales. I'm the top seller out of any division. I've broken records for them. I am good at my job and they know it. Not only that, but I'm a motivator for other workers in the company. If a walking shit-stain like myself can produce those kinds of numbers, why can't they? Since I had my accident, sales have been rising exponentially. To them, my disability is a god-damned blessing. They installed extra-large sanitary bins in all the toilets on my floor. My full diapers are worth their weight in gold.
I have a nice car. It’s a Beamer. The genuine leather seats are covered in plastic, but they’re still there. I wear Rolexes, heavy gold rings. I have a charisma all of my own at parties.
Eventually, though, you get tired. You want to claim some semblance of your old life back. Failing that you want a view of the sea, golden sand and all the freedom in the world to shit on it. So let me tell you a story. It’s a short one, good for a read while you’re on the John. And afterwards, you can wipe your arse with it and flush it away.
Like I said before, twenty minutes is a long time, if you know what to do with it. It’s even longer if people know what you’re doing in that twenty minutes. It’s longer still if people know that what you’re doing involves a douche.
The annual Christmas party is pretty heavily secured. There are metal detectors at the door and you have to put all your metal things in a basket and step through. Every year I go off. Every year the executive overseeing the check-ins coughs nervously and motions for the security guard to let me and my little bag in. Every year that little chunk of metal in my spine pipes up and lets me know its still there. Still sitting nice and comfortable with its teeth around my self-esteem.
The Company’s Christmas party is pretty much the same as any other. Lots of cock waving, lots of free piss and lots of embarrassing behaviour. I almost seem normal with the kind of stuff that goes down in the stairwells and behind closed office doors. One time the morning cleanup found a senior manager, neck in a noose made from his tie, pants around his ankles, passed out next to a double-d personal assistant. I left him there, but only after I’d taken enough photos to guarantee he’d be out of the sales race that year.
Generally everyone just mills around, getting slowly smashed until we’re herded into the main event room where we get given some crappy ‘See The Difference’ speech and awards are given out for best motivator, best presented, best blowjob technique, that sort of thing. Six years running I’ve picked up the top award for best seller and from the figures its clear its going to be me again. I sit there, sipping water as the CEO winds up his stupid speech. Awards come and go. Bimbo. Bimbo. Sales jock. Bimbo. Finally it’s time for the best seller award. He’s singing my praises, with a few little clever jokes thrown in for good measure about being ‘flushed with pride’ and ‘brown with envy’. About halfway through his tirade I sit up straight in my seat. Five seconds later a smell wafts over my table buddies. I grab my little baggy and scrape back my chair. Mr. Smart-arse on the stage stutters on another of his jokes as I scuttle from the room. He rallies like a champion though, as I close the door I hear him say that once Marty’s been refreshed he’ll receive his award from him personally. The damage has been done. Marty Is Getting Refreshed. That Is Where Marty Is. Everyone applauds and hits the bar at the back of the room like a jackhammer.
Twenty minutes.
The bulk of a diaper can hide exactly two TASERs. The M-26 Military issue TASER can fire up to 10.65 metres, delivering twenty pulse shocks per second of about five-thousand volts through clothing up to five centimetres in thickness. The little bag you’ve been seen with for the past three years, the one that holds all of your sanitary products? Well, that little bag can hide just about anything. Anything could include diamond-tipped glass cutters, a set of lock picks and a small piece of plastic explosive. Just in case things get desperate.
The no-necks smirk as I walk up to them. They’re still smirking as I pull the TASERs out and shoot them both in the gut, akimbo style. They’re down in an instant, doing the worst kind of horizontal mamba. The Difference lies before me. A green promise of golden sands and freedom of meal choice. It’s easier than I thought. The explosives don’t need to come out. Neither do the lock picks. The diamond yearns for its green paper cousin and that yearning cuts through the glass like a knife through a big brown turd. They should’ve paid more for the guards. Four locks snap down on almost two million dollars. It’s been a bumper year, lead from the front by yours truly. I place the TASER hand units inside the glass case and step back over the twitching guards. Their dark blue pants have a slowly spreading stain of irony down the back of their thighs.
The suitcases just about fill up the boot. They could have layered the money and fit it in one but I guess that doesn’t look quite as impressive. I pull the open container with last night's corn-ridden stool out of my pocket and throw it out the car. No way was I going to rely on my body for good timing. Three years of experience have taught me never to rely on your bowels.
The airport check-in lady smiles as I pay for the extra kilos on my luggage. She wonders what’s so important that I need to pay one hundred dollars extra for. I look her in the eye, smile and tell her.
Toilet paper.
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