And the lesson is this: never, ever, under any goddamn circumstances, drink a big bottle of laxative before taking an afternoon nap.
I woke up, not to the gentle sound of birds or the quiet hum of the air conditioner, but to a feeling. A warm, wet, and completely unfamiliar feeling. I was floating, not in a dream, but in a swamp. My own private, man-made sewer.
And then the smell hit me.
And in that one, beautiful, ugly, and completely honest moment, my brain, still thick with sleep, managed to form a single, perfect thought:
What the fuck?
I jumped out of bed, a spry, athletic move for a man of my size and vintage. But in my haste, I forgot about the laws of physics. The law that says when a large, shit-covered object moves quickly, it tends to leave a little bit of itself behind. I smeared a perfect, brown streak of my own goddamn DNA right along the edge of the mattress, a beautiful, abstract signature on a masterpiece of self-defecation.
And then I was upright, standing in the middle of my bedroom, a confused, naked, and completely befouled old man, with a warm, brown river of liquid shit running down the inside of my leg.
There was no time to puke. No time for the shame. The only thought was: shower.
I raced for the bathroom, a clumsy, panicked shuffle, leaving a little trail of brown breadcrumbs behind me on the clean, white floor. A perfect, pathetic little map of my own private disaster.
I hit the shower, the water a blessed, beautiful shock. And I just stood there, watching the evidence of my own internal collapse swirl around my feet, turning the clean water a sad, muddy brown. I took the soap, and I went to work, a desperate, clumsy janitor, trying to clean out all the cracks and crevices of a crime scene.
And my stomach, that treacherous bastard, it was still churning. A quiet, gurgling reminder that the show wasn’t over yet. But you can’t take a shit in the shower. Even at the bottom, a man has to have a code.
I damped myself off with a towel I knew I’d have to burn later, and I started the walk of shame to the other bathroom, my eyes straight ahead, avoiding the little trail of my own disgrace, avoiding the great, brown, beautiful, and completely horrifying Rorschach test that was my bed. The smell was everywhere now, a thick, rich perfume of my own mortality.
I made it to the other toilet, and I sat down. And in that moment, with the quiet, honest, and beautiful release of the last of the poison, I felt a kind of peace.
And then I started to laugh. A real, ugly, gut-shot laugh. The laugh of a man who has just seen the punchline to a long, slow, and completely unfunny joke.
The whole goddamn production, from the moment I woke up to the final, beautiful release, it all took maybe ten minutes. A perfect, little, ten-minute preview of the coming attractions.
Because that’s it, isn’t it? That’s the future. That’s what a man has to look forward to. Not a quiet, dignified fade into the sunset. No. You just get to be the old man who’s known for shitting his pants. A walking, talking, and occasionally leaking monument to the slow, ugly, and completely inevitable decay of the human machine.
Today was a postcard from the future. A little “wish you were here” from the man I’m going to be.
And they say the golden years are something to look forward to.
