One Wrong Turn on the Way to the Bathroom

by chris otchy

James woke up in the late morning and gathered up the porno mags that littered his room. The girl on the top of the stack had a dumpy face and brown hair that looked like a dirty mud flap. She reminded him of the first girl he ever made love to. Her name was Evelyn. Every night, before his hand disappeared beneath the sheets, in a ritual that preceded that most urgent grappling, he would open the magazine and remark to the photo, in a voice barely above a whisper, "Good evening, Evelyn, remember me?"

James considered jerking off again. "Well," he thought to himself, "I am going to be out of the house the whole day..." But just as he reached down for the lotion, he heard his mother calling from downstairs in a voice he wasn't exactly excited to hear.

"James," she squealed, "if you want a ride with me to the train station, you better get your backside out of bed, and I mean now!"

James' mother drove him to the station wordlessly. On that particular morning, she had what was known in those days as a pissy attitude. It was a fairly common sentiment, way back when. She hated her job. After spending 23 years at home in a marriage that ultimately failed, she had taken for granted the freedom being a housewife really afforded. Sure, she had worked before she was married, but she was a teenager then, serving up chocolate malts at a soda fountain. Getting your first office job at the age of 52 is a whole different thing. But what could she do? Times were tough. Someone had to pay the bills... And it only made things worse to see her 26-year-old son, a hack filmmaker who dropped out of the University of Illinois, show up on her doorstep. And jobless, no less. Sheesh.

"Don't think I can give you a ride home later, buster, 'cause I can't," she sniped, and hauled off in a cloud of perfume.

James rode the C train to 52nd St. and 8th Ave. That was where the New York State Department of Labor was located. Unemployed people went there, in those days, to attend meetings that were supposed to prove to the authorities that they really were trying to find work and were not just scamming money off the system. The fact of the matter was, James kind of was scamming money off the system. But he thought he deserved it after all the crap he took at his last job.

You may be familiar with the concept of school bands. If you aren't, here's a quick update. During the year, lots of grammar schools and high schools all across the U.S. have bands that ritually perform at sports functions, ceremonies, and painfully awkward recitals. The schools traditionally rent out instruments from a lending company--you know, oboes and clarinets and trumpets and the like. Well, during the summer, the company from which those instruments are rented cleans each and every one. This is where James used to work--piccolo department.

Here's how people get chosen for their instruments. The students who have any talent whatsoever, or exhibit even a hint of intelligence, get to choose which instrument they want to play. The real dumb asses get stuck with the piccolo.

In order to clean the piccolo, James had to take apart each section and polish it individually. Considering the clientele that normally used these things, you can imagine the gooey, nasty-ass, dried-up, spittle-y crap he ran into on a daily basis. Being a rather imaginative fellow, James was inclined to picture (involuntarily, mind you) where exactly this piccolo had been, and what abuse it saw in order to incur such horrendous scars. In other words, James spent the summer envisioning all the foul book bags, grimy desks, horrendously disorganized lockers, car seats, closets, and school storage rooms where these poor instruments had resided... in the hapless care of the least gifted students in the tri-state area.

James did this for minimum wage.

When September came and the company had their annual Fall downsizing, James gladly took his pink slip and turned it into $172.43 per week from the Department of Labor. It was like magic. All he had to do was call in to an automated system every week and hit a bunch of numbers that indicated he was still unemployed. Beats cleaning spittle out of piccolos. Yippee.

So away he went that blustery winter day, rolling down the gray corridors that are New York City's streets and avenues. He found his building--an undistinguished monster of granite hidden near the corner of 52nd St. and 8th Ave.

If someone had dashed up to James the very moment he walked into the New York State Department of Labor and asked him to describe the scene that faced him, here’s what he would have responded:

“Complete chaos.”

James was dumbstruck by the seething mass of humanity. Unregulated running and shouting seemed to be going on almost continuously, and no one was monitoring the use of the water fountain. A printer was puking blank paper like freshman at a keg party. Lines of people seemed to grow in every which direction imaginable. The right side of the room was covered. The left side of the room was covered. There was a bunch of people lying on the floor trying to form some sort of vertical line. Chaos.

