A Piss in the Woods: A Slightly Messy Novella

9781483508696

PART 1

Chapter 1

Surprised by some archetypal Forest, where every twig looked like a tree, and urged by a primitive request, I unzipped my pants to take a pee.

O Bladderful Delight! O Sweet Golden Stream!

My urine chiseled off chunks of unlumbered bark.

O Liberated Spray! O Bastilled Steam!

It bounced off unearthed roots with lethal spark while bullets of urine ricocheted off my hand, while leaves at my feet drank like beaches of sand.

O, for a dry place to stand!

Yet, O Most Glorious Grand!

Then the last drips dropped where I had not planned. I dropped them there where my foot was a lake. And before I could wipe off my very wet hand, I gave my glee’d weenie one final shake. With zipper restored and my button re-snapped, I resumed my search for the nearest way out. It seemed none of these hills had ever been mapped. It seemed my last meal was this morning’s trout.

My feet hurried like rabbits that scurried into holes. My heart worried like hobbits that journeyed close to trolls. Up this hill to see where the path ended. Down this hill to see how far it descended. Worrying, up; hurrying, down. Trees, branches, leaves were all I could spy.

My God, where the hell am I?

Ah, up ahead – could it be? – I saw the shape of a strange Fellow: perhaps He knew why I came here; perhaps He knew where I should go. So, with the abruptness of an unplanned change in career, towards Him I ran yelling, Hello! Hello! But when did He look at me, even when I winced in abdominal pain? When discomfort whelmed me, did He even acknowledge my emotional strain? Though my guts were melting like a candle flame’s wax, despite tightly clinching my gluteus max, I chased after Him like Congress desperate for a tax. But alas! Though tired as I was, though fighting bravely like fox-holed GI’s in Korea, though vowing no surrender - a few steps later it was obvious that I had diarrhea.

To where could I run with such bodily malfunctions, with miles to go, with this implacable gas? I wanted to catch Him and ask for directions, but the priority that moment was the burning in my ass.

So there in the woods without a porcelain seat, in front of pattering chipmunks and twittering birds, I crooked my knees and spread wide my feet, and, squeezing my guts, pushed out a glob of four turds.

O Joy begetting! O Bliss untaxed!

My forehead stopped sweating. My muscles relaxed.

O Grace amazing! O Rapture fetched!

My ass stopped blazing. My intestines destretched.

Until…until…

O, now what to do? I lamented, with this mud-like layer glazing both of my cheeks.

Solutions were few, unlike the smell in the air that had fermented for weeks.

Where was the two-ply white? The soft embossed paper?

My eyes searched the immediate site like three young policemen, two barrel-bellied detectives and one career-spiraling journalist on the cusp of the latest metropolitan caper. What choice did I have but to scoop up some leaves and rub them into the cleavage behind my thighs? My hands acted quickly like nearly-caught-in-the-act thieves, stealthily like train-station spies.

From my Neanderthal position I stood, humanity imputed. With pants pulled up, dignity restituted, I looked around.

Have I been surveilled? Has some camera captured a peek?

But a sudden thought just then prevailed:

Where, O where, was a creek? A creek, a pond, a sink for my hands!

Then desperately sprung a blunt realization: I was miles from the comforts of civilization: warm running water, a fragrant bar of soap, microbacterial slaughter, a clean towel to grope.

So I ran up the foremost hill, and there stopped running, and there stood still. No men’s room to my left, no rest stop to my right. Nothing ahead except one sight: That Fellow, that Man, that hominoid Shape! Hope burst from my heart like juice from a mad child’s grape.

Oh, sir, I called, Oh, sir, please stop!

Wild I was as a mating season’s male flaunts.

I’m lost, I yelled like an outnumbered cop, then waited and waited, but heard no response

Was He deaf to my voice? Mute with His? Blind to my desperation? After pausing a moment, it became clear: I had to resolve a more emergent situation.

O, damn (that dirt I used to wipe). O, damn (those leaves I shoved up tight). O Villainous Soil! O Perfidious Plants!

They had conspired against me with gluttonous ants! Off came my boots, came my jeans, my undies.

