The Potty Mouth at the Table (14 page)

Read The Potty Mouth at the Table Online

Authors: Laurie Notaro

Tags: #Non-Fiction, #Humour

BOOK: The Potty Mouth at the Table
2.2Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
DEATH CAB FOR COOTIES

I
t looked like an ordinary yellow cab.

When it pulled up to the curb of the hotel in Cincinnati, no one fled from the backseat murmuring, “I’d get the next one if I were you,” or shook his head at me like a pitcher shaking off a catcher. There were no warning signs, no caution tape stretched across the backseat, no body bag in the trunk beside my suitcase. But as soon as I settled into my seat and the bellhop closed the car door, I knew I was in for a very long ride.

There was a distinct scent inside the cab, one that made me choke back a dry heave. It reeked of bad thoughts, lingering regrets, and possibly a touch of human decomposition. It reminded me of the predominant reason I never went back to Girl Scouts camp. Cinnamon toast is awesome, but
when you show a little girl the hole the pack leader’s husband’s just dug ten feet from camp and say “Form a polite line and do not stare,” you have just provided a ten-year-old with a lifetime’s worth of recurring night-terror material.

Because that incident occurred when my frontal cortex was still quite malleable, I now sit up in bed in the thickest of darkness at least once a week, panting like a fat dog on a beach, sweating like I had just raced Jen Lancaster for the last Twinkie on Earth (another recurring dream—she wins) and waking my husband up in the process.

“You had the dream?” he always asks, to which I nod.

“Train station or the Twinkie fight?”

“Train,” I say as I nod again, but I still can’t catch my breath.

“Just the toilet sitting out in the open?”

“Mmm-hmmm,” I reply in a whisper, still seeing it as freshly as if I were still there. “No door. No walls.
Just a potty.

“And the Chinese lady who stands over you and yells, ‘
You take too long!
’?”

I nod my head again. “She’s
so mean,
” I whimper, as my face collapses into that of a cranky toddler’s.

“I know,” my husband says soothingly. “I know.”

I turn and barely say to him, “I just don’t want to wipe,” looking for understanding. “I just don’t want to wipe.”

And now, because I still think there are some soft spots
in parts of my brain, I was sure the smelly cab was going to translate into something far more paralyzing than an angry Chinese lady with a full bladder. It smelled like an open sewer—the odor was foul and aged, and the stench infested every crack and surface of the taxi, wrapping me in a gagging embrace.

It was too late to orchestrate an exit; I was on my way to the airport, my suitcase was in the trunk, and the driver, a husky man in his thirties, had already merged onto a highway. So I covered my mouth with my hand, pinched my nostrils as closed as I could bear, and tried to focus on anything besides the putrid stink sinking into every pore I had that wasn’t already blocked with body cream from the T.J.Maxx clearance shelf. I cracked my window to let as much of the funk out, but the glass edged down an inch and then stopped, trapping me in the taxi tomb with its fetor.

The odor staunchly refused to move.

What could possibly smell so bad?
I thought to myself as I surveyed the scenery, watching Ohio turn into Kentucky while I prayed for the airport exit to appear. What could be causing this foul odor? It
is
Kentucky, I reminded myself; maybe someone left a farm animal in the trunk a month ago after he got dropped off at his whiskey still? Could someone have shoved a diaper in between the seat cushions? Oh my God, am I sitting in someone else’s muck? My friend
Andrea sat in homeless pee once on a bus in Denver. It made a great story, but no one really wants that in their repertoire. I quickly examined the seat and saw no kind of residue beneath me. Nothing. I was safe.

My mind raced, trying to solve the mystery. Surely, it can’t just be the smell of the cab. I’ve even lost a milk shake in my car before during July in Arizona and it didn’t smell this bad. Is it flatulence? It can’t be, I reasoned, fully wanting to believe I was breathing in eau de diaper rather than eau de cabdriver exhaust. He would have had to hit six different countries in the last eight hours, including dropping by India to snatch up some curry off a questionable street cart and then drinking water from Mexico, in order to cause this level of intestinal distress. Anthony Bourdain has never eaten anything that could have resulted in this, even meals he watched die. I was at a loss.

Meanwhile, the smell was not abating; in fact, it was becoming thicker with every passing moment. Soon, I’d have no choice but to kick the window out or risk making my own contribution to this stinkhole. What the hell is going on in Cincinnati that no one has reported this criminal scent to the authorities? I wanted to yell. This was definitely a life-sentence-without-parole brand of smell, there was no doubt about that. Premeditated, indeed.

