It's Best If You Don't Reach Out

"The unexceptional late thirties male against COVID-19, genital herpes, and $18 an hour employment"

[PDF] https://drive.google.com/file/d/1EeoAQdISHUHFHNMjo9T-vm09wd4AWioK/view?usp=sharing

[Amazon] https://www.amazon.com/ITS-BEST-DONT-REACH-unexceptional/dp/B09RM8WPRG/ref=sr_1_1

INTRODUCTION

Part 1

I'm a poop criminal

First of all, I'm a poop criminal. I was on a date at one of Tucson's three malls, and sometime between dinner at that generic chain restaurant and bowling at that arcade that plays royalty free music I felt a familiar, but feared judder in my stomach. My irritable bowel syndrome is usually more active in the morning, and then diminishes during the day, but this night I made the poor choice to continue drinking beer. The speed of service was severely impacted by a lack of people willing to work in the restaurant industry following everything we learned about labor, wages, and the wealthy over the course of the pandemic. So to avoid looking awkward I kept drinking beer while our food languished in the understaffed kitchen, and triggered my IBS just before we got on a lane. "I'm going to go buy us some beers," I said to my date as she laced up her bowling shoes. She looked confused because we just drank so many beers next door, and logically I should be gearing up to bowl, too. Instead, I left my shoes in a heap and took off toward the concessions. When I confirmed I was no longer in her line of sight, I veered off toward the stairwell. I needed to run downstairs to the restrooms, evacuate my bowels, clean myself with a wet paper towel (habit, but also necessary when you wipe excessively all day like I do), run back upstairs, and buy two beers before resuming our date. Some events needed to break my way for this to not appear unusual, including an available stall in the men's room followed by a short line to purchase alcohol. Do Not Enter. Closed For Cleaning. "Fuck!" I whispered to myself, as I approached the sporting arena style restrooms. There was one large subway looking entrance for men, and another large subway looking entrance for women (no doors, just hallways). The men's entrance had a shower rod extended across the middle with every frequent flyer's nightmare notification hanging from it: This restroom is unavailable. I yelled, "Hello...?" hoping a sympathetic employee might grant me passage, but none answered. I watched a couple and then a few women exit the other restroom, and started considering how many women might still be in there and what would be the consequence for claiming gender fluidity. "Screw this!" I psyched myself up, and darted under the little beam that stood between me and the solution to shitting myself on my date. As soon as I rounded the corner, I startled the referee costumed employee standing in the middle of the room who then began waving his arms side-to-side like he was going to eject me from a baseball game. "Hey man," I started to explain as I dodged past him and his outstretched arms, "I drank a lot of beer, my stomach is upset, and I'm having an emergency!" I closed the stall door, and sat on the toilet. I immediately expelled a torrent of gas, and felt instant relief. No shit this time, just another annoying false alarm. As my mind calculated how much time I wasted pretending to buy beer, I heard the referee call security. I listened incredulously to this little bastard tell his radio, "I need security in the men's room because a guy just breached the barricade!" Are you kidding me? Breached the barricade? "And now he's sitting in the stall that's clogged." OK that's bad, but he could have pointed me to a safe throne! I frantically wiped away the clear goo that leaves the asshole in false alarms, and shouted back, "I didn't do anything, it was just gas!" I left my stall, and started washing my hands, but the uncompromising staff continued his distress call, "Yeah, now he's washing his hands. He's like five' eight with dark hair..." I figured the likeliest outcome now was my date ending in embarrassment, and weighed the morality of just going home, unmatching this woman from the app, and never returning to the mall. As I breached the barricade out of the bathroom, and reemerged in the downstairs arcade, I immediately locked eyes with two mall security guards making their way to me. They were still a ways away, so I ran between the colorful and noisy video games, and started zig-zagging my way back to the stairwell. "This is humiliating," I thought to myself, wondering why the jerk in the bathroom couldn't relate to another human in need or at least appreciate me not taking a dump he would have to clean up in front of his precious barricade. I decided to go back to my date, and told her the line to buy beers was too long. She looked over my shoulder, and said, "Um... I can go try in a minute," as clearly only a smattering of people were buying food. I noticed she had entered our names on the scoreboard. So we bowled. And while we bowled, the two security guards stood about ten feet back and watched us for probably six turns. My date never knew I was a poop criminal, but I live with the shame.