You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy.
The airplane Lavatory.
I’m hooked up to the WIFI.
I’ve chosen super funky hits of the 70’s.
To the passengers around row 6, I’m a normal looking white dude wearing cargo shorts and jesus sandals.
But inside my head?
I’m Kid Dynamite?
I’m the white Re-Run from the 70’s show What’s Happening.
The sound track of my mind is a 1970’s who done it where I’m shaft, A bad mother, shut your mouth.
Suddenly, my ears are filled with the unmistakable sounds of James Brown.
“Make it funky.”
I think the staccato guitar riffs are signaling my bladder to get funky, so I get up to use the lavatory.
I am careful not to appear like I am from the Middle East nor do I have intentions to try to pry open the cockpit door with my iPhone.
As I walk up the aisle, I feel the eyes of an entire plane watching me.
I am after all, one bad mamma jamma, right?
But I don’t care. I am insulated. My Ibuds are firmly pressed into my ears and my brain is filled with 1970’s Funk.
I might as well be wearing bell bottom pants and sporting a white boy Afro.
I want to turn around, face the passengers and flip them all the bird and simply say:
“That’s right. I’m using the lavatory. Anybody got a damn problem with that?”
Instead I bask in my insular space. I let the funk create a barrier around me like a musical diving bell over my head.
I pull open the door to the lavatory.
It’s like entering a broom closet in the Holiday Inn, only the Holiday Inn is less frightening, and doesn’t smell like the camel exhibit at the Baghdad zoo.
As I slide the latch, the harsh fluorescent light goes on.
I look in the mirror that is 7 inches from my face.
Yikes I look rough!
My head is gigantic, like some misshapen Easter Island statue is now situated on my shoulders.
I stare at my pasty white face. I look like I’ve lived in a cave for 6 months.
I listen to the wails of James Brown pumping through my cranium.
Suddenly the plane shudders, and I am reminded that I am standing in a flying broom closet with a hole in the floor. It is nothing if not claustrophobic and stinky.
The music is pumping, the light is disorienting, the plane is shaking.
It’s like a stinky Studio 54.
As I take my position in front of the commode, I feel the plane undulate ever so slightly.
I like serenity when I am using the facility.
I don’t need G-force. I don’t need tension.
Suddenly the sound track of my moment changes. Aretha Franklin is filling my auditory canal with pulsing waves of baby making music.
“What it is? What it is? Rock steady baby!”
I lift the lid of the commode.
That’s when I see it. And no amount of 70’s Funk can undo what I see.
Another human has left a solidified waste bomb for every other passenger to experience.
AAAAARRRGGGHHH!
I am disgusted, repulsed, angry.
I wish I was wearing gloves. I need a full body condom.
I want to push open the door, stand before the plane and scream; “Someone has some “splainin” to do in here!”
I imagine every eye staring at me wondering if I have a box cutter or a shoe bomb.
Then I would say: “Were you people raised in a barn? This ain’t San Quentin bitch! Someone get some 409 and get your ass up here!”
That’s what I would have said.
What did I do?
I hit the flush button and wait for the vacuum to sweep away this camel excrement to the bowels of the plane.
There is a jet engine roar, but sadly, there is no water.
The camel dung remains.
It is gigantic, like a zombie passenger has somehow crapped the pyramid of Egypt out his ass.
I am mad at Southwest.
Really Southwest? Did you forget to pay your potable bill?
Bags fly for free. So does Camel Crap?
Just then, Give up the Funk by Parliament blares in my ears.
GIVE UP THE FUNK.
A seemingly appropriate anthem for what I am experiencing.
I look anywhere but down. I stare at my own Easter Island face.
I look jaundiced in the light.
Do I have dysentery?
This is s surreal.
My face. The camel excrement. The 70’s super funk thump thump thumping in my ears.
“There’s a whole lotta rhythm going round! We want the funk. Gotta have the funk!”
It’s too late now. I have assumed the position. I have done this a million times in my life so I don’t need to look down and I don’t. I won’t. I can’t.
I am grossed out. This lavatory has become a Mexican jail.
I wonder when this happened? Who did this? Surely they knew. The evidence of their visit is here for all to see.
How unfortunate. This tranquil lavatory has become a sinister, mile high crime scene.
I notice there is plenty of Kleenex affixed to the wall. What this flying discotheque of death needs is a crime tape dispenser.
I want some mile high justice.
Suddenly, my head is filled with the funky sounds of the Ohio Players.
Fire!
“Gotta gotta gotta be burning!”
I prepare to exit.
I want to interrogate someone.
I want to go all Columbo on somebody’s ass.
I want Peter Faulk to come out of that lavatory wearing a rain coat and squinting like a pirate.
I want to roll out of this tiny 3×3 lavatory like a funky Iron Sides dealing up some Southwest Justice.
Instead, I exit to the smooth and groovy sounds of the Earth Wind and fire.
I take one more look at my massive Easter Island head and then unlatch the door
I exit knowing that the next passenger is going to enter and visit this same crime scene within.
I feel the eyes of the other passengers staring at me.
I don’t want them to think that crime scene is my doing.
I walk back to aisle 6, my head down.
I’ve done nothing, but I feel guilty. “I didn’t do that! It’s not me!,” I want to scream.
I take my seat on the aisle and buckle in.
As I do, “She’s a brick house,” rings in my ears.
“She’s mighty mighty letting it all hang out!”
I smile.
I watch the next passenger, bladder bloated, move toward the lavatory.
I furtively smile.
What will they think? How appalled will they be when they find the digestive pyramid of Egypt waiting for them?
Kool and the Gang fills my soul.
“Jungle boogie! Get down get down!”
I watch the woman enter the lavatory. The door latches and the Red X on the ceiling indicating the lavatory is occupied illuminates.
Poor woman, I think to myself. She is going to feel like a crime victim, like she’s been assaulted at 36,000 feet.
I want to push my call button and report a drive by shooting.
I resist the urge. I only wish I didn’t know the guy in seat 3-c had corn for dinner last night.
Thanks southwest!
The woman exits. Her face reveals nothing.
She is a world series of poker champion keeping her thoughts, her anger, her dissatisfaction to herself.
But I know. I know what she thinks, how she feels.
As another funky tune fills my brain, I watch a parade of passengers come and go.
Every single person is straight-faced, acting as if nothing unusual has happened.
But I know what they know. They know there has been a flying atrocity committed by someone on this plane!
I wonder if the FBI will board the plane in Oakland.
Perhaps a team of Southwest Janitors wearing toxic suits is on standby.
Perhaps the digestive pyramid will necessitate a more dramatic response from the CDC.
“Is it monkey pox?”
Will they place samples in bio hazard bags marked toxic.
I can’t wait to get off this flying health violation.
“The captain has illuminated the fasten seat belt sign,” the flight attendant says.
I smile as funky town blares in my skull.
I don’t feel any turbulence.
I think the captain is just keeping the lavatory crime scene off-limits.
Life’s Crazy™