While it may seem absurd that a brilliant philosopher such as myself would be composing his customarily highfalutin prose while seated on a vessel customarily reserved for the unceremonious dropping of feces, I assure you that I am being well-paid by the publisher who, I would have been surprised to discover if I didn’t know my name to be such a draw for pretentious readers worldwide, turned a modest but real profit on my 2009 volume A Week at the Airport.

Sitting here on the toilet, one reflects on the psychological aspects of “pissing” and “shitting.” Child psychologists have long known about the trauma endured when one first becomes conscious of leaving behind and flushing away forever this substance that was for some period of time hugged safely and deeply inside one’s body. Defecation is not unlike a sort of childbirth, and why should we not feel loss for that pickle-sized friend that did us no harm? Of course, as adults we understand the dangers of blocked bowels, but as with many intellectual understandings, that understanding has little impact upon our instinctive emotional response.

My thoughts now turn to the magazine bin. How do people select the reading material with which to populate their bathrooms? One could, of course, collect empirical data on this subject, but as a philosopher I have decided that sociologists and journalists are chasing a tantalizing but unattainable “truth.” Real truth is to be attained only by a philosopher such as myself, sitting here on the commode and making things up. So here is the truth: people grab whatsoever happens to be nearest when the need to spend a significant amount of time in the loo arises, and over time the books and magazines accumulate like autumn leaves, wrinkled by the moisture of the shower.

One is, of course, not always alone in the lavatory. One may be accompanied by a friend, a lover, or even by an unexpected intruder. It is a peculiar state of connection one achieves with one with whom one is—however temporarily—sharing a latrine.  I refer, of course, not just literally to the peculiar connections that may be forged among mouths, other orifices, and intimate organs, but metaphorically to the emotional connections one forges even in the absence of physical contact. Once one has heard the sound of another human’s stream of urine tinkling against the porcelain, one cannot but imagine that one holds some pungent key to the soul of the urinator.

Having now completed both tasks for which I lowered my trousers and sat to contemplate the mysteries of life, I will conclude this all-too-brief manuscript, wipe my anus literally and metaphorically clean with such acceptably soft tissue as my financially modest but otherwise shamelessly immodest station in life affords me, and flush the toilet in that daily gesture so evocative of hope and renewal.

– Jay Gabler

Photo by Hugslife (Creative Commons)