New Amsterdam meets Old Amsterdam: EURO GROTESQUE CAMEO

Remembering Toilets

Sitting low among antiques,
reading Golden Books and
turn of the century dairy adverts,
little girls and dogs.
I’ll wash the bottom of these things again in twenty years,
stare at more cold condensation and
post nutritional essence,
learning optimal breath techniques to avoid the voids.
Our house was filled with dust-bowl era potties
Big white milk jugs
Marbled tin
Coats of suspicious rust.
I’m still playing with these things,
and its more than once that I’ll have
worked for a man still in his towel skirt
past noon, for a place to stay.
I’ll get sad and worry that it could be only the existence
of an additional n in my name
that distinguishes me from the cleaning ladies
who’s employers don’t get them high while they scrub.
But then wonder if they do, too.
I mean it did become something of a standard procedure.
The first time was serendipitous, and deer antler velvet or coffee berry extract would commence each day and giggle towards the same Tracy Chapman album playing loudly throughout the home in the early evening.
I felt a delicate concern for that man's dust and as though I were helping my own father who collects and keeps unread religious ephemera for far too long.
My friend and I would sit in the orchid gardens and search for spiders and climb trees in between cleaning bathrooms I wanted so dearly to sparkle.
That next one though,
the first time my bartending landlord made me ride on his chortling Vespa
through cobbled streets, stunk with canal smell,
I placed the fewest possible fingers around his waist to remain on the back
until it broke down, uncomfortable conversations away from his flat.
The second time, he just sat gross and pore-faced in his filthy house
as I spilled mop water into his living room
after handing him back the too much tobacco-ed joint
and tried my best to look as though I’d done this sober before.
Its a smart man who heightens the help’s detail orientation and visual acuity, lending artificial autistic inventory abilities
and espressos to keep her infinitely motivated to:
Get The Job Done and
Listen To All The Stories About Drunk Driving In Australia.
And after he asks if I do massage
and takes his shirt off and requests a sunscreen application
vertigo strikes as I quickly Have To Go out and down his alarmingly Dutch staircase,
twice too narrow for his wide frame, the one cloaked in Axe,
the bottle, I tissued hair from and placed neatly back next to some nail polish,
wincing at the evidence of some woman’s voluntary presence there.