Toilet Monitor (April 9, 2009. Full Pink Moon. Issue 3)

"They're monitoring my toilet now."

"Huh?"

"They're monitoring my toilet," I told him again.

"Who's monitoring your toilet?"

"I don't know. The feds. The IRS or the FBI. The NSA. The INS. Who else is out to get me? Could be anybody."

We sat at the kitchen table sharing a bottle of wine and smoking cigarettes.

"So what makes you think your toilet's monitored?"

"Every time I go to take a dump lately, I hear a little beep go off. Really more like a telephone ringer. Tiny little electronic sound. And coming out of the toilet. Sounds like it, anyway."

"Where's your cell phone? Maybe it got stuck up your ass and somebody's trying to call you."

"That was kind of stupid. You think I'm making this up?"

"I've seen you make things up before."

"Not this time," I said. "This is for real."

He refilled his glass from the bottle on the table and freshened mine up too.

"I need a favor," I told him.

"What?"

"I need to take a dump right now."

"So go take a dump."

"I want you to come with me and hear this thing."

"You're out of your mind."

"No I'm not," I said. "Are you my friend or what? Friends help each other out. This is serious business."

"You're a serious nut case. I've never watched anybody take a dump before."

"Nobody said you had to watch. Unless you want to. Just listen for the beep. I've got to know I'm not dreaming this."

"Can we leave the bathroom door open?"

"What for?"

"In case it stinks."

"That's an insult, man. But you can leave the door open if you want to."

So he followed me upstairs to the bathroom, and I motioned to the chair opposite the toilet.

"Have a seat," I told him.

He sat down, and I raised the toilet lid and dropped my pants.

"Dear God," he said.

"Dear God what?"

"It really is nine inches, isn't it?"

"Thought you said you weren't watching."

"Couldn't help it. I always thought you were lying when you bragged about it."

"I can't lie," I said, and sat down. "Now be quiet and listen for this thing."

A few awkward moments passed by and nothing was happening. No dump, no electronic beeping sounds.

"Another thing I've been meaning to ask you," he said.

"What's that?"

"Why do you have a chair in the bathroom?"

"It was an accident," I said. "When I moved into this place I had one more chair than I had room for. So I put it in here."

"Seems kind of stupid, a chair in the bathroom."

"Maybe at first sight. But it's useful. You brush your teeth longer if you do it sitting down."

"Never would've thought of that," he said, then lit a cigarette. "Where's the ashtray?"

"There isn't one. Use the sink."

"I haven't heard any beeps or buzzers yet."

"I haven't shit yet."

"Well hurry it up, will you?"

"It's harder with an audience."

"I'll close my eyes," he said, and reached across to thump his ashes into the sink.

"I used to have a girlfriend who liked to watch me shit. Did I ever tell you that?"

"No. You never told me that."

"Yeah. Gabriela. Remember her?"

"Gabriela? Sweet little Gabriela? She was into scat?"

"No, no. Nothing like that. It was a closeness thing for her. She thought she was the only person entitled to watch me take a dump. So she did. Just because she could. Made her feel special."

"And now here I am watching you take a dump. Shows how special she was."

"Thought you said you weren't watching."

He rolled his eyes, took a drag from his cigarette, and blew his smoke slowly toward the ceiling.

"Are we getting any closer?"

"Can't force it," I said. "It comes in waves. We missed the last one by just seconds. Climbing up the stairs scared it off."

"So another thing I've been meaning to ask you."

"What's that?"

"Why do you have mirrored walls in the bathroom?"

"Don't know. Previous tenant. I had nothing to do with it."

"So you sit there and watch yourself shit?"

"Yeah. And watch myself watching other people while they watch themselves watching me take a shit. How's that?"

"Sounds like an echo."

"An optical echo. I think we just invented something."

"Why don't you just invent a turd and drop it so we can get out of here?"

Then it happened. The little beep went off. Like a tiny, distant telephone.

"There it is!" I said. "Did you hear it? And I didn't even poop yet!"

"Yeah," he said. He was looking directly into my eyes, looking really serious, maybe even scared.

