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The Mountain.
The Silence.
The Isolation.
What I am about to transcribe to you is not an isolated incident, no, this is something that has transpired over and over and over again with the details of each successive occurrence illustrating clearly to me, that there is in fact, some place called Hell.
At the complex of education (school) located on the Mountain (country side back water station) one inevitable thing needs to happen basically, everyday I am there.
I need to use the toilet.
This is pretty natural so it doesn’t really get me too flustered. I have been doing it for a while after all.
However….on Thrusdays, this year the same as last year, one particular teacher, an old Japanese man about 60 years old who is an English teacher I guess, although for all I know hes some kind of deranged charity case, comes to the school to teach, or something.
He is about 60 years old but somehow comes off as being, old as fuck.
It’s tough to put into words but you have all seen it: On this side we have a 60-year-old man who has made an effort to keep up with the times and stay active, healthy and sane. He wears conventional fashions and has a good, slick haircut and is likely sporting a Rolex and fancy yet conservative foot wear. He is in the “Sean Connery” category of older men.
On the other side, well….lets call this the “Gary Busey” category. Essentially, it’s all circling the drain. Common sense: gone. Fashion awareness: shot to hell. General ability to relate to other humans without freaking them out or making people mutter “ewwww”: erased.
That is where this other Teacher falls. Another casualty of the “Busey syndrome”.
When he is in the teachers room, he sits at his desk with the most horrific poly plaster grin teak welded to his face. His outfit: slacks and a shirt he must have been given when they released him from the institution back in ’69. His general aura is disconcerting, his overall countenance, enough to make you lose your hard-won appetite.
This, all this, I can sort of deal with. He is an old guy (sort of) right? Old people have only two principal hobbies left in their miserable lives and those are: 1) telling us, the not old, what pussies we are, and 2) acting like they are stark raving mad. This is common knowledge. So, I’m dealing with this. Thank god we live in a society that appreciates what is important: Money and Youth. Just, thank god for that. But I digress….
No, my alarm bells go off not when he is sitting at his desk, bolt up right smiling crazily and thanking everyone who passes by his desk, just thanking them, what for, nobody knows just muttering “Thanks thanks always thank you”.
Whatever, I’m dealing. I told you. No, things don’t get truly bizarre and frankly terrifying until I find him, again, as always, hanging out in the toilet between classes.
After each class finishes, he makes his way to the first floor toilet, near the teachers room, and instead of washing his hands in the deep sink outside the bathroom like many teachers do, washing their hands obsessively to avoid disease which actually, over a lifetime, weakens their immune system amazingly so that at 55 they can be heard screaming “Oh god no…not the Flu!!!” , no, he goes into the bathroom and I swear to god, is waiting for someone to come in.
At school, I drink a lot of coffee. Then, I drink a lot of water to make up for the coffee. The end result is that I have to engage in joyous and often intensive bouts of urination 2 or 3 times a day. As doing this in my pants while educating the masses for some reason is frowned upon, I have to go, between classes to the toilet.
I did this again today.
And yes, there he was. Washing his hands. Washing away the memory of all the people he has murdered no doubt.
As soon as I entered the toilet my soul let out a massive SIGH.
“NOT AGAIN.”
“yes, again bitch” it ( my soul, a clear sadist) snickered at me.
I went to the FAR urinal and tried hard to look like I was really focusing on this, like it wasnt something I have done what? thousands of times? tens of thousands? No, I was focused, concentrating, unable to talk.
I felt his eyes boring into me from the 3 meters distance to the sink.
I’m focused. Cant talk. Focused. Cant talk. Focuse….
“Sooo, what ah, book are uh,reading these days?”
Again again again again again.
THE SAME QUESTION.
Last year, how many times was he in here? How many times did he ask me that same question?
How many times did I cordially answer, forcing the thought “Dude, I don’t do pee pee chat” out of mind while insisting to myself, “its ok, back in his day guys talked in the toilet, hell they probably helped shake each other off or pissed on each other to stay warm in the snow after the war..” but not now. This was AT LEAST the 8 th time he had accosted, yes ACCOSTED me in the toilet with his manipulative, dirty question.
He might as well have asked: “Hey little boy, do you want some candy? I have a puppy in my Moving van over there, yeah that one, behind the trees.”
My inner sigh, I couldn’t control, became an outward-bound sigh and I mumbled, I think, “I’m reading a book about…climbing…things.”
I forced my remaining urine out in one massive, sort of painful torrent, some of it splashing, sadly, on my pant leg, quite a bit actually, and, book about climbing things? jesus. gross. Come on Man.
Then the real deal breaker, he spoke.
“Ah…yes…ah….non-friction?”
gross.gross.gross.gross.gross.
escape.escape.escape.escape.escape.
“uh…yeah….I’m not into Friction UH, ohgod, Fiction.”
Wash hands quickly, do not make eye contact.
GROSS.
He washes his hands in this sink.
“Ah….you mean….contempolaly author….sss?”
Move. Grab the door handle. Move. Open it. Move, away….oh god…I just realized, he had moved to a urinal and had begun, had EXECUTED all the motions connected with a piss but unless I’m mistaken, had not actually PISSED. He was, deargodmaryandjoseph, FAKING A PISS TO ASK ME THE SAME FUCKING QUESTIONS HE HAD ASKED ME OVER AND OVER AGAIN BEFORE.
flee Eric. Flee.
I did.
Vending machine. Hit the vending machine. Fuck. hands SHAKING, SHAKING, get the change, dropped a ten yen coin: Fuck it.
hands shaking…need….to get ….DAMN YOU!
NO CORN SOUP!!!!!
They only stalk it in the winter time. Damn….damn and then I can’t handle it and let out a deep, throaty “FUCK”.
I whirl around to 180 degrees, my body locked in a combat position, my eyes wild, my face flushed and sweat streaming now from my brow despite it being cool, only to encounter two 14-year-old girls from one of my classes standing there, mouths slightly agape, staring at me with utter bewilderment. Staring with big, brown, almond shaped eyes. Telling me without words: we are BEWILDERED.
A moment passes. My eyes shift from one of them to the other. They look at me. Then another moment slides by and one of them, the one on the right, maybe her name is Ayu says “em, Eric, your pants….”
????.
What the fuck are you suggesting you little tart? is this place full of nothing but deranged faggots and under age prosies?!?! JESUS!!!
Then, she extends a small boned, tiny little index pointer finger toward my crotch.
I notice her Mickey mouse wrist watch.
I notice her small hands.
In slow motion, my eyes move down and I realize, with difficulty, that my fly is completely wide open. A wave of lead heavy, ice-cold horror drifts into my lungs as the other girl named Maiko or Mako or something speaks: “eww, it smells bad, like…pee : (” Her little nose scrunches up, and she looks left then right then….
Both of them stare at me. Their Mouths closed tight. Their Eyes slightly squinting. Their Body language suddenly on the defensive. My sweat trickles down the side of my face onto my lips. It trickles down my back under my belt. It rolls down my chest to my abdomen.
I inhale pulling in a long breath with my nose as the three of us hold this tense eye contact.
It does smell like urine.
Gary Busey.
I make an abrupt right face and as I long stride out of the corridor toward the teachers room I mumble something like “Aren’t you two supposed to be in class? Jesus.”
On the train home, I notice, with a mixture of embarrassment and relief, that nobody sits next to me for very long.
