Henry Miller was fond of saying that his writing was after the mundane, the animalistic in man. Naturally he was wrong. What he probably meant was that he wrote frankly about sex. But even that was harly a novelty. D.H. Lawrence, Chaucer, Sappho, Catulus. Yet very few have written of the other animal aspect of our lives. The vast majority of us on a regular basis squat down or sit on some porcelin or wodden frame and empty the unused contents of our intestines into the bucket or bowl or pot or whole in the ground. Yet this rarely makes it in the books. Which is fine I suppose. Perhaps it is too common, to low as it were to be included. But to my mind, if Miller were really after the animalistic side of life should have spent some time on crap. Shit, poop, scat, turd, log, booboo, bowel movement, deficate, laying cable, dropping the kids off at the pool. We have probably hundreds of words and phrases to describe the act. And yet very little writing on the subject (and yes that Outkast song about roses smelling like booboo... that's a southern expression for shit).

I was fascinated at a young age by this mysterious thing which we all did but never talked about. I used to pester my mother as to why the lone ranger and tonto never stopped to use the bathroom. She claimed that they went during the commercial breaks. I'm not so sure. They were simply unaccounted for during commercial breaks. They could have done a lot of things during commercial breaks. Zorro too seemed to be extremely constipated by my reckoning. It turned out that he too used the toilet during commercial breaks. This answer satisfied me for a while, but then I started to wonder what it was about using the bathroom that it had to be done during commercial breaks. I was allowed to get up in the middle of class and use the restroom if I had to, what was with the Lone Ranger that he had to hold it until commercial? That leads to colon cancer in the long run you know. 

Later on I found out that Elvis had a heart attack on the toilet. For three days I refused to go to the bathroom. And when i finally did, Jesus did it hurt. I've heard a lot of men say that they understand the pain of women giving birth because they've "laid a log the size of the child." After watching my friend give birth at home with the midwife, I find this statement to be highly unlikely. To the best of my knowledge I have never seen a truck driver come waddling out of a gas station toilet with dislocated hips. Possibly Elvis came as close as a man ever will to feeling what birth is like, and the experience killed him.

The first indoor toilet was invented by akdjfkj in London at the close of the Victorian Era, which seems like an act of rebellion to me, surely the Victorians would have been to delicate for such a thing in the house? But it turns out the prior to Mr alkdjf lovely invention the common method of relieving one's bowels was to use a chamber pot. Chamber pots pop up in literature from time to time and I never could quite make out exactly what they were used for, that is, it was hard to tell if one actually crapped in them or if they were simply something for those middle-of-the-night pees that seem to grow more frequent the older you get. But after doing abit of research and getting some very strange looks from the Brooklyn Librarian who was attempting to help me, I discovered the in fact the chamber pot was used for crapping. There was no mention of toilet paper in the literature of the day.

But I've traveled a bit in Asia and I already knew that even today toilet paper was not a worldwide occurence. In most of Laos and Cambodia for instance the common method of cleaning up ones ass is water. Generally the water is conveyed via a hose with a presurized spray nozzle, but even that's relatively modern. It used to be that the left hand was the most common form of toilet paper, which is why even today upperclass resident of Bombay who have clearly never used their bare hand to clean up still insist on eating with only the right. This is also why we in the west shake hands with a our right hands. In fact, the deeper i looked into the subject the more I discovered that many seemingly innocent or arbitrary cultural customs stem either directly or indirectly from the toilet habits and edicate of the day. 

The chamber pot for instance was often heaved out the window into the street. Now I when I first heard this story I was told that dishwater often came out the wondow which is why a man traditionally walked on the left side of a lady, but it seems that often there were far worse things than dishwater coming out the window or door as you walked past. 

It has always somewhat roubled me that the sight of a woman's ass turns me since from a strictly biological point of view the ass is merely a portal of disposal. And yet, and I feel I am not alone on this one, men find a woman's ass very appealing. J Lo has made a talentless carrer out of this fact. And women too find a man's butt quite appealing. And yet. Yes. It is. 