My god!

A party of juveniles! And my testicles: hot fudge sundaes. Slapping and screaming, my willy turned beet as a red checker. The frenzy of ants grew even more heinous. Though my fingers were effective plucking the ants off my pecker, they could not rescue my throbbing anus. Half-naked I fled further in the Forest, half-ashamed without half of my clothes.

Shit! Damn! Fuck! I rapidly thesaurused. My soul for a shower, for a pool, for a hose!

Yet, despite my pagan behavior, God heard me like a merciful savior. From both the South and the North He gathered Cold along with Heat, and blended them quickly - adding a pinch of sleet - opened the skies, and sent them forth. Came then the rain, came then the torrents, came them with apocalyptic volume and mass. Low in the mud was I a slightly abhorrence; nevertheless, sympathetic God washed the ants off my ass.

When done, when heat had begun, when clouds unfiltered the sun, when the myriad of stings on my skin no longer stung, my fallen clothes harkened me back to where they had been flung.

I stood between two trees on top of another hill. But still that Man, that mythical Figure, a mile up ahead, perhaps with miles to go, unable to tread or unwilling, seemed to compare what He knew with what He should know.

Having learned He was deaf or mute or obliged to indifference, I did not trouble a yell. Having stretched out my left foot, then right, then neither at once, I chose to trip before I fell. Hands into air. Shoulders upon dirt. Rocks in my hips. A branch where it hurt.

Damn! Shit! Fuck! I again thesaurused while I fumbled further into this mystical Forest.

It did not matter where I landed next; what mattered most was why I was hexed. What had I done or said or didn’t when I could have? What god or fiend didn’t I address when I should have? Was I Someone’s bane? Someone’s curse? Some Thing’s target? Something worse? Who drew me into these woods? ‘Twas not I who wanted any of this. Was there some dark Purpose or sweet Revenge arising from my clandestine piss?

A mile ahead, a mile or so, frozen, it seemed, by some fright, He weighed the thoughts that He must know which were wrong and which right, which to let go and which to hold tight. Not that I knew which truths were best or had any wisdom that I could suggest; rather, perhaps, He knew a path just for me, some philosophical geography. Perhaps He knew where lay my metaphysical West.

As though each tree were a convict pocketing a switch-blade knife, as though each knot of oak root were a lightly-sleeping suspicious wife, my eyes were a skinny white guy all alone in the pen, my footsteps were a cheating husband who said he would be home by ten. I walked half a step slower than a first-grader’s pace with my hands cupped over my nuts (just in case).

A mile I walked, a mile or more, only to find only the shadow He wore. Not the legs and arms I had seen before. A mile towards shadow, a mile from the shape, far as the glare in a window behind an old dusty drape.

Thinking I could catch Him I ran forward and faster, but the only thing I could catch was a burgeoning new blister. Three in fact: one on the bottom of each big toe, and on my left heel a third started to grow.

Fuck! Shit! Damn! I habitually chorused while I stumbled to a rocky bench in the Forest.

Though neither boot was covered with mud, both socks were spotted with perambulatory blood. My flesh was ripped upon three quivering nerves. My tender skin weft with the warp yarns of razored cotton. And as is well known, such foot excruciation deserves a grimace equal to horse radish hors’ d’oevers, and limps into the Hunchback of Charles Laughton.

I marched with a hobbling strain, almost more than twice a league, but when my heart hurt more than pain I finally kneeled to fatigue. The journey, my fate, whatever It was: It won. I was done

Whether to amuse God or prove Him or find that He is far more, or hear some silent sound, or think some unsaid thought, or swim where others drowned, or sleep where others fought, or seek what others found, or hide what others sought, I did not know. I did not care.

I am here…not where I wanted to be.

While others had been busy combing their hair, I had stopped to take a pee. While girls were busy gollying guys, I was here. And here I closed my eyes and here made dirt my lair.

