Oh, Shit!

At Florence, the public men’s room the Port of Siuslaw provided had been modernized: back in the 70s, it had been built as a two-holer. But it had been modernized. Now, to be Accessible but still in the original floor space, it’s half of its former self. During the tourist season, in sunny weather, there is nearly always a queue.

I ran the queue gauntlet one day. Standing there, hoping the women passing to theirs would think I’d been sent to inspect the plumbing under the adjacent dock, I waited – and waited.  A guy was in there ghetto-blasting rap. Nobody else dared enter. But, hey. No urgency. I was just doing time.

After - like the sign told me to, I even “Lavase(d) las manos.” But, like I’m also supposed to, I love the planet and so I couldn’t stand to electro-dry my hands or waste a paper towel.  So when I came back out air-drying my hands - that’s when I saw him.

Substantial-looking senior gent, he seemed part of a sky-larking grand-kids group coming my way. In maybe his frail early eighties, he was still a rangy, erect man, six-three anyhow. Pressed khaki pants, neat short-sleeved summer shirt, khaki-billed ball cap. Left-over from his lifetime of responsibility, a fresh haircut.

But on his face – unmistakable, perspiring, red-faced anxiety. Trying to hurry towards the men’s room, trying desperately not to move his legs an inch more than he had to, wincing with each move, he pegged his wooden cane ahead, nine inches at a step.

And when he spotted the length of the men’s room queue, as if struck a physical blow, he reeled. Tears of embarrassment gushed into his old eyes. I heard him exclaim, “Oh, shit!”

 Unadorned, uncensored - naked. That’s exactly what I heard him blurt. “Oh, shit!”

But of late, I’d been back, really hammering at myself about my habit of worrying. I was even worried about how much I’d worry if I had something real to worry about. We were years into the everlasting Covid Days; everybody I talked to was getting worked-over by neuroses of one sort or other. Same with me. “Quit it, Joe. Quit worrying about shit.” That was exactly my general-purpose, mind-scrubber mantra. Daily, I drilled exactly those particular words into my head. I adopted that particular four-letter wording because I had long ago figured out that is what worrying is worth. As a latter-day action guy, I seldom got depressed in my old paralyzed way. Not worrying is a skill. I was doing my “don’t-worry-be-happy” reps daily. I really was learning “…how not to cry”.

And so, when I witnessed crushing human distress and shame, there I was. Faced with the facts in the tall man’s case, my worry-mantra was exactly what was called for. I had spotted humanity hitting the wall in the race of life before, but when I saw the tall man, but I was practiced at “keepin’ on keepin’ on.” I was getting really good at the moves.

 So I walked away from the sight of his red, panicked face. I mean, after all, didn’t he have people? Wouldn’t they take care of him? Wouldn’t they prop-up a loved, high-miles man forced to live inside a body leaking like a many-times over-torqued oil-pan plug?

 His last day was a beautiful day. Back when he and I were celebrating the same sunrise, I’d repeated to myself my other mantra – my action mantra; I told myself, “This day is a gift, Joe. A day in your life. Make something of it.” When I walked on past him, I deliberately repeated it. Seemed to work fine. Besides, way back when I came out of the Port of Siuslaw’s restroom, I knew where I was going next. Coffee. It was easy for me. I put his excruciating, foul shame out of my mind.

The coffee wasn’t all that great. In fact, I’d felt compelled to tell the kid hired to sell it that it tasted curiously like instant coffees for which also I’d had the misfortune to have paid cash. But I was writing regularly. I was working on a story, so I swallowed the kid’s coffee anyhow. On the walls, the coffee place had original art for sale. It was an old, converted outboard motor repair shop, now considered charmingly quaint, with caved-in couches. Besides coffee and art, they sold cute little plaques with slogans and “nice” advice. A lot of that. It was arty-farty. But the coffee tasted freeze-dried or maybe like Postum tainted with 2-Cycle-oil. It was stupid.

You know what coffee does. I don’t mean the Rolaids thing, but on my way back to my pick-up, hurrying to the same men’s room, that’s what I was eating when I saw the tall man again. There was no queue. Nobody was around. Outside the men’s room, he was sitting alone on a bench in the shade of a lone, drooping cherry branch. His pale face glistened. He was sleeping. I knew something of his recent agony but, unaccountably, he was sleeping. I wondered about his earlier skylarking grand kids’ retinue, but I didn’t see them. As if it had fallen unnoticed, I wondered about his brown wooden cane laying alone on the brick pavement. I saw his cane hand on the bench, palm-up, fingers relaxed. A lone fly came and went from his nose. Two returned. They stayed.