March 2nd, 2010 by Ang

So I am currently in Buffalo with my friend Erin.  Who is super awesome.  And I was in Rochester for the week before, with my friend Amy.  Who is also super awesome.  I have super awesome friends.  I think this is because I’m hella awesome, but that’s besides the point.  There have been many riotous adventures in New York, some of which I will never share (Muwahahaha) but this one is just too much comic fodder to let lie.  And as we all know, I have no shame, so here we go.  Oh and there is a bit of back story to this so you might want to get something to drink.  Unless you have a weak bladder, in which case I would definitely avoid the drink.  And if you have any sort of respect for me, or dignity in general I’d go do something else.

Erin and I went to TJ Maxx, presumably to get her a skirt, and home decor items, but somehow I ended up with cowboy boots and obscenely low priced lingerie.  Not necessarily to be worn together, but now that I think of it…  ANYWAYS, so I was on the phone with my darling sister, who does things like go to Uganda to work at an orphange for children who’s parents were victims of the horrific guerilla warfare, or going to the Dominican to do other mission work during her summer vacation of being an elementary teacher at a school for inner city children.  Basically she’s the one on your right shoulder with the flowing white robe, wings and glittery head piece, and I’m the one on the left who’s scantily clad in red, twirling her sexy tail and picking her teeth with a pitchfork.  She is also very proper, I embarrass her often, it’s a hobby of mine, but I do it in measured doses, as her payback is nasty.  She pulled a knife on me when she was eight, true story.  Granted I smacked her in the face with like a rolling pin or something, but that’s arbitrary.

Well part of my NY trip was Arbys.  See Arby’s is my glutton nirvana.  It’s oversized hat gives my tummy flip flops of squee.  We had ONE Arby’s in the mall by my house, and they closed it for some stupid Boston style pizza shop (Couldn’t have closed one of the NINE freaking Chinese/Japanese places that masquerade as sandwich or Cajun cooking.  Seriously, what is Cajun about rice and Sesame chicken?)  I was heartbroken, they didn’t send me a letter or anything.  So I was psyched about going to New York with it’s plethora of Arby’s locations.  In the Baltimore airport I found an Arby’s RIGHT BEHIND MY GATE!  In a blissful daze I walked to the counter, ordered my delectable Roast Beef sandwich and curly fries, my Holy Grail I had been craving for months.  I sat down and devoured.  There is no other word in the English language to describe the manner in which I ate that artery clogging mass of food.  Then I heard the announcement that they had moved my gate, and terrified I was going to miss my connecting flight, and with the sorrow reserved for burying kittens, I threw away the remainder of Arby’s and ran to my new gate.  With that foreplay of gastral euphoria in my mind, I was lusting even more to sit down and enjoy my #3 to completion.  There I hit a snag.

Now Amy is marvelous and wonderful, but she isn’t into fast food.  She is healthy and doesn’t even eat moo cow, and when she found out how averse I was to vegetables, and my hellatious eating habits, she vowed to force vegetables down my throat.  She also said, that under no circumstances was I allowed to go to Arbys, and instead she would make delectable home made, well balanced meals for me, and convert me into someone who actually respected the internal workings of my digestive (and by proxy, cardiac) system.  My mother would have informed her this was impossible, she would know since she tried for years (Rebellious little Ang would go to bed hungry until the tuna noodle casserole she insisted I ate turned green, had babies, and moved to Vermont where they raised artisan chickens).  Amy DID make me delectable food which I ate with pleasure, except the quesadillas, which were a little on the spicy side, as in the made me blow snot out my eyeballs spicy side.  But I did not have Arby’s.

So when I made the transition to Erin’s I decided I was going to eat at Arby’s every day until I went home.  Now God only knows what I was thinking, that I could build some sort of Arby’s reserve up and borrow from it whenever I was longing for some beefy goodness (Hehehe, beefy goodness…)  But regardless, we have been adhering to our rigorous schedule, of Arby’s hopping.  And now that all this very vital information has been bestowed, we go back to TJ Maxx.

My beloved Arby’s is apparently best visited in moderation.  While my sister told me about the new bulletin board she was putting up for her underprivileged students, I felt my tummy rumble and that very iggy feeling that everyone recognizes as a very urgent need for a restroom.  Tossing my slouchy cowboy boots to Erin, I meandered over to the bathrooms, my sister prattling on about some charity something or other.  Opening the door I’m confronted with two stalls, an occupied handicapped stall, and an empty smaller one.  OBVIOUSLY I went into the empty stall (What is wrong with you?)