Chapter 2

The next morning, the local newspaper reported on the latest developments of the famous murder trial. There was an analysis on new tensions in the Middle East. There was a report on the latest outbreak of e-coli, an article on the shocking death of a famous actor, a cartoon lampooning a senator caught in a sex-scandal. There was an exposition on the debate over a presidential veto. There was an opinion piece about the rights and limits of government. A young woman asked for advice about how to handle her boyfriend’s fingernail biting, and the paper provided detailed instructions. There was a forecast for partial cloudy weather with a 30% chance of an afternoon shower. There were box scores from yesterday’s games. There were year-to-date rankings for professional golfers.

My hands flipped through the gray reprinted sheets of herald and time. Nothing in Section A. Nothing in Section B. Nothing in Section C. There was no mention of me, no mention of a middle-aged man’s journey into and out of a mysterious Forest. No description of the strange Man I had seen there. No explanation of why or how or when I was first introduced into the Forest; just facts and opinions, names and dates, like uneaten spaghetti and green beans and teeth-marked garlic break scraped off into plastic tubs and flushed down the drain of modern consciousness.

Was I not newsworthy?

My daughter, Maureen, already up an hour ago, had fixed her long red hair and decorated her blue eyes and matched her earrings to her purple blouse in a manner winsome to a prospective teenage male in ninth-grade algebra class cryptically known as the guy I liked in sixth grade. She left to get to the bus on time and was on her way to high school by the time I came downstairs.

"Was my private journey into the Forest of no interest to the general public?

My son, T-Man, still in middle school, donned a yellow Polo shirt still flashing a stubborn cheeseburger stain just above the left pocket. He was spooning the chocolate-flavored corn puff cereal from a blue bowl into his mouth. He was waiting for me to announce it was time to go, and would be happy if I never made such an announcement.

But I was curious about the Forest. I wanted to know what it was and why I was there and when I could go back, if at all, and whether anyone else in hiding in the modern world wanted the same thing.

My wife, Maggie, kissed my son on the forehead. He was too old now to be given a kiss anywhere on his skin, at least by his mother. I stopped giving him kisses two years ago, the last night of summer before he started middle school. Maggie gathered her purse and car keys.

Goodbye.

Bye.

Have a good day.

Okay

Then she gave me a kiss goodbye.

Have a good day.

You too. Bye

Bye.

We spoke in some unstudied style of modernized pentameter, forming heroic couplets out of our morning routine. Our language was rich in single-syllabic readily-available tropes.

The fragrance of some Macy’s-displayed perfume from last Christmas lingered after she hurried to the garage. I think she was running late. She always had her alarm clock set ten minutes fast in an effort to not be late. But she always found something to do with that extra ten minutes: stay in bed longer, take a longer shower. We could hear the Volvo engine as it backed out and drove off. I looked at the clock.

One minute, T-Man.

Oah.

Is your backpack ready?

Yes.

Teeth brushed?

Yes.

The cable sports channel was luring him with images of modern-day heroism and foible, with fast-flashing portraits of home runs and diving catches and double plays. I never played baseball as a kid. My dad never taught me. His dad never taught him. I never taught T-Man. I wish I knew more about baseball so I could help him be a star like the other kids. All I knew was that the Yankees won most of the World Series ever since the 1920s. I knew about the mythical figures of baseball: Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, Mr. October. But that’s all. In fifth grade, I was stuck playing right field (or maybe it was left). The ball was hit right to me. All I had to do was stand there and catch it…that’s what the guy playing short-stop (or maybe it was second-base) yelled for me to do. But I didn’t catch it. The ball flew over my head. I chased it. I was proud of myself for capturing the ball before it rolled and hit the fence, but by the time I turned around the guy playing short-stop (or second base) was yelling at me as if I had just singlehandedly started the third world war. I threw the ball as hard as I could to him; it landed three yards in front of him. I don’t even remember whether I tried to bat the ball or not, or whether we won or lost. My mind blocked it all out after that day, after I gave up some sort of a base-clearing home run.

Got all your homework?

Yes.

Shall we go?

Okay.

T-Man turned the television off. We walked to the garage and got in the Camry together. His name was Thomas, but we called him T-Man. I came up with it. I thought it sounded cool. I was never cool in school, certainly not in eighth grade. T-Man was a cool name, and it helped foster