My kidneys are overflowing, drip drop drip drop. I’m tapping my feet, shifting weight, playing with my hair. These movements keep my brain from firing impulses to my expanding bladder, which, in turn, fire back pains of warning. T-minus five minutes, tops. Eight fans stand in front of me. This doesn’t include the dad with two young children, who will easily add another few minutes to my wait.
This was presumably the only public port-a-jon in center city Charlotte. The rest were trucked in for private parties, who charged desperate crotch-holders $5 a go. Commies. A covert police presence kept us honest and kept our urine off public buildings. It would last until a few dozen drinks wiped clean all caution and it was back into alleys, legs spread and eyes every where.
A beer company’s got this lot reserved, the one with the free toilet. Not a single car. Just a spinning prize wheel, a weak cornhole game and chatty skanks on the microphones, chirping random R&B song lyrics and inside jokes.
Blue jerseys, the insignia of Buffalo Bills, are crowded in numberless pockets among the hometown fans, who are easily outnumbered. Tailgate parties cover parking spaces typically reserved for the bankers on the weekdays. Today, there are bottles breaking, incessant yelling and hands slapping and I have to piss so damn bad, and, thank god, dad and the boys are finished. A man in cut-off shorts and a headband steps in. Five left.
And the football game will begin with raucous noise and spilled drinks on knees. Heads are turning, there is yelling and yelling and yelling, nothing in particular, just screams, a capella versions of the “Shout” song. The black jerseys, they turn to look and whisper in their spouse’s ear, and the man in the street says that we should all hop onto I-77 North, right back up to Buffalo, something about “Dixie blood in my veins, god dammit, always”. The game will end in the away team’s favor, “our” favor, and I totally should have fucking pissed in that conspicuous crevice by the truck, and what was I thinking? I tap the gravel and touch my sides and wait and wait and there’s just a dude and two ladies in front of me and I can do this. I can and I will.
A game’s end, the rotunda fills with the elated, who high-five, reaching across railings. “BUFFALO!!” And if you’re not a fan, it’s just boisterous, drunken noise from the annoying Yanks, no manners at all, no respect and there are kids around, dammit.
Fire grills burn up charcoal, carry across the lot, sting my nose, but it’s the best, sinuses flare and I suck in cool autumn air. A girl steps out and her friend, her friend walks off with her, she was standing in line for company and why the hell would you do that? Man, ladies are strange in that regard.
Laughter at every corner, and this day is good, man, this day is fucking GREAT and damn it feels good to not be cited for public urination, trickletrickle. I tell them all this is the greatest day of my life, my friends I tell, not the pissers in line. I am walking on air. I am healing sick child of skin-related illnesses.
We will stay, long after dark falls on a victory and this won’t end anytime soon, and it’s belly laughs with sore ribs and the muscles in the back of the skull, pulling tight, and there is a line at the crevice.
Lou