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| I'm Here to Save You |
This is the men's room toilet in the basement at some soul-destroying place where I once worked. Grotesque, isn’t it?
Yet, somehow, it has a twisted type of porcelain beauty that a man could come to really appreciate for its sublime unsanitary glory and brazen display of sheer uncleanliness.
Monkeys take better care of their habitats.
It’s magnificent in it own way – an edifice of genius evolved through years of neglect to test human will and caveman sensibility. Reduced to this primal level, no one who might ever willingly use this toilet would care what position the seat was left in by the last user. Up. Down. It simply wouldn't matter, because if it was in the wrong configuration, they would instinctively correct it to suit their needs and wouldn't make a big damn deal out of it.
A man lacking resolve and fortitude having no other choice than to take a seat on this particular toilet might rush in quickly, his jaw set in grim determination, eager to be done and away from this vessel of potential contagion that an unfair universe has set before him in his time of need. He might feel compelled to try to fashion a rudimentary seat cover from scraps of toilet paper before being seated. He might even attempt to hover.
The man who has strode barefoot through the primitive fires of proto-human initiation, one who has survived the tests, would enter this restroom calmly, perhaps with a newspaper and a cup of coffee. If he was running late and needed to multi-task to save time in the morning he might even bring a sausage or bacon-filled breakfast burrito.
This man understands that paper seat covers are for fools because the real danger in his world is not from germs but rather from triplicate forms and pie-charted monthly sales reports thrust in his face by demonic supervisors. He intuitively knows also that a breakfast burrito is the perfect food for eating without a plate because it can be balanced perfectly across one knee while he reads his paper, and as long as the filling isn’t still bubbling from the microwave everything will be just fine.
Fear of contagion and filth? Ha. The man who embraces the chaotic slide toward simian devolution dances joyously with the germs and latent viruses found here and in similar, and sometimes worse, places knowing that their assaults against his immune system only make him more powerful.
When the inevitable super-mega-ass-kicking virus rolls across the globe in a feverish wave, those who were unafraid to plant themselves firmly on these unwashed thrones of tribulation will watch as those around them whose immune systems have been left sissified and weak by a lifetime of germophobic behavior succumb to a host of ailments too horrible to describe. In this time of biological cleansing they whose white blood cells, through constant training, have become like Norse Berserkers will suffer only some mild congestion and minor aches and pains that are easily treated with a nice dark beer or a shot of good Scotch.
And when the planet has been allowed to become untidy again, these neo-humans, these Germ-Whisperers, with their godlike immune systems will arise to create a new society in a world that is not only considerably less crowded, but also mercifully free of hand-sanitizing gels and unnecessary household cleaning products.
