Anal Retentive

This coffeehouse bathroom is bugged with air fresheners. The one in the outlet is fitted with a tiny bulb that makes glow its Gatorade-blue liquid. Aromatic flowers are clipped to the drying rack on the wall, their plastic buds meticulous in corollas and pollen roughage. The room is pregnant with fragrance, overindulgence. I shimmy off my jeans and inspect myself in the full length mirror placed in the corner, angled so I can watch my reflection from the toilet. The mirror's memory cradles the hundreds of people who've scrutinized what they saw in its bounced-back photons. I see that I've lost weight but my tan has disappeared, the violent line that once divided my stomach from the pasty groin down to my knees all blended away.

The toilet paper dispenser doles out two sheets at a time, a creamy perforation slicing the two-ply serving. The number two becomes a holy thing. No geometry is made with two. I remember an episode of a cartoon I used to watch where a blue blobby guy tries to wipe his ass with more than two sheets of TP and is reprimanded by a rabbit in a monocle. To this day, the thought of a cartoon character's colon upsets me.

"Freud would have a field day with that one" has become one of my favorite post-adolescent phrases.

A sign on the mirror suggests I throw paper towels in the juxtaposed bin and not the toilet, the pink curly lettering printed on decorative card stock. The word juxtaposed, I think, is a decent word in almost any context except for the bathroom.

In the dining area, an old man sits at his usual table, alone. Sipping espresso-no-sugar. He's brought a chessboard with him and some notebooks. There's the expected chin scratch, the darting pensive eyes. A map of rooks and pawns advance upon unknown plains in his mind.

I quit the chess club in third grade after I botched an assured victory in my first match of the year. The girl who beat me, I'm sure, doesn't remember, but I've known that shame, among the others, as a humming eternal, deeply hidden.

The old man never looks up from his board. My macchiato goes down easy and I tell myself that's the last macchiato I'll order in my life. Outside, I watch the surface of the earth morph into a mine field, and everyone stepping on all the wrong spots.