Once Upon a Potty (for her!)

Saturday night. The trouble with house-sitting is that I always feel
like a stranger, even though I have the place to myself for eight days.
I have to tiptoe and make sure everything is in the right place. It’s
easier when you housesit for a guy who has three girls between the ages
of three and nine, though. The place is trashed when I arrive. It’s a
sad thing when the state of a house ruined by three little girls is on
the level of what I’m used to as a 29 year old bachelor. Eating Fruit
Loops for dinner, drinking nameless red juice and tearing through the
Britney Spears CDs while wearing a funny hat and a sparkly dress is
exactly how I live normally. The only difference between me and a nine
year old girl is that my generic red juice has vodka in it.

There is one thing that I’m not used to, though. Silence. I’ve
always had roommates or crazed family members around, so sitting in
front of the TV watching TV Land and the Cartoon Channel all day starts
to get to me after a while, especially when all the videos in the house
are geared towards ages 5-12. I placed a desperate call to my old
friend James, who said he’d put off drinking himself to death and come
right over. I put on Carol King’s Tapestry and changed out of
the sparkly dress and back into normal clothes. James arrived after a
few minutes with a bottle of Dalwhinnie, poured himself four ounces and
then took a long swig, sitting down heavily on the floor and pressing
his head forward against the wall for about 45 seconds. Then he said
hello, smiled, stood up and patted me on the shoulder.

We retired to the living room, red juice and whiskey, and watched Buffy repeats for a bit until the inevitable question arose.

“So what are we gonna do?”

I shrugged, “A movie?”

“What’s out?”

“Nothing.”

“We could get drunk and go see that Kate Hudson movie.”

“We have to hold hands if we do that,”

James took a sip of scotch, “Dude, I need a Kate Hudson fix. I want to make her beg me to cum on her chest.”

I sipped my red juice and glared at James over my glasses.

“Some bitches like that.” He looked sheepish, “Or so I’m told.”

Carol was done and The Monkees had come on. Last Train to Clarksville.
I would have burst into the air, dancing like a man of religion, if my
mind wasn’t bent on the idea of cumming on Kate Hudson’s tits and face
and screaming “I’m not your stepping stone, you whore!”

The owner of the house had a video of Almost Famous lying
around somewhere and James nodded fractionally when I suggested we get
some early Hudson. I crawled on all fours across a rug stained by
essence of dog and the mysterious power of little girls. In the cabinet
beneath the TV, I began to dig fervently for the video, all the while
humming mindlessly to the tune of I’m a Believer.

Then I came on her chest,
Now I’m a believer…

Fuck! I turned and glared at James.

“You look like Harry Potter with those glasses,” he slurred, grinning wickedly.

“Fuck you, you dirty, ass-licking muggle.”

Somewhere between searching for the video and drinking my generic red
juice and vodka, I found myself spread-eagle on the floor and singing
to the ceiling beams.

You trying to make your mark in society
You using all the tricks that you used on me
You reading all them high fashion magazines
The clothes you’re wearing, girl, they causing public scenes!

James leapt onto the couch and guitar-walked like Chuck Barry. “Not yer
stepping stone!” he screamed manically, breathlessly. “Not yer stepping
stone! I’m not yer stepping stone!”

Somehow, by the time the song ended, we ended up in the same positions
we had occupied a few minutes earlier. I looked up at James. “No Almost Famous, dude.”

“I mean, Kate reminds me of my little sister.” James said, then he
glanced sideways and looked confused, “What were we talking about?”

I rifled through unmarked tapes and Disney boxes when, out from the
shadows in the rear of the cabinet, a fire-engine red tape case tumbled
out onto the carpet. Instinctively, I pulled back with a girlish gasp.
The cassette was labeled “Once Upon a Potty for Her.”

James cleared his throat.

“Put it in,” he said, his voice thick.

Once Upon a Potty opens up with The Potty Song, which is strangely
catchy, and then goes into the cartoon story of Prudence, a four year
old learning to go to potty. The audience is introduced to the basic
physiology of little girls. Apparently, all girls have a head, for
thinking. Eyes, for seeing. Ears, for hearing. A mouth, for eating.
Hands, for clapping. A body, for dancing. Now, here’s the secret all
guys should learn – little girls also have a wee-wee, for making
pee-pee, a bottom, for sitting, and a little hole for making poo-poo.

It doesn’t help to watch this video while listening to The Monkees on a
powerful stereo system with a volume knob that goes to 12. James was
singing “Valleri” under his breath throughout the entire video, which I
found emotionally invasive.

At the mention of the little poo-poo hole, cartoon Prudence bends over
and grabs her ankles, smiling between her legs, while the camera
lingers on the little poo-poo hole for what James and I felt was an
excessive amount of time. It wasn’t until the end of “Valleri,” but it
was close. This sure looked different than the little girl who used to
hang around my door.

While Prudence discovers the secrets of going potty, at first shitting
on the floor and spraying gallons of milky piss all over the walls,
James and I became involved in a heated debate about the wee-wee. Being
somewhat naïve when it comes to women, I took the video at face value –
women have wee-wees. But James disagreed. He said that only boys have
wee-wees. A wee-wee, by definition, indicated a penis.

I wanted to take a stand, because the vodka was with me, so I insisted
that wee-wee was a more general reference to genitals. According to the
video, wee-wee’s make pee-pee. If all girls make pee-pee, and pee-pee
comes from wee-wee’s, then all girls have wee-wee’s. QweeweeD.

“Impossible!” James shouted. “Everyone knows a wee-wee refers to dangling outside bits!”

“Girls have outside bits!” I barked. I’d seen them.

“Those aren’t outside bits! Is the outer wall a castle or is it the building inside the wall?”

“It’s both, James! The whole structure is the castle!”

“Girl’s don’t have wee-wees, and I stand by that.” James crossed his
arms, whiskey sloshing onto the floor. The house cat crept out of the
shadows and gently licked at the puddle.

“Then if it’s not a wee-wee, what is it? What do you call it?”

“Glory hole, slit, the hungry clam — ” James looked defiantly at me, then crossed his arms again and pouted.

“No, no, for four year old girls! What do you call it?”

“I don’t fucking call it anything for a four year old girl you goddamned short eyes!”

“This is your argument, asshole!”

“I wouldn’t even bring it up until the girl turns 30. What’s this, daddy? Nothing! Get away! Pariah! Outcast! Unclean!”

“If you ever have a daughter, remind me to smