[Reading-and-Crapping]
by YBLalat

Before coming to the States, I had no idea that the two tasks could be done simultaneously. In fact, both tasks are, in a very disturbing way, complimentary of each other. You know that you have to do your ‘business’, and that severe adversities will fall upon you if you do not make way for its whims, but that does not prevent you from making full and good use of the time spent daily on it. What better things to do as you relaxingly sit, waiting for your daily dump to hit the drain, then to enlighten yourself with the grace of new information and knowledge?

Back home, the nature of the crapper is often wet and dark. It is supposed to be that way by common and local standards. No one really wants to furnish or decorate their crapper ornately, may it be for their own personal use or the public, and transform it into a very cozy and welcoming experience. The reasons for this ignorance and prejudice against crappers everywhere is obvious: it’s not worth the effort. The money, sweat and work you invest into making your crapper the most beautiful and avant-garde is not worth the amount of time per day you spend in it.

Then, we need to realize how reading is viewed. The nature of reading is that it is an act of great honor and respect and that of the esteemed knowledgeable. It is always associated with the savants and their wisdom and God’s high appreciation to those who dedicate their lives in doing it, may it be on His Holy Book or just any plain book. Thus, reading is not only considered improper to be done in such a place often associated with filth and bad odor, but also very impossible. The nature of the site and of the ‘business’ themselves are major factors as to why in Malaysia, the reading-and-crapping trend do not catch on.

Again, as I said, before coming here, I did not know that this reading-and-crapping thing is doable, even if it means that the nature of the crapper is more reading-friendly or more comfortable to its occupants than that of its counterpart in Malaysia. But then, gradually, as years gone by, I become accustomed to seeing and sitting next to those who do they daily chore of emptying their bowels like second nature to walking and swinging your arms at the same time. So accustomed have I become to that that I feel the strong desire and accumulating curiosity to gain the same agile dexterity, to undergo the same foreign experience.

I, too, want to read-and-crap.

Every morning on the way to the class, I am sure to have in my immediate grasp the day’s newspaper. The Minnesota Daily is not only a great informer of what is happening around me but also a great companion in times of desperate need of an activity to keep oneself awake, especially from a professor’s incoherent and unfathomable lecture on the importance of the spin quantum number on the energy level of an atom’s orbital. However, more importantly, the Daily could also be your savior when the crapper paper runs out on your ‘business’ session and there are still lumps of gooey, sticky crap dangling from the hair inside the cheeks of your shit-hole.

The first day that I tried reading-and-crapping in the U crapper, it was early mid-morning and in the middle of an ongoing class hour; so the crapper was rather empty and its floor still dry and not in heavy use. Therefore, I had all the privacy and comfort in the world to learn and practice this very difficult style of relieving one’s full intestines. Equipped with the Daily and some engineering leaflets taken from the building’s entrance, I calmly took my time and chose the ideal crapper which I thought would be the best to commit my memory to this historic event.

All of the crappers were squeaky clean and dry; thus, the hygiene factor in selecting the ideal one was taken care of with ease. The crapper chosen, as it was to best suit the main agenda of the business, had a direct source of light and ventilation on top of it. It was just next to the wall and the nearest to the window and had the most amounts of crapper paper and hand-washing soap in it. Everything was so unexpectedly perfect that I started to have doubts. The sight of such an ideal place to experience your first read-and-crap was so overwhelming.

I came fully prepared. The night before and the morning just then, I ate my dinner and breakfast meals in heavy loads and with indiscriminate preference of whatever was served before me. Wheat bread, thick pasta, string noodles, fried rice, chicken legs, tuna spread, mixed vegetables, boiled eggs, tomato ketchup, spicy chili sauce, chocolate milk and Colombian coffee beans are just to name a few basic food groups that was inside my bowels at that moment. I tapped and caressed the skin of my pot belly so passionately as to arouse it from its tranquil sleep, gently waking it up to the task that I have dreamt and planned for so long.

“The time has come.”

The seat of the crapper’s bowl was very cold that the muscles of the butt contracted a bit in shock and it had to get itself used to the cold for a few minutes before starting to relax and letting the flow of the moment to take charge of the main agenda. That few minutes that it had acquired to calm itself I used it to prepare the order of materials to be read, from the most engaging to the least and from by the best columnists and journalists to the worst. Then, I waited patiently and with faith. I sat still and breathed slowly. Small growling sounds echoed from within. The crap’s journey was about to begin.

The first few seconds after the first few chunks of my morning dump came upon contact with the crapper’s bowl’s water was the most pleasurable and satisfying. That proved to me that all is according to plan and is well on progress. I knew that after that, after the dry head of the crap was well cut off from the main body of the whole dump inside your ass, there will only be a smooth and uninterrupted flow of steady satisfaction and sense of long-withheld relieve from the blunt edges of your bottom. If and only if then that the reading portion of the reading-and-crapping agenda is to be initiated with ease and relaxation.

As I was flipping the Daily towards the editorials page, my mind and attention was already taking off from the land of morning excretion at a rapid pace, leaving the matter to the sole supervision of the senses and the biological routine machine of the body which require no mental and intellectual management of the brain. My focus was then on the ramblings and grumblings of the readers on the issues that did not concern me much but did a rather splendid job of entertaining me while on the crapper’s bowl. It took me a while to read the newspaper with leisure in the crowdedness of the crapper but I managed myself to make use of what was available by wiggling and jiggling as much to comfort.

I was already fully taken by the emotional persuasion and idiotic rhetoric of the guest columnist’s views on the matter of Afghanistan when the next batch of wet chunks of crap came out gushing from my shit-hole like a burst of fireworks on New Year’s Eve. My focus was so occupied by what I was reading that I did not even realize that that moment was my first reading-and-crapping experience. I did not even notice how well and agile I was reading and crapping at the same time although being the first-timer that I was. It was like a second nature to me, that reading-and-crapping thing, as if I had done it before. It was so second nature that I was not even aware of doing it.

The crap just came out like magic, continuous and slushy. It only needed an impetus, an initial momentum - a mere motivation for shit’s sake. That was all!

So, if you, by any chance, are taking your crap and feeling a bit guilty of the time you are wasting by just sitting there and waiting for all of it to end down the drain, probably it would be wise to just try and read something, anything. If you don’t think that you would be able to handle yourself efficiently with a newspaper in one hand and a crapper paper on the other, why don’t you give the writings on the crapper’s wall a chance? I assure you that, even if the writings on the walls are not to your taste or level of intelligence, you will be amazed by what you may learn about other people and how they spent their ‘business’ time inside the same crapper and what goes inside their head at the same moment their crap and yours fall into the crapper’s bowl’s water.

Isn’t it so true that learning is a never-ending agenda of one’s life that starts from one’s birth and ends on one’s death? And hey! So does taking a crap!

Note: In case you have not figured it out already, 'crapper' is the crude name for 'toilet' (e.g. the ladies' crapper).