Sacrament / Excrement

Constipation, literature, and other spiritual crises

Sacrament / Excrement

Mami tells me to sit on the toilet for 20 minutes. At first I last 4 minutes, thinking 10 had passed. Then I bring my new book and read about a French woman, a bourgeoise who says “merde” and “bite” and wears old jeans to hide her upbringing. How serendipitous.

Tourists ask her where the toilets are and she describes — not to the tourists, to the reader — the shit-stained walls and Arabs sucking fat cocks. Her words, not mine. I’m more delicate. I cannot stand vulgarities or anything scatological.

I teeter somewhere in the middle of life where profanities no longer appeal until, probably, one day they will again, when my hair is puffy and white, my back a little bent. I’ll wag my cane at pigeons and kids. I’ll smoke and wear red lipstick again.

This is what I think about on the toilet while multitasking: relaxing the <insert>, reading about the French woman licking <insert> and reminiscing, anticipating, conjuring. After 24 minutes I give up and head downstairs where Papi hands me an article about Diverticulitis.

I glance at it, toss it in the recycle bin and go watch the birds feast on the feeders Mami had hung in the winter-barren trees. A hedgehog is wintering under a thick pile of leaves. A black cat stares at me and disappears between the bushes.

I think of the similarity between the words excrement and sacrament. The holy shit. An aura of excretion. By now, I’ve been backed up for 5 days. I wonder if there’s a deeper meaning to it, this holding pattern, this negation of natural release. But, of course, there isn’t. A pipe is just a pipe. Shit is shit, coming or going.