The Psychopath on the Other Side of the Bathroom Door
A few weeks ago my friend Lotta told me that her doctor told her that her antidepressants weren’t working because she had too many toxins in her body, and that she needed to use a “colon cleanse” to flush everything out of her system. It sounded completely insane and I told her that, but then she mentioned that when she took the colon cleanse she lost three pounds that very day—I was immediately in. I convinced myself that I owed it to my family to have my crazy pills work properly, but really I just wanted to lose three pounds without working out. And that whole last sentence kind of proves why I need to be on crazy pills. Awesome.
So I went to the grocery store but I couldn’t find the colon cleanse. I considered asking the pharmacist, but as I was waiting in line I had a conversation in my head that went like this:
ME: Yes, I’d like some colon cleanse.
PHARMACIST: I’ve never heard of that. Sounds like something deviants use.
ME: It’s something that cleans out your colon so your antidepressants work better.
PHARMACIST: I think you’re using your antidepressants wrong. They go in your mouth.
ME: You are surprisingly unhelpful for a health care worker.
PHARMACIST: I’m calling the police, deviant.
I’m not sure why I jumped right to the pharmacist calling the police, but once the thought was in my head it was stuck there, and so I panicked a little when the pharmacist asked what I needed. I paused awkwardly and then asked where the reading glasses were, and then he said they didn’t carry reading glasses, which is weird because most pharmacies do, and I always like to try them on and pretend that I’m a naughty librarian. So instead of the colon cleanse I decided I would just take a bunch of ex-lax, because I figured, next-best thing, right? I bought the extra-strength stuff because it was the same price as regular strength, and so technically it was like I was saving money, and I thought that would help my argument when Victor demanded to know why I bought twenty dollars’ worth of “unnecessary” laxatives (although it turns out he didn’t really care about cost-effectiveness because he hates being economically feasible, or wants me to be fat or something). I already knew he’d be all judgy about the whole thing, because he was also very unsupportive when I wanted to buy those Chinese foot-pad things that suck all the toxins out of your feet while you sleep. He claimed the whole Chinese foot-pad thing was a scam, but I think it’s just because he wants me to suffer, or maybe that he’s racist. Then when I called him racist he got all mad and screamy, and I was like, “I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT I’M SAYING! THOSE ARE THE TOXINS TALKING,” but he still wouldn’t let me buy them. And this is exactly why I waited until the week he left for a business trip to New York to actually do the cleanse.
I took two chocolate squares of ex-lax that night, but then I noticed that the directions said it would bring “gentle results,” and it seemed like a good colon cleansing shouldn’t be “gentle” at all, so I took three more tabs. And they were chocolaty and delicious and I was kind of hungry, so I ate another one. And then nothing happened at all. So then next morning I took two more (because at this point I thought maybe there was something wrong with me, and that I had some kind of freakishly high laxative tolerance), and then I went to Starbucks and picked up a giant Frappuccino. This might have been a mistake, because apparently coffee is kind of a laxative too, although sadly I wasn’t thinking about that at the time, because I was too busy thinking about the phone conversation I’d had with Victor last week about Frappuccinos when he called me at work:
[Ring]
ME: This is Jenny.
VICTOR: So why don’t they make chocolate Slurpees?
ME: Um . . . what?
VICTOR: Chocolate Slurpees. Why don’t they exist?
ME: They do. They’re called mocha Frappuccinos.
VICTOR: Nope. Not the same thing. Frappuccinos don’t have that little spoon on the end of the straw like Slurpees do.
ME: Those are Icees. Not Slurpees.
VICTOR: Next time I go into Starbucks I’m going to be all, “I want a spoon on my straw, a-hole!” How else are you gonna get that little last bit in the bottom, huh? Spoon straw!
ME: ?
VICTOR: They need to join forces, 7-Eleven and Starbucks.
ME: Mochaslurpeeccino?
VICTOR: Or maybe a slurpeemacchiato. Now, that would be an unholy union.
ME: So did you actually need something from me or . . . ?
VICTOR: Doo-doo, wa-wa.
ME: Huh. What was that?
VICTOR: That’s my Antichrist music.