"What's the matter?" I asked him.

"That's not the FBI, dumbass. How long did you say this has been going on?"

"I don't know. Maybe a week. Why? What is it?"

"It's your pacemaker. It's telling you the battery's going dead. Get up. We've got to take you in."

"But I haven't shit yet."

"Least of your worries. You can shit in the car. Just get your pants on and let's go."

"You're taking this way too seriously," I told him. "There's a T-Mobile store right around the corner. We can walk."

He looked at me like I was crazy or something.

"What the fuck does T-Mobile have to do with anything?"

"They sell minutes, don't they? I can buy myself some more time."

"Man, you are out of your fucking mind! You get up off that crapper right now or I'll drag you off it myself!"

"Wait a minute," I said.

"You may not have a minute, dumbass!"

"Here it comes."

"Here comes what?"

"The next wave."

Bad Fingers (March 5, 2009. Issue 1)

When we were done with why she was there in the first place, we got dressed and moved to the library. She sat in the big leather chair at my desk; I sat in the Windsor chair at my work table.

"You're different," she said, after staring at me in silence for a while.

"How's that?"

"Intriguing. And a gentleman, too."

"You probably say that to all the guys," I mumbled around the cigarette I was lighting.

She raised her crack pipe to light it. Raised it to her mouth, flicked her lighter, but then turned away to actually light the thing. She was my first crackhead, so I didn't know if that turn of the head was a common thing among them, or if it was a thing unique to her.

When she turned back around again, she started looking at the things on my desk. She picked up a story I'd written, and began reading it. Read it all the way to the end while I smoked my cigarette and watched her.

Watched her eyes move back and forth, watched her brow now and then become a frown, watched her mouth sometimes curl into a smile. Then she was done. And she looked back up at me with penetrating eyes, and no smile.

"Your father," she said, "was an anal-retentive asshole motherfucker who had to have everything just so all the time, wasn't he?"

"How'd you know that?" I asked. I was genuinely astounded. She was dead right, but there was nothing in the story that could have told her that. The story was about a girl I fell in love with on the platform of a subway station. My father had nothing to do with it. I hadn't spoken to the bastard in over twenty years.

"It shows in the way you write," she said, and put the story back down on the desk.

I didn't ask her for an explanation. I stubbed out my cigarette and lit another.

She asked me if I'd heard about the dead guy in the neighborhood. I told her I hadn't, told her I didn't follow local news. She told me the whole story.

They found the guy in the vacant lot next to the drug store. They said he'd probably been there maybe three or four days, which was really quite awful since it was the middle of July, which meant he was in pretty bad shape by then.

She and some of the other streetwalkers had found him and called the cops. She knew him, she said, and she'd done him once, too. Blown him, actually, nothing serious. But his real preference was the boys, which was why he hung out in our neighborhood, here where all the queers were.

He was a nice guy, she said, and generous, too. Which was why his murder seemed all the more puzzling. The missing items, she figured, had to be the motive. His Rolex was gone, and so was his Beamer.

She told me about how his arms were criss-crossed over his face, his last act being to try and protect the nose job he'd just gotten. She told me other things, too, but I remembered only one. She said he was so bloated that even his fingers looked ready to explode.

Just then she raised the crack pipe to re-light it, and I couldn't help looking at her fingers. Bad fingers with tough dry skin, chewed-off nails, and garish hints of last month's ill-chosen polish. I closed my eyes and shuddered.

We sat for a while longer, chatting. She was a very nice girl, and a smart girl, too. Not to mention pretty, if you didn't look at her hands. I hated it she was a crackhead.

I asked her, finally, if she was ready to go.

"I guess," she said. "Except now need to figure out where I'm going to be homeless tonight."

I ignored that. Had enough of my own problems to sort out. She got up, picked up her purse, and put her pipe back in it. I walked behind her as she moved to leave the room, but then she stopped to peruse the bookcase. She paid particular attention to the bottom shelf.

"You're an atheist," she said, "aren't you?"

"How'd you know?"

"All those Bibles."