handicapped stalls, city malls

As per usual, my shifts begin with a trip to the bathroom. All I can hear while I close my door in the handicapped stall (though I think they should all be handicapped, really, for what normal individual would willingly enter a department store?) are the cries of saggy-diapered toddlers to their equally saggy mothers. "If you're good," they coo, "you can get two cookies for lunch." (I would never give my hypothetical child a cookie, not because I don't love them but because it means two hours of additional activity.) Meanwhile on my porcelain throne, I'm staring at the grout between the tiles and am wondering how, given how dark and permanent it appears, it is so easy to fall beneath it and into the throes of retail. Or just anything, really. And all I do is sit on the toilet, with hands cupping my cheeks and listening to the vague sound of flatulence (suspicions are confirmed in approximately three seconds) of middle-aged women who probably once rolled their eyes at elastic waists, too.

I like the handicapped stall because it's furthest from the sinks, and therefore furthest from people. It has a long counter inside it, too. But I couldn't really tell you why, nor could the legitimately handicapped, I'd imagine. Sometimes when I am seeking an extended vacation from the innumerable joys of clothes-folding and credit-opening, I like to prop myself up on the counter and examine my face after I've finished scoping my more important surroundings. I notice that the things that used to go away once I relaxed my jaw now stay a little longer, and I see what looks like a small boomerang beginning to form atop my eyebrow. I should stop being so expressive, maybe. However, I was unaware that mimicking the dead (lest I forget I work 40 hours a week) called for any semblance of brow arching. Occasionally I am distracted by the sound of excrement dropping into the toilets nearby like slightly overweight children cannon balling into a swimming pool, and realize that for better or for worse, I'm not alone in all of this. Funny it took the sound of shit to know this. Then I hear the flushing and the tap-tap-tapping of impatient feet and decide it's time to get back to work.

So I fake flush (because for whatever reason I want people to think that I too just finished my business) and saunter over to the sink, past the scrunchied women splaying their babies' pudgy legs and past the women with hands whose skin resembles a piece of paper that's been through one or three loads of laundry, and then I unfortunately stare at myself again and those growing wrinkles. Babies are crying to my right and I can just feel the heavy sighs of their tired mothers hit the floor in between the flushing and phlegm-hocking of musky women in polyster pants. And in the back of my mind, in the same place that told me to keep moving, there's also a voice that says that while I know that I'm no better and made of no worse, I really, really, am not ready for any of this. Please God, at least not now. Not yet. I'd rather cast aspersions on a line so far away into (and maybe from) my future that I never have to reel them in, or worse, be reeled in by them.

I finish washing my hands and pitch my lightly used towel into the wastebasket and wander like an ant back to my register, knowing that I will inevitably suffer the company of a yellowed man who thinks he's smoother than silk when purchasing his poor wife a neglige made of its cheap and scratchy imitation for $3, and all I can think of are the heavy sighs that reverberated on the tiles and how they probably sound similar to those made at night after the act (albeit brief) is over and she can finally take off that itchy nightgown that resembles a miniature tree skirt. And then I sigh, which probably sounds similar to that one made by an old woman looking at her confetti of pills that she must take each morning with food. But I guess there's no use in sighing, because soon enough I'll be wiping asses and then too-soon enough will be having my own cleaned as well, this time by someone whom I pay to be nurturing. Meanwhile, the voice of the faceless pop star provides a necessary distraction as I step foot on the escalator. It is vague and unobtrusive, making my ascent to reality a little less painful.

I see my coworkers, and the are smiling. Cheryl is full-time and has pepper colored hair. Karen is also full-time and offered me her aspirin the day I faked a sprained ankle to leave work early. She is one of the friendliest people I know, and part of me wishes that she knew I was (and am) full of shit. The act of keeping a smile even after you realize that life can be full of sighs and shit is one on which I need to work, but maybe it's something that comes with adulthood. I can only hope. I guess.