Every race, class, and ethnicity was represented in that room, every religion and language. So much diversity, it was disgusting. There was only one thing every person in that room had in common—they all needed money to survive. That, and they all looked like they wanted to kill themselves.

A mousy woman with a flat head haircut suddenly appeared before him with a glazed look in her eye, grappling a manila envelope with fervor.

“Do you have an extra C-7 form? They didn’t tell me I needed one,” she said. “They never tell me the right forms to bring.” But before James could answer she began to veer off at an obtuse angle, continuing to talk a mile a minute… to no one.

He felt himself slipping closer to the brink of panic. “OK, James,” he said to himself, “just get a grip here. One of these lunatics must know where to go. They must. You just have to find the right person. Easy as that.”

But it wasn’t as easy as that. Forget asking someone a question, James couldn’t even get anyone to LOOK at him. Which, actually, was a pretty common problem for him. You see, in those days, eye contact between two strangers was considered a very rude thing to do. If you made eye contact with a stranger, it usually meant one of two things: either you wanted to beat them up, or you wanted to fuck them. Both impulses being rooted in the same place in the human psyche, you can see how repressed and anal people really were in that day and age. In any case, this particular afternoon, James found himself in a situation many of us would be familiar with—lost, with no one wanting to look you in the eye.

After stumbling around a bit, unintentionally crushing someone’s cheapo umbrella, being accused more than once that he was trying to cut in line, James finally located a woman sitting at a desk. From the look of her, she had one hell of a pissy attitude. Two men in business suits were shot down before he even reached her. His turn finally came, and when her putrid gaze fell upon him, it felt like Sauron’s Eye had eclipsed the sun. Trembling, he asked, “Do you know where I can find the unemployment office?” Steam starting pouring out her ears. Her face got beet red.

“Where do you think, jerk?!” She let loose a string of obscenities, then, “Jesus, I didn’t even have my lunch yet!”

James found a long marble hallway with people lining one of the walls. He followed this for a while, taking the protests of angry liners as encouragement that he must be on the right track. He hurried down two more corridors, then followed the line around a corner, and down another. At the end of the third hallway, to his chagrin, he did not find an Unemployment Office. Oh, no.

“This is the line for the fucking bathroom?!!”

“Uh, no, man,” a hippy in line replied, “I just got to go pee.”

He came upon a lesser-lined hallway with a great preponderance of locked doors and very busy looking people. Unfortunately, when he tried to get someone's attention, they all seemed to walk away or suddenly get distracted by something far more important. James saw one man in a train conductor's hat standing in front of a large door, his posture and demeanor lending him an air of distinction. James approached the man, and although he couldn’t be certain, James was almost positive the man timed a gaze at his watch specifically to avoid eye contact.

James cleared his throat loudly and asked, "Excuse me, sir. Do you know where I can find the unemployment office?"

For a frightening moment, James thought the man was actually just going to walk away, ignoring him completely. Instead, he found a fascinating piece of lint on his jacket as he replied, "3rd floor. Room 314."

Room 314 smelled something like a cross between a refrigerator of old food and a camper full of sleepy kids. There were a couple of fat guys sitting in desks far too small for them, and some weirdo Puerto Rican lady in the back. One dude definitely looked retarded, or maybe it was just his huge glasses. The moderator, a middle-aged loser who looked like her name was Flo or Marge or something, stared at James for a moment. She scratched her freakish mane, which was dyed a hue that does not exist in the natural spectrum of colored light. Her fingernails were green, with tacky miniature Christmas trees painted on every single one of them.

"Please take a seat if you are here for the unemployment meeting," she said, exhaling a thin vein of cigarette smoke. Her face resumed a queer, wrinkled expression that could only be interpreted as pain, or having to take a shit.

James stood there for a second, smelling the smoke. His brain was buzzing and he could feel a wicked head rush coming on. You see, for James, just walking into this office was quite a surreal experience. He hadn't seen a classroom full of such a random assortment of degenerates since high school.

