Chuck Palahniuk - Doomed

The preceding observations steeled my spine even as tractor-trailer combos hurtled past, not a hand’s length away. If my mother had been happy living as Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm she’d never have become a glorious icon for the moviegoing world. If my life’s dream were to boil innocent apricots into a vile jellied condiment, alongside my nana, I wouldn’t now find myself dashing across the hostile congested lanes of State Route Whatever.

My chubby legs scampered, advancing and retreating in the flurry, dodging lest I be run down and tatters of my chunky childish flesh be pasted to an assortment of chrome bumpers and radiator grilles, bound for Pennsylvania and Connecticut, my denim-chambray ensemble reduced to sodden rags ironed flat against the searing blacktop. One stumble and I’d perish. One forward misstep led to two backward steps. My burden of tea shifted, heaving me off balance. I reeled sideways into the path of an oncoming long-haul monster. Blaring its mighty air horn, the looming tires squealed and skidded. A cargo box of doomed cattle slid by my side, so close I could smell their bovine musk, too close. Their thousand large brown cow eyes stared down piteously upon me.

Without pause other trucks bore down, herding me, prompting my stubby legs to scurry hither and yon, my mind blind with frenzied self-preservation. I darted. My eyes squeezed shut, I raced, ran, flitted, and cowered. I pivoted, slid, and dived with little idea of my direction, mindful only of the howling automobile horns and swerving near misses. Pursuing headlights flashed their indignant high-beam strobes at my jiggling belly fat.

Sopping with perspiration, I was chased. My flabby monster arms flapping, I was intercepted. My progress thwarted, my meaty love handles bounced as my direction was redirected. An onslaught of irate motorists succeeded in elevating my heart rate higher than would the next two years of costly personal trainers.

At last I stumbled. The toe of my shoe kicked an obstacle, and I tumbled and rolled, ready to be slaughtered by the next pursuing conveyance. My arms and torso were collapsed forward, crumpled to protect the fragile glass jar and Beagle book. However, instead of hard pavement I landed on something soft. The obstacle which had arrested my foot, I opened my eyes to find it was a concrete curb. The soft place where I’d fallen was a lawn of mown grass. I’d reached the traffic island. The grass itself flattened and yellow-dead, the yielding cushion where I now lay was a warm mound of squishy dog poo.

Gentle Tweeter,

To avoid the sometimes soporific pace of Mr. Darwin’s travelogue I’ll not describe every molecule of the upstate traffic isle. Suffice to say the island was ovoid in shape, bounded along all sides by maniacal drivers operating their motor vehicles at breakneck speed. As is so typical of the upstate region, the island’s terrain was boring. The view in every direction was uninteresting. The geology ho-hum. A scanty layer of lawn blanketed the island, and every surface—the grass, the inoperative drinking fountain, the concrete pathways—radiated heat at a temperature comparable to the surface of the sun. To be more exact: the surface of the sun in August .

The object of my quest was to locate some insect trapped here and specifically adapted to this sordid environment. I needed only to collect a specimen and name the new species for myself. My discovery would launch my new future as a world-renowned naturalist, and I’d need never again be claimed as a dependent on the tax returns of Camille and Antonio Spencer.

Not that my parents ever paid taxes.

Hulking at the center of the island, like a dormant South Seas volcano ripe with the gaseous stench of brimstone and methane, stood the cinder-block public toilets. To attract exotic insects I uncovered my jar of highly sugared tea, and I waited. Dared I hope for a blaze-colored butterfly? If such a unique species appeared, it would be my own: Papilio madisonspencerii . My clothing hung drenched with perspiration. My neck itched. My thirst grew.

Instead of unique aboriginal butterflies, I was beset by houseflies. Rising as a dark haze, migrating en masse from the reeking public toilets, sated from feasting on fresh human bowel movements, wet with the excrement of strangers—these flies migrated straight to the sweetness of my lips. Fat, buzzing black flies as large as twelve-carat diamonds swarmed in a teeming fog around me. Mr. Darwin, my invisible mentor, would be ashamed, for I was unable to summon up even a distanced scientific curiosity about these loathsome vermin as they alighted on my arms, my sweaty face, crawling upon my damp scalp and specking me with their poo-tinged feet. Parched and frustrated, I flailed them away and drank greedily of the tea. The sweetness begot more thirst, and soon I drank again.

Besides the vile houseflies, the only evidence of animal life thereabouts was dog doo-doo. In the same way sea-birds have deposited millennia of guano on certain remote islands, thus making those nations wealthy with quarries of nitrogen-rich fertilizer, I posited that future upstate residents would someday mine their traffic islands for the vast accumulations of dog poo. No butterflies arrived. Nor did any neon-colored dragonflies. Stymied by the day’s suffocating heat, I partook of more tea. Between the heat and the vigorous exertion required to ward off poop flies, I soon found I’d drunk most of the gallon.

So well irrigated by tea, I found myself compelled to make number one. Painfully compelled.

Please, Gentle Tweeter, do not take what I’m about to say as elitist. If you’ll recall: You are alive and most likely eating a nice buttered snack, while my own precious body is providing craft services for earthworms. Recognizing our relative statuses, in no way can I really high-hat you. But, plainly put, until that tedious upstate moment I’d never before made use of a public toilet. Oh, I’d heard tell they existed, these shared spaces where one and all might venture to donate their wee-wee to a community sewer, but I’d simply never been forced to exercise so desperate an option.

My clenched woo-woo howling in wordless distress, I abandoned my empty tea jar—the sticky glass at present paved with black houseflies. I carried my Darwin and went in search of relief. The landscape offered nothing in the way of cover. No options existed save for the ominous cinder-block bathrooms, their exterior walls painted a dull ochre. So advanced was my condition, so distended my bladder, that I had no hope of successfully retreating to my nana’s spartan albeit semihygienic commode.

The beckoning public toilets seemed to boast two doors, each door occurring on a side of the building opposite the other door, both doors painted a dismal brown. Mounted at eye level beside each was a sign lettered in an alarming sans-serif, all-caps typeface. These read men and women, respectively, suggesting the genders were segregated in their public-toilet-going pursuits. I waited for confirmation, hoping to follow a woman into what seemed the appropriate door. My plan was to mirror some stranger’s behavior, thus avoiding any major faux pas. I especially worried about under- or overtipping any attendant. Etiquette and protocol constituted no small part of my Swiss boarding school education, but I remained oblivious as to how one ought to comport herself while tinkling among bystanders.

Even at school I eschewed using the shared lavatories, preferring always to return to my room’s en suite water closet. Among my worst fears was that I might suffer from a shy bladder and find my pelvic muscles unable to sufficiently relax.