I spent April Fool's Day in Austin, and the joke was definitely on me as I found myself locked in on a self-imposed booze trip that found me pouring Shiner Boch and margaritas down my neck at an alarming rate of speed.
Ostensibly, I was down there to attend Jerry Jeff Walker's birthday concert with my Dad and my brother, but after a mediocre show that lasted a little over an hour, the only sensible solution seemed to be found at the bottom of many beer bottles.
Although the show was a disappointment, the bathroom at the concert venue provided me with many a laugh.
This is because the bathroom at the Broken Spoke on South Lamar is a pit that holds one large, rusted trough as well as a sink that doesn't work and the place is rounded out by an industrial-size trashcan that sits in the corner.
Three intoxicated men were usually crammed around the trough, which left room for two more people to stand behind the pissers and give advice while discussing the condition of the facilities.
It was during my second or third trip to the bathroom that an older man with long, grayish hair ended up standing behind me as he waited impatiently for a place at the trough to open.
Here's a transcript of the conversation he had with the three of us situated at the trough (despite the fact that none of us said a word throughout most of his monologue):
Man: Goddamn, this place is tiny and I've got to drain the lizard. Hurry up there boys. Son of a bitch you would have thought they would have put more places to piss in here for Christ's sake. I guess in a pinch you could always piss in the sink and shit in the trashcan over there. In fact that sounds like a good deal for everyone.
Pisser to my left: Except for the trashcan.
Man: Hey, we've all been there before buddy.
I quickly finished and left the bathroom laughing as I pictured this guy squatting down over some nasty trashcan in a dark alley somewhere in Austin. It was only later that I realized that I should have been angry with this sick bastard for lumping me in with him and his inability to shit in normal places.
When he spewed out that "we've all been there before" the implication was that I had also been down that road paved with garbage cans full of shit.
But I have not, and I have no plans to start.
What my plans do include, however, is a sharper focus on what people say and what it means in a broader sense. Quite simply, I've got enough problems that I create on my own without having other filthy degenerates putting me smack in the middle of their seedy bathroom issues.
Life is too short, and there's simply too many working toilets for that kind of shit.
-BDS
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