Toilet Readers -- A TEd Talk

For the past year I have shared a 450 square ft. studio with my Heavy Metal Bearded Boyfriend (HMBB for short). Prior to the scientific experiment of “Let's move to Los Angeles and live in a shoe box”, we lived in a 4 bedroom duplex flat in Chicago for 8 years. We only shared that extravagant palace with one other person, our best friend Kristen. Not to brag, but we had a lot of space. Now, we are literally on top of each other, whether it’s in bed, or at our respective work stations which due to that 450 sq. footage are conjoined. (Lets not get started on his argument that I have about maybe 4 ft. more space than he does to work.) When living like sardines you start to notice things. Things that didn’t matter in a 4-bedroom duplex with separate offices and a bathroom with a window to fresh air.

I’ve started to notice how much time this man spends in the bathroom. Lets be fair, he does have IBS (Irritable bowel syndrome) but it’s not severe enough to warrant this much time on the porcelain throne. Then I started thinking about all the other men I’ve lived with or know and something clicked. Men just spend a lot of time in the bathroom. And here I thought movies and TV shows were just exaggerating. Nope. They were commenting on the phenomenon of men rushing to the bathroom at the slightest hint of doing a number 2.

How can anyone sit there that long and wait? Do you realize how much time is wasted in a lifetime by waiting on a toilet? Extraordinary. So, then I got interested in what women do. I personally wait until I am 100% sure I am ready to go poop. I don’t fuck around with it. I get in, get it done, wipe and get the muff out of there. I asked a few of my girlfriends their bathroom routine and astonishingly theirs mirrored mine. So I asked about their significant others, ones that were male, if it was the same as HMBB. I was astonished once again. THEY ALL WERE. So I did some research and this is what I discovered….

Men have been doing this for centuries. CENTURIES! Better yet, they love to read while waiting. Can you imagine how many tiny fecal particles are on magazines in bathrooms? Or even on your PHONE? I see you out there, you tweet and Instagram poopers. I had a roommate who would bring his computer in the bathroom with him. He would watch an entire movie while waiting to poop. I had to arrange my morning routine by 15 minutes to beat him to the bathroom so I wouldn’t be late for my job at the Apple Store. No joke, a full movie to take a shit. Wild.

Science has proven “bathroom readers” tend to NOT feel disgusted by the smell of their own feces either. I believe this. HMBB has no shame. Wanna know how I know? Of course you don’t, but I’m going to tell you anyway. When he’s spending too much time in the bathroom after his morning coffee, I can smell his feces from across the apartment. The door is CLOSED. Do you hear me? CLOSED. If I can smell it across the apartment and THROUGH A DOOR, can you even imagine the potency of the smell from inside the bathroom? Legendary.
They make a whole line of “Poo-Pourri” sprays to mask the demons he summons into the toilet from his rectum and I can tell you first had, they don’t work. The key word in this is mask. The only thing that works, believe it or not, is a really strong 7-dollar candle from Home Goods. There isn’t much I ask of the HMBB, really there isn’t…

• Take out the trash
• Scrub the tub (I have knees of a 70 year old man and can’t bend that long)

And but certainly not least by any means…

• LIGHT THE DAMN CANDLE BEFORE YOU SIT ON THE TOILET

The aspect ratio of him actually doing the 3rd task is 1 out of 10. So 9 out of 10 times I am dealing with a scent strong enough to make a 300-pound linebacker pass out. Even the dog, who is a smelly tooting machine in her own right asks to be let out on the porch for some fresh air while her fathers clogging the toilet.

News flash, my toilet sitting friends, science has proven it’s not actually healthy to sit there and wait for your colon to do its thing. The longer you sit the more strain you’re putting on those muscles you need to get the job done. You know what strain does? Causes hemorrhoids. Nothing is sexier than having your significant other help you put medicine on your excessive toilet use reading until your feet go numb hemorrhoids. HOT. TAKE ME NOW BABY.
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Lessons from todays Ted-Talk are the following:

• Don’t sit on the toilet for no reason
• Fecal matter is more than likely on your book and phone screen
• Let’s hope you don’t get pink eye (which is the HMBB Instagram handle funny enough)
• Don’t watch a movie while pooping. You’ll make your roommate miss her commuter train to the suburbs
• Always light the candle before the expelling the demons
• Just be like women and wait til it’s ready because women are always right. ALWAYS.

Later Gators.