In which our hero goes to the bathroom.

Welcome to my blog. Previous readers have expressed confusion as to whether the narrator of this blog – or what Henry James refers to as the center of consciousness – really is Jack Nicholson. All I can tell you is that I, the writer of the blog, am indeed Jack Nicholson. However, I should mention that the characters in this rather disjointed chronicle are NOT intended to represent any real people, living or dead. And so, I felt this preface necessary.

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I often find the chore of taking a shit much less burdensome than I initially expect. 

Letters:

I’d like to apologize to Kevin Spacey. I think he’s a fantastic actor, and it would be both an honor and a privilege to watch him re-create any of my performances.

INTERIOR. MEN’S ROOM. – MOMENTS FOLLOWING NICHOLSON’S MEETING WITH HIS AGENT (DEPICTED IN MY PREVIOUS BLOG ENTRY).

Someone is in the stall beside mine and I fear that my urine flowing into the toilet is too loud, so I redirect the stream towards the inner porcelain wall of the bowl. I raise my penis further to warm the inner left of my thigh (a secret pleasure). After misfiring onto the backside of my underpants, I firmly hold my penis back in place.

My shit is large and its tip resembles the head of a circumcised penis bobbing in the water. It is long and fat, and I can’t help thinking, “I just had a big boner up my ass.”

Where does the word boner come from? I have a theory: 

The French word bonheur means happiness. I imagine a lanky Frenchman, a troubadour, strutting a medieval palace with an erect penis visible in his tight leggings. He smiles while crooning a princess, and another Frenchman turns toward me, an Anglo Saxon visitor, and says something like, “Il est bonheur!” The Anglo Saxon returns to England misusing the word bonheur, or boner, to describe erect penises. The term catches on.

There is some graffiti scribbled on the leg of the stall:

Tap foot twice for BJ. A stupid joke. I can see my neighbour’s shoes. Rockports. I am also wearing Rockports. His have brogues. I wonder if he also thinks it’s a stupid joke. What if he taps his foot? The idea seems wrong. I am not gay. 

Perhaps there is hidden truth in the jest of the graffiti. If I play along with the joke, will his Rockports kick down the wall that separates us? Will those shoes genuflect their brogued toes against the urine-stained floor while lips and tongue aggressively suck on my dick? Tap foot twice for BJ. A similar scribble behind my head is probably directed at standing urinators: DISCRETELY tap foot for BJ. A thumb of black skin between his sock and cuff. What was meant by discretely? A Black man. Does discretion demand less of a tap? A subtle raise or repositioning of the foot? I am not racist. Perhaps any number of slight movements would be misinterpreted as a discrete tapping of my foot: a toe flex, the shuffling of my heel, leaning on the outer pinky edge of my foot to air its sole. Black, black, black, black, black, black. Wait – is my foot actually following the list of slight physical adjustments? My shitting neighbour – he’s Black – clears his throat and blows his nose. Tap foot twice for BJ. Was the bringing forth of mucous an attempt to signal some sort of ‘discretion’? Tap foot twice for BJ. Is their mucous the same colour as ours? Tap foot twice for BJ.  I loudly think:

HOW CAN STUPID WHITE MEN LIKE ME BE SURE THAT MINDREADING IS NOT A SUPERIOR GIFT OF THE MIGHTY AFRICAN BLACK PEOPLE?

Did I move my foot? Maybe just a blink, but could it have been interpreted as a tap? A discrete tap? Tap foot twice for BJ. Is Black reading it too? Tap foot twice for BJ. Why isn’t there any other graffiti to focus my eyes on? Tap foot twice for BJ. A dirty joke. A phone number. Tap foot twice for BJ. Something racist. Tap foot twice for BJ. HOW CAN STUPID WHITE MEN LIKE ME BE SURE THAT MINDREADING IS NOT A SUPERIOR GIFT OF THE MIGHTY AFRICAN BLACK PEOPLE? HOW CAN STUPID WHITE MEN LIKE ME BE SURE THAT MINDREADING IS NOT A SUPERIOR GIFT OF THE MIGHTY AFRICAN BLACK PEOPLE? Tap foot twice for BJ. In simple bold Sharpe between two pairs of feet – white and black – both dressed in Rockports: Tap foot twice for BJ. Tap foot twice for BJ. Tap foot twice for BJ. I inch my Rockport a touch further from his Rockport and tap my foot two times.

After a pause: the flush of his toilet; his shoes promptly exiting the stall; the men’s room door swinging shut behind them. The faucet is not turned on to provide running water for washing hands and the sensor that ignites the hand dryer is left without a signal for reception. Alone, under the silencing hum of fluorescent lights, my Rockports plant their soles to the cold tiled floor of the locked stall and avoid the random stains of yellow. It helps to tap my foot repeatedly during the long push of shit from my ass.

Cragganmore popped his little head out!! He popped his head out! I’ll kill the bastard.

Fade to BLACK…

The sound of tiny wheels rolling against the tiled flood. A skateboard comes to a halt. The large Star of David sticker on its underside is flipped up in the camera’s lens.

Our hero lays passed out on the bathroom floor.

A young Hasidic Jew dressed in baggy jeans, rod laver sneakers, and a vintage Batman yarmulke spits and looks Jack Nicholson up and down. The bare beginning of a grown out beard and lack of formal black attire affirm that God is a recent discovery for the boy. An older zealot-bearded Hasid slowly raises a container of smelling salt – sitting in his jacket pocket since Yom Kippur – and holds it shakily beneath Nicholson’s nose. The old Jew resembles Cragganmore. “I’m awake. I’m awake.”