I know men who define the seriousness of their relationships by how many bodily functions they can reveal to their girlfriends. For instance in the beginning they will painfully repress even the slightest of farts for fear of offending (which reminds me of James joyce in on of his letters to Nora asking her to fart on a pair of panties so he could smell her sweet bum). My friend Sam claims that for him it is a moment of complete extasy when that time arrives that he feels comfortable enough with a girl to let one go. He added that the first one is best if its noisy and not very smelly, he typically test fires one when she's far enough away that she can't smell it if it does turn out to be less moisy and more of an olfactoory experience. "Its that feeling of being complete relaxed with someone you know, where you've progressed beyond that painfull dating phase where you still space out the phone calls and whatnot. If you fart and she laughs, you're home free, you can call whenever you want." 

The next stage my friend Andy informs me is when she is willing to fart around you. Typically this does not occur without cohabitation. Curiously either women actually do fart less than men or perhaps more unhealthily they simply hold it in longer. Whatever the case, women it seems are generally unwilling to fart in the presence of a man until that man has already commited to living under the same roof. 

My friend Alex claims that the beginning of the end is when she stops closing the bathroom door to pee, or even worse to poop. Yes it turns out that women do not crap, lay cable, drop the kids off at the pool or any other such colorful phrases, in fact they poop. I've never lived with a woman who didn't close the door to poop and it seems that no one else has either, but everyone seems to have a friend that has. "I mean come on you want to hear a girl say, 'shit, I got to go take a big dump'?"

I actually have no opinion on that, having never heard it and being completely incapable of imagining a woman I was with saying it. And yet. And yet. That is what they do isn't it. I don't care what women pretend their poops are like, the fact is shit comes out their ass, deal with it. "Okay sure, but why do you have to dwell on it?" my friend Andy complains. "I mean come on there's that scene in Gravity's Rainbow when the general eats the poop and everybody says that's why the Nobel people didn't give it the prize that year. Nobody want to think about it." True, but they didn't give the prize to anyone I remind him and what's better than getting the Nodel Prize in literature? Having the whole thing stop for a year because what you wrote is so shocking the commitee deadlock and decides not to decide. "I guess" Andy mumbles on afternoon over a beer. "But I probably would have deleted the scene for amillion dollars. Hey who are you writing this article for again? And why? You're gonna change my name right? I mean people that know you that know me that read this might think I'm a freak or something." "What are they going to think of me?" "Oh you'll spend a couple years as 'the poop guy.'"

Which reminds me of a thread I lost a while ago, why do we step into private rooms to do the most common thing we do? We do not eat alone in a room. In fact we make a public spectical of the entry side of the equation, but the exit side we do on our own. Well in the west we do. I remember the first time I took a train in India, pulling out of the Bangalore station at about ten in the morning and watching in amazment as literally hundreds of men squated around on the tracks, chatting reading papers and yes, taking dumps. 

"It's like those one way mirror toilets they put in NEw York or Paris or wherever, I don't think I could do that." What Andy is refering to of course are the toilets in New York that are completely mirrored from the outside, but when you step in its as if you are in fact about to take a totally public shit. The interesting thing is everyone knows what you're doing so it is more or less a public shit, without the visual. After having my expense projects roundly rejected I funded my own trip to experience the public crap. Several people waved as they walked by which I will admit was unnerving because even though I knew they couldn't see me, the looked straight at me. One kid came up and pressed his face against the glass, hands cupped around his eyes trying the peer in, perhaps wondering if this was the sort of thing the Lone Ranger did during commercials.

The strange thing was I didn't have to go. I just put the toilet see down and sat there for a while watching the commuters walk by. After a while I moticed a distinct clss difference between those that simply walked by and those that waved or commented.

[All of the attributed quotes in this essay are fake. Andy for instace is actually named Steve and never as eloquent as I've made him out to be. Alex is really my friend Bob and unfortunately did actually once date a woman who didn't close the door and I know this because he shoed up at my doorstep two days later. Everything else is entirely fictional. Except for the parts that are true.]