The audience laughed and I settled into my seat, a little more comfortable now that introductions had been made. Except for Mr. Poet, who stood up, introduced himself, mentioned the award that his latest poem had won, and proceeded to say, “You can tell when a person truly understands what humor is when they do not have to resort to profanity, unlike the potty mouth at the table.” With that, he threw me a look of disdain so pure and disgusted, it was followed by the exclamation point of snotty expressions, the exaggerated eye roll.
The room flatlined as every eye in it immediately glided down the table to me, the offender—the Potty Mouth. I’m sure my jaw was caught in a free fall before I pretended it was funny, but it was no use. It was out there; the diss was as blatant and direct as one baby mama to another with kids the exact same age—and with the exact same noses—standing in line at the Dollar Store, buying diapers.
I decided not to respond to Mr. Poet’s comment, even though I was so embarrassed that I don’t know how my ears didn’t light my neighbors on fire. I was stunned, and the embarrassment was so overwhelming that for a moment I felt dizzy.
Would I have liked to reach over and give him one of my mother’s “I don’t think you’ll be doing that again” pinches, flesh vise-gripped so effectively that it would leave physical and emotional scars for decades? Yes, yes, I would have liked that very much. But there was no way I was going to stoop to his level. People had attended this panel to hear writers talk about humor, not to watch a slap fight between two assholes, one in a hat (and it’s definitely an Asshole Fight if any participant is wearing a hat).
Let it be known, however, that due to the fact that I have two younger sisters close in age, I am very versed in the art of parking lot fights, especially the kicking aspect, and I am more than willing to bring those skills indoors, my friend.
He, however, went on to recite his entire poem word for word, and I happen to know this for a fact because he printed out five pages of it and handed them out to everyone who passed by one of the classroom windows.
My outward politeness, however, did not stop me from thinking of a thousand retorts in my head:
“Who are you, Columbo? Take off your friggin’ hat already; it’s a hundred and fifteen degrees outside and the runway at the airport just melted. Get an all-season identifier, like a birthmark or a monocle.”
“I want to peel the skin off your head like a grape. There’s certainly enough hot air under that fedora to steam your bald head, you talking onion.”
“I googled you after I read your stupid bio. You can tell when a writer truly understands humor when he doesn’t have to write about oral sex and wieners in every single shitty poem to get a laugh. Yes. I said shitty. Again. Shitty shitty shitty.”
I thought of all those things and more.
I just didn’t say them.
My ears were still a little hot by the time the class ended two hours later, but I was comforted when several students came up afterward and said nice things to me. I decided to chalk the experience up to lack of social skills on his part because he was probably such an ugly baby that no one would hold him; and I wouldn’t rule out Tourette’s or a crest in a manic cycle that had yet to be addressed.
So I went about my business during the conference, meeting nice people and having a good time, until I was headed back to my hotel the next day. Who was coming toward me but Mr. Oral Sex Poet. There was no way to blend into a crowd; there were just two of us on the path. I knew it was him. He was still wearing his hat.
Now, just to be clear, I am not the nicest person in the world, and I have never pretended to be. However, I knew I had two options here: smile and say hello or knock off his hat with a “Mom said to stop touching me” kick and go for the back of his neck where the flesh was the loosest to get the best grip for the de-gloving. (See? I can be not nice, too.)
But as we got closer, I hoped that maybe I had made a mistake; maybe he did mean the comment to be funny but just delivered it wrong, or just ended up saying something he didn’t truly intend. He was a couple of yards away from me when I smiled and made myself say “Hi,” not sarcastically, not snottily, but pleasantly. It was, I have to say, almost a cheerful greeting. As if to say: Let’s wipe the slate clean, Mr. Oral Sex Poet. Because after all, I decided, what kind of adult man calls an adult woman a Potty Mouth in front of sixty other adults and means it?
The same kind of man, apparently, who sees a Potty Mouth waving and saying hello to him on an otherwise deserted sidewalk—then sneers and literally turns his nose up.
Well, I thought, my hand still in the air midwave. Well.
I guess he showed me.
Didn’t he?
The last night of the conference, I arrived at the hall where the reading was about to take place and checked in with the coordinator to see whether there were any last-minute things I should know about.
“You’re scheduled to read first,” she informed me, and that I was to be followed by Mr. Oral Sex Poet, whom I was decidedly not going to wave to this time. “We’re taping this, so if you’d like a copy, let me know. The poet after you is submitting this video to an award panel, and as long as I’m making one copy, I can make another. My battery can last an hour, so you’ll be fine on time.”
It was a great reading. I had a wonderful time. The audience was awesome, all except for the wrinkled woman in the front row who shook her head adamantly when I asked whether they wanted to hear another piece and she cheered for the poet instead. I saw you, lady. I saw you. But I didn’t cast one glance in her direction, nor did I look at Mr. Oral Sex Poet, who still sat with his hat on, as I read piece after piece, occasionally eyeing the video camera until the green light switched to red and the battery power was nearly spent.
Kicked, I thought to myself as I turned my head and looked straight at him, smiling cheerfully.
Consider your ass very much kicked.
That’s right, my friend. I said ass.
DON’T MAKE ME THE ASSHOLE
I knew it.
I. Knew. It.
The trap I had set only yesterday had been sprung, and the proof was right there before my eyes. My bath puff, green, unraveled, and springy, was in the second tier of the bath caddy that hung down from the neck of the showerhead.
And that was not where I had left it.
I pursed my lips together and shook my head.
Roughly twenty-four hours before, I suspected something was amiss. For days now, even possibly weeks, I had a feeling the puff was not where I had left it. Its position would be slightly askew, barely noticeable to the naked eye, but I could tell that my puff had been tampered with. I dismissed the notion, sure that I was wrong. I had to be wrong. Who would use another person’s puff? Intentionally? It’s the equivalent of using someone else’s toothbrush or hairbrush, or used chewing gum plucked off the underside of a table.
Who moved my puff? Who would even touch my puff? You couldn’t pay me to touch a strange puff; even looking at other people’s used puffs made me feel queasy. Now I couldn’t even bring myself to look at my own puff. I put on rubber gloves and plucked it out of the shower caddy with a pair of salad tongs and tossed it unceremoniously into the trash bin.
That’s when it dawned on me—the call was coming from inside the house. There were only two possible suspects: my husband and our nineteen-year-old nephew, Derek, who was staying with us for the summer.
Obviously, my husband would respect the sanctity of the puff. It is very clear in my house that I am Anti-Cootie. He knows all too well that I won’t even take a sip from a glass someone else has mouthed as a result of letting my then three-year-old nephew, Nicholas, take a “sip” from my glass of water, only to return it to me looking like a Chicken McNugget smoothie.
So that left only one possibility. A flash of horror gripped my bones and I had to resist the urge to cry out loud, although my mouth still made the movements.
“Oh my God, oh my God,” I whispered, thinking, Why, why, why would a y
oung man go into a shower and start touching unfamiliar puffs? Especially one that was frayed and collapsing—it was clear, that was no young puff. It had miles on it, having already scratched and clawed its way through life, and now it lay used and feeble on the second shelf. I had to bunch it up to even make it workable. And now, it was soiled and shameful in a pitiful netted heap, used by others without protesting a bit.
Dirty puff. Dirty, dirty puff. I wasn’t sure from which perspective I should throw up first—mine or my nephew’s.
As I washed without the puff for the first time in ages, knowing I was not getting clean with soap alone, I took some small comfort in knowing I was not smearing questionable DNA all over my body. As I stood under the stream of water with my eyes closed and suds pooling around my ankles, one thing was clear: I was going to have to broach the situation and put an end to the sharing of the puff.
I didn’t want to blurt it out and risk embarrassing my nephew. I felt a grand approach was much better than an appointed one; after all, mysteries of the body and accompanying long stares are far more comfortable to deal with when they are left on a somewhat ambiguous note. I considered leaving a note saying, “Dear People Living in My House: I don’t mean to be selfish, but the puff in the shower is not community property. It belongs to the Lady. Who will now be getting a new one. With her name on it,” on the bathroom mirror in a swirly, cheeky font, but I decided on another, underhanded, more passive-aggressive route.