Just as I looked out the window and wished I could stick
my head out of it like my dog, I saw a sign for the airport. I had two miles to go. I can make it, I reassured myself, I
will
make it! I can hold my breath for two miles! If he goes sixty miles per hour and runs every red light, that’s only two more minutes!

As the cabdriver took the exit, I saw the air traffic control tower on the horizon getting closer, closer, closer. I was almost free to breathe! Just then, the driver turned his head in my direction and asked, “Which airline are you at?”

I started to show four fingers in a misguided attempt to pantomime the words “US Airways” so that I wouldn’t have to stop holding my breath. And it was precisely at that moment that I solved the mystery of the overwhelming stench.

It was his breath. That terrible, sickening smell was coming from his mouth. And the sickest part of it was that I knew I wasn’t overreacting when the urge rose up inside of me to scream as if I suddenly had found myself sitting in the middle of Grand Central station with no pants on and a wad of Charmin in my hand. I quickly grabbed my purse, got my wallet, and rummaged through it to find enough cash for the fare so I wouldn’t have to stay in that cab a second longer than necessary.

I grabbed a twenty just as the cab pulled up to the curb and stopped in front of the US Airways terminal. Just as I
leaned forward to hand it to him, he opened the car door to get out.

I’m not exactly sure what happened next—I don’t know whether the bottom of his nylon sweatpants caught the handle of the seat adjuster below, whether one foot stepped on the hem of the other pant leg, or whether the elastic suddenly around his waist had surrendered and exhaled its final, exhausted breath. I can’t say. All I know is that as I leaned forward, I saw the shiny navy blue material bolt south, cresting over a wide expanse of flesh and gathering momentum for its last push to the bottom of the hill, and before I could shoot backward, the driver’s exposed, unveiled ass was less than two feet from my face.

Without missing a beat, he immediately reached back, grabbed his waistband, and yanked it back over his enormous, bare, brandished posterior and slammed the cab door like it happened a million times. Every. Single. Day.

There are moments in life that pass all too quickly, and there are those that drag all too leisurely, siphoning every grain of time they have left in the frame. Then there are moments that make the world halt, that hold you hostage long enough for the comfort of denial to settle in, until you believe that a cabdriver’s pants did not fall off at the distance from your face that you would normally hold an ice cream cone. This was one of those moments.

It was at this point that I wondered why it was that I stopped carrying a flask of bourbon in my purse. If you had asked me prior to this moment what circumstances would have allowed me to become nose to cheek with a stranger’s bare buttock, I only could have surmised that I had become a crack whore, and even then, I would not be the one about to hand over a twenty-dollar bill. Especially not to a stranger who couldn’t be bothered to brush his teeth for decades, let alone secure his danglies with some undergarments.

I will admit that I held back on my typical twenty percent, but do believe that some solid advice can take the place of monetary gains when administered properly.

“Here’s the fare,” I said, finally relinquishing the twenty as I fled from the cab. As I grabbed the handle of my suitcase from him, I took a large step back, looked him dead in the mouth, and said: “And here’s a tip: Whatever about the dental floss, you’ve got three teeth left, you’d just be going through the motions at this point. I get it. But before other parts of you start to rot, too, you need to buy some goddamn underwear.”

But what I didn’t see coming was his jaw dropping just as quickly as his pants. Within seconds, his concentrated fetid breath shot in a direct line out of his mouth and into my sinus cavity, where the scent firmly planted itself and remained until I reached my gate and headed into the two thousand miles of airspace beyond.

THE RED CHAIR

I
t was the grandest red chair I had ever seen.

I couldn’t believe my eyes.

The contour of its winged back flared out at precise, perfect angles; the brass tacks flawlessly aligned along the edges of the armrests fixed the dark, deep red bouclé upholstery firmly in place; the arms rolled outward slightly in an invitingly wide curve, as if going too far in one direction would be unforgivable.

I loved this chair.