Skeeved as I am about about public restrooms, my need was much too great for the patented “hover” that all girls are taught at a very early age.  Without going into too much graphic detail, my tummy was rebelling.  I grabbed for the toilet paper and yanked.  And came away with two squares.  Now public bathroom toilet paper typically requires a wad of at least six squares for the most low maintenance of personal needs.  My particular development was quite a bit more specialized, and I had… two squares.  My sister continued going on about how she was donating her skin for burn victims, and I frantically looked around for additional options.

The other occupant had left her stall shortly after I locked my door, so I couldn’t ask her for a loan, and my eyes came across the sanitary waste bin that occupies all women’s restrooms.  A long, un-used stream of toilet paper was draped across the top of the garbage can, and taunted me.  Such WASTE! My hand started to move towards it of it’s own free will but right when my sister mentioned something about making socks out of hair collected at dog grooming salons, I KNEW that the toilet paper had been left there by persons with malicious intent, and that they had probably infested it with AIDs as some sort of sick joke.  I obviously could not use the tainted paper.  My sister then hung up as she had to tend to her greenhouse where she raised vegetables to make soup for the homeless.  And I was left alone.

My quandry was thus.  I needed toilet paper.  There was NO WAY I could go without it.  I looked to the floor thinking I could duck between stalls and grab some surreptitiously.  Seeing the supposedly standard white tile was in actuality some paisley concoction of gray and brown, and a stray peanut (Who’s journey to it’s resting place I didn’t even want to begin to comprehend), I decided against it.  At this point I had been in the bathroom for well over ten minutes, and my “appropriate visit time” clock had hit it’s expiration point.  My only option was the other stall, but if I were to hoist my pants up, it would create an uncomfortable mess of innumerable proportions, and not only would I squish when I walked, I would have an odor that most people associate with the homeless and severely mentally deficient.  My only option was to make a run for it, sans bum covering.

Perhaps run is a much too optimistic term.  I slowly gathered my personal items, internally steeling myself for the four steps infinitely long trek to the next stall.  Slowly I spun the lock, peering around the corner.  My pants and underwear (Which I were insisting were to be kept clean) were pulled up as much as possible, but still rode low enough to get me arrested in all but the most permissive of nudist colonies.  Gulping to keep down the bile I could feel rising in my throat, I waddled the best I could, to the stall at the back of the rest room.  While I obviously was terrified that some child would come in and have to go to therapy for the rest of their life upon gazing on a round rump that hadn’t seen sun in almost 7 years (Not to mention the accompanying stress and trauma of their having to learn how to navigate the world now that they were BLIND…), my main thought, as soon as I hit the point of no return was “**** what if there’s no toilet paper in there either?”

I dove into the stall and slammed the door shut behind me.  With nano seconds to spare apparently because as soon I registered the click to signal my privacy, I heard the door open.  My first thought was relief at my narrow get away, but the second was triggered by the stream of profanity that came from next door as I realized that in my haste, I had forgotten to flush.

Fortunately the staff had made sure to not only fill the dispenser with sand papery rolls, but they stockpiled a lovely pyramid in there.  After I made myself presentable, fore and aft, and the very angry woman left, I made sure to build a small shrine of 1-ply in the smaller stall, shortly followed by dousing my body with anti bacterial lotion.  Reeking of what is billed as “Midnight Pomegranate”, but in reality smells like Sweet Tarts, I found Erin who had not yet noticed that we had aged several years since we had last seen each other.

After paying for my purchases, once we were safe in the car I told Erin the whole story.  (She actually guessed several parts of it, which was very frightening)  Wheezing from laughing so hard, she had tears streaming from her eyes so that she could barely see the road.  So I absent mindedly pulled a tissue from the pack I had in my purse and handed her one…  Obviously I hadn’t even considered this as an option, or the fact that I had a cell phone, with internet, which in the event that I couldn’t call Erin (Since she had left her phone at home, and we had presumed that it had already been eaten by the dogs), I could have Googled the store’s number and had her paged to the restroom to rescue me.  However, either one of these routes would have been something that any normal, sane person would have done.  Not a hella awesome one.

Erin tried to make me feel better by sharing her tale of drunken woe, where when met with no toilet paper, she resourcefully used one of her socks, threw it in the tampon box, and tried to pass off her singled footwear look as a political fashion statement in regards to the poverty of third world countries.

Our bond even stronger through our shared experiences, we laughed, and went to dinner.  At Arbys.