And then, when I was dressed, I got my car keys.
When I returned, the two gentlemen I resided with were sharing a bag of Fritos and a can of bean dip, which, by the way, I purchased because it’s my Signature Snack, which they had raided from the Lady’s Private Snack Closet. My husband stopped chewing and tried to hide a gargantuan portion of refried beans under his tongue when I walked through the door.
“I’m calling a family meeting,” I announced.
“Ellbuoyoomoooh,” he said.
“Yes, you will buy me more, but that is not the objective of this family meeting. Something kooky is happening in the shower,” I said, opening the bag I’d returned home with.
My husband gulped several Fritos whole like a snake. “It all goes down the drain,” he protested.
“That is an urban myth,” I replied, letting go of the bag. “If I stuck a black light in there, I bet it would light up like a Broadway marquee. It does not all go down the drain. The world is not your urinal. And I have a situation that is possibly more urgent than even that.”
No one said a word.
“For the last several days, I have noticed that my puff is not in the same place where I left it,” I explained slowly. “So I feel it necessary to explain that a bath puff is a single-user sort of thing. Like a hairbrush. Or a retainer. Or—”
“Don’t say ‘tampon’ in front of Derek,” my husband said as he cupped a hand to the side of his mouth to block Derek’s view, and then mouthed, “He’s just a boy.”
“I wasn’t going to say that,” I said, shaking my head.
“I thought you were,” my husband replied.
“No, I wasn’t going to,” I insisted.
“Are you sure?” he asked. “Because it looked like you were going to say something . . . like that.”
My mouth started moving because I had so much to say but no words came out.
“I was going to say dental floss!” I finally asserted. “Dental floss. And keep your hands off my goddamn frigging bean dip! It’s my Signature Snack. You know that.”
“Are you making dinner soon?” Derek asked. “What are we having?”
I took a deep breath and then spit out, “I want to talk about bath puffs. I want to talk about someone touching something that’s mine and private and should remain mine and private. No one should be touching my puff, do you understand? No one touches my puff. No one. But me. I am the only one who has touching privileges over my puff.”
The air was still in the room for a moment.
“But,” my husband began. “We’re married. I thought we were . . . one.”
The air went still in the next moment.
“What?” I questioned. “No. No. We are not one. Who told you we were one? Because. No, we are not one. You are one. I am two. Or I am one and you are two. It doesn’t matter, but we can’t both be one.”
My husband didn’t say a word.
I pointed at him. “Uno,” I said very clearly, then pointed to myself, “and dos. Uno and dos. Don’t say anything, Derek.”
“I would never touch your puff,” he said anyway, and that’s when I wanted to light myself on fire.
“Don’t say another word, Derek.” I turned back to my husband: “Why are you puff touching? Why? How long have we had a community puff when only one person in the community knew?”
“I don’t know,” my husband said, shaking his head. “We got married in 1996, so . . .” And then he started counting on his fingers.
“Oh my God. Oh my God.” My hands flew to the sides of my head. “You are shitting me. Shitting me. I am going to pass out. I want to pass out. What is going on here? Is my sister my mom, too?!”
“I thought you were the oldest,” Derek said.
“Not the point, honey,” I yelled at my nephew. “Not the point. It’s a metaphor!”
“It’s actually not a metaphor; it’s an analogy,” my husband corrected.
“Shut up,” I demanded. “You still have student loans!”
I reached back into the bag and pulled out a long plastic tube with rainbow colors inside and ripped it open.
“You are green!” I said as I threw a brand-new bath puff at Derek. “I am pink! And Mr. One is purple!”
Then I had to lay down the Laws of the Bath Puff, which I augmented with hand motions simply to avoid any confusion. They are as follows:
1. Just because we sit on the same potty does not mean it’s okay to put my puff on your butt.
2. I never want to stand in the shower again and say to myself, “Is that . . . mine?”
3. If you forget your puff color, you surrender your right to use a puff, any puff, during that period in which ownership is unclear until you have reconfirmed your assigned hue.
4. The moment the puff leaves the tub/shower area, it is not allowed in any other part of the house that is not the trash.