"Detention," James suddenly said aloud, because that's what the scene reminded him of. James spent a lot of time in rooms very similar to that one while he was attending St. Jude's Academy for Boys--particularly between the hours of 3 and 4pm. He was a smart kid, but a lot of his teachers told his parents that James liked to "wise off." In St. Jude's Academy, kids who liked to "wise off" always ended up in classrooms chock-a-block full of degenerates between the hours of 3 and 4pm.

"In a moment I will hand out a quiz for you to take," Flo said. Her tone reflected the kind of attitude one adopts after doing the same, irrelevant thing with a bunch of complete strangers who don’t give shit, everyday, for 20 years.

"The purpose of this quiz is to determine whether or not you are eligible to continue receiving Unemployment Benefits. Do not look at your neighbor’s paper. Do not talk during the quiz. Do not use the bathroom during the quiz." At this last comment, a childlike sigh of discontent was heard from the back of the room.

"What, you got to use the bathroom?" Flo asked the Puerto Rican lady.

"Mmm hmm."

"Can you hold it for a couple minutes?"

"Naa un."

"OK, go for it," Flo said. "We're gonna have to wait here for a second, folks."

One of the fat men erupted, "Jesus Christ, what is this, kindergarten?"

"What do you want me to do? The lady's got to pee," Flo replied.

"Well... is this going to effect my union dues?" the fat man said, and James noticed the powdery blue scarf hanging out of his shirt. It was then that the idea of him being gay crossed James’ mind. James knew from the moment he saw him that he wasn't gay. But still... there was something inherently effeminate about this by-all-accounts rough-and-tough man. For some reason, it was just funny.

"What union are you in?" Flo said.

"Local 703."

"You're a plumber? An unemployed plumber? Oh, man... " Flo rolled her eyes. "Half the city can't get hot water and you can't find work? Crimminy sakes, my toliet's all fouled up, why don't you come over to my apartment tonight? Sheesh."

A few moments later the Puerto Rican lady came back in and sat down with a popsicle in her mouth.
"What the--?" the moderator stammered. "Forget it. I don't even want to know. Like I was saying, no talking, no bathroom visits, no nonsense. OK? All right."

She handed out the papers to the first person in each row and they passed it over their heads in turn. The quiz consisted of three questions:

1. Circle all the following sources you have used in order to find employment:
a. Newspapers want ads
b. The Internet
c. Personal contacts (family or friends)
d. Trade or union contacts.
e. None of the above. I have not been trying to find a job.

2. How far would you be willing to commute if someone offered you a job?
a. 1 mile.
b. 5 miles.
c. 25 miles.
d. 100 miles.
e. I am unwilling to commute.

3. Check the statement that most accurately describes you:
a. I am trying my best to obtain gainful (paid) employment.
b. I am applying myself moderately to obtain gainful employment.
c. I am doing nothing to obtain gainful employment


James had to sit and stare for a moment. Was this some kind of joke? He looked around and everyone else seemed to be taking it seriously. The Gay Plumber concentrated, taking great care in marking his answers down. After a little while the moderator said, "OK, times up. And the answers are… number one is A, number two is C, and number three is B. That's right, A,C,B. Pass 'em up. You can leave now. Thanks for coming. Have a productive day."

As he walked out into the swirling chaos that was the everyday machinations of the New York State Department of Labor, James felt as if he was waking up from a dream. Outside the same cast of characters were playing their predestined roles: the man in the conductor's hat, urgently peering at his watch; the mouse woman, still seeking out a C-7 form; the angry lady at her desk, still un-lunched by the look of her. Some newcomer was screaming for an eraser.

"Do these people ever leave?" James thought as he stepped back outside, the wind tearing at his unzipped jacket. "Maybe this is somewhere you end up if you take a wrong turn on the way to heaven." A lost looking soul walked towards him like a zombie, a familiar looking envelope under his arm.

"It's that door over there on the right," James commented, anticipating the man's question. A brief shadow of a smile passed over his face, and he walked silently on.

"No," James thought again, "it's just somewhere you end up if you take a wrong turn on the way to the bathroom."

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