11.2.22

When I'm done wiping after I poop, after the last pass with the toilet paper, when the toilet paper is nearly untarnished save maybe the slightest aura of brown, I wipe once quickly with my finger along my ass crack just to make sure it's really dry and clean. I have only told this to one person in my life, Jamie. I revealed this private detail in a conversation we were having about gaps in the literature in the poop and pee department. Jamie had kicked off the conversation by remarking that he had never read a description of a pooper looking at the paper after they wiped. I replied that I hadn't read that either, and that I also hadn't read a description of a pooper standing up from the toilet and turning to look down at the world they had created below. We agreed that we did both of these things and that many others probably did too.

This conversation was inspired after Jamie read me a two page long chunk from The Novelist by Jordan Castro that detailed various wiping experiences, "one-and done" positioned as the unattainable goal. We had both agreed that we loved reading about this and resonated with his observations. Months later when I told my boss about this chunk of text she said that if he was a woman writer people would call him crazy. I verbally agreed with her at the time but I thought her comment was somehow off. Perhaps it was slightly outdated, but more so I felt that anyone writing two pages about pooping probably could handle being called crazy.