But it was too late. I had already pledged my allegiance to the antique dressing table that was displayed in the window of St. Vinnie’s, my favorite thrift store. I had unabashedly lusted for a three-mirror table for most of my adult life, and I couldn’t have found a more perfect one than if I had
rubbed my own belly and made a wish. The cashier had my debit card and a
SOLD
sticker was slapped on one of the mirrored panels before I even looked over and saw the glorious chair. And the side tables that matched the vanity. And the antique footstool covered in floral, cabbage rose chintz. And the incredible floor lamp, and the carved rocker, and the overstuffed settee in white linen. But the standout, I felt by far, was the chair.

“How much is that?” I asked without a second’s hesitation, knowing full well that if he said anything below sixty bucks, I was going to take it even though I knew that I was already going to have trouble sneaking a dressing table into the house, never mind a huge 1930s wingback chair.

“It’s $74.99,” the cashier said without looking up, and handed me the receipt for the table.

“Oh,” I scoffed, more grateful than anything that I had just escaped the trap I had set for myself. “That’s far too much. Far too much.”

The cashier shrugged.

“It’s too much,” I said in a whisper and I nodded. “It is.”

“Okay . . .” the cashier replied.

Fine,
I thought in my head.
Charge too much for a red chair. See if anyone will buy it! I thought you were a charity! Shame on you for letting people go hungry or naked or whatever because you priced a chair too high!

But as I was leaving, I had to pass the red chair on my way out. I reached out and touched the wool upholstery, still in great condition, eyed the broad, wide expanse of the seat, the sweeping curves that flared out with elegance of a bygone era. “Oh,” I heard myself whisper, “I love you. How I do!”

It was the Great Gatsby of chairs. Understated yet bold, subtle though demanding. A classic. A standard set so high that other chairs wilted in its shadow, afraid, lesser. I pictured it in my living room, layered in newspapers and unopened mail. In my office, with my computer perched in its lap. In my bedroom, smothered under an enormous pile of wrinkled clothes.

I could not bring this chair home with me, I told myself; I could not. I find it very difficult to pass up once-in-a-lifetime deals and they happen all the time to me. As a result, I already have two Victorian couches, an antique architect’s desk, a steamer trunk, and an eighteenth-century French pine door in my subterranean wing, which is what I like to call our basement.

However, I have plans for everything, and I keep telling my husband this. I will get to the couches as soon as I master the art of reupholstery, which I will probably start sometime in my fifties, possibly sixties; the desk will go into the library as soon as I marry my second husband (hopefully
a plumber), who will make enough money to build one; and I will use the door when I buy a house that is missing one that measures nine feet tall.

And I know danger lingers right around the corner. I am aware of that. I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that I do have true concerns about becoming not just a hoarder but a hoarder who goes down in hoarding history, like the Collyer brothers, who died in their New York City town house when one of the brothers—while attempting to feed the other brother, who was blind and immobile—was crushed by his own booby trap of newspaper bundles and a baby carriage to catch “intruders”; as a consequence the other brother starved to death ten feet away . . . although their bodies were found two weeks apart. Or Big and Little Edie Beale of Grey Gardens, who had a twenty-eight-room mansion but used only three rooms because of the abundance of trash, raccoons, and cats that ruled the rest of it. Or Howard Hughes, who held on to his urine and collection of fingernail clippings for far longer than was really necessary. My husband shares these concerns and is convinced he’s going to die in a fire fueled by my abundance of ephemera, with his major lament being, “People will never know that I was funny.”

So when I came home with the announcement that my lifelong quest for the perfect dressing table had just been completed, he was far less thrilled than I was.

“Great,” he said without looking at me. “One more place you can put paper in.”

“It’s an awesome table,” I said. “It’s got a three-way mirror and rosette carvings on the front.”

“Where is it going to fit?” he asked. “In between the two Victorian sofas in the dungeon where it can get nice and warped and grow mushrooms on its legs? Does it even fit in the bedroom?”

“Yes!” I lied. “I just need to move the pile of clothes that need to be dry-cleaned over to where the pile of clothes that need to be lint rolled is, and put the piles of clothes that are moth-eaten or have stains I can’t get out into the plastic bins, so I can put those in the basement until I decide I can’t save them and then throw them away in roughly twelve years’ time.”

Other books

Angel: Rochon Bears by Moxie North
Tragic Desires by A.M. Hargrove
Treason's Harbour by Patrick O'Brian
Wishing Well by Trevor Baxendale
Betrayed by Suzetta Perkins
The Invisible Bridge by Julie Orringer
Shadow's Light by Nicola Claire
Joseph E. Persico by Roosevelt's Secret War: FDR, World War II Espionage