5. We should make a concerted effort to never let our individual puffs graze, brush against, or have any physical contact with one another.
6. And I really don’t want anyone else touching my soap when he is naked, either.
7. Don’t make me the asshole. Because you are making me an asshole for calling you out for violating unspoken but generally understood Cootie Code.
Of course, I am living with two males, whose response to the laying of the law was:
“Puff off.”
“Puff you.”
“Shut the puff up.”
“Never leave a puff behind.”
“I’m going to put my puff on the knob.”
And if they think that’s funny, fine. Then that’s funny. As long as we have our own netted globes teeming with DNA to scrub the dead skin cells off our own bodies, they can laugh all they want. They should laugh. Laugh it up. Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha. How funny!
It’s not going to be so funny, though, when they see a note on the Lady’s Private Snack Closet addressing some missing savory items, particularly bean dip, printed in the boldest font she could possibly find.
LEGENDS OF THE FALL
MIDDAY.
THE LIGHT ON A PHONE RESTING ON A HALL TABLE SIGNALS RED AS IT RINGS.
THE VOICE OF A WOMAN CALLS OUT.
LAURIE (Voice-over)
I got it, hon!
A HAND PICKS IT UP. IT BELONGS TO LAURIE (INDETERMINATE AGE, CURLY HAIR, MOST OF THE LEFT SIDE IN A PONYTAIL, MOST OF THE RIGHT HALF TUCKED BEHIND HER EAR, WEARING A BROWN VELOUR HOODIE—CLEARLY HER PAJAMAS. SHE’S CHEWING ON A FIBER BAR AS SHE PICKS UP THE PHONE, HER MOUTH SMACKING LOUDLY BECAUSE THERE IS NO O
NE ELSE IN THE HOUSE TO YELL AT HER.)
LAURIE (CONT’D)
Hello?
CUT TO A KITCHEN IN A LARGE TRACT HOME WITH COUNTERS FILLED WITH EVERY SMALL ELECTRICAL APPLIANCE EVER INVENTED AND SOLD, INCLUDING TWO MICROWAVES, A CONVECTION OVEN, A BLENDER, TWO COFFEEMAKERS. CROCKS FILLED WITH DECORATIVE SPATULAS ARE CRAMMED IN BETWEEN, AS ARE FLAMELESS CANDLES AND BLOCKS OF COLORFUL SILICONE KNIVES. SEVERAL BOXES MARKED “QVC” ON THE SIDES ARE OPENED AND VISIBLE IN THE BACKGROUND. MOM, A WOMAN BEARING A STRIKING RESEMBLANCE TO LAURIE, PLUS TWENTY-TWO YEARS, HAS A CORDLESS PHONE IN HER HAND. SHE IS CHEWING ON A COOKIE AND IS WEARING A BROWN VELOUR HOODIE. THERE IS A PACKING PEANUT IN HER HAIR.
CUT BACK TO LAURIE. A SMALL CHUNK OF FIBER BAR TUMBLES OUT OF HER MOUTH. SHE KEEPS CHEWING.
LAURIE
Hey, mom. What’s—
CUT TO MOM.
MOM
Yeah, listen. I don’t know if anyone told you, but uh, we were at the hospital Thursday.
CUT TO LAURIE.
LAURIE
Oh my God. What happened?
CUT TO MOM.
MOM
Oh, God. It’s your sister.
LAURIE
Oh, no! Lisa?
MOM
Your sister!
LAURIE
Lisa?
MOM
The one closest to you.
CUT TO LAURIE.
LAURIE
I said “Lisa?”
MOM
In age.
LAURIE
Oh, Linda.
CUT TO MOM.
MOM
So your sister was just in the hospital.
LAURIE
Lisa?
MOM
Have you been drinking? I’m not playing games with you. Are you ready for me to tell you about your sister’s tragedy? or are you going to play games?
CUT TO LAURIE.
LAURIE
I’m ready. I’m actually very excited.
LAURIE WALKS INTO THE BATHROOM AND SHUTS THE DOOR.
CUT TO MOM.
SHE BITES INTO ANOTHER COOKIE. A PIECE OF IT FALLS OUT OF HER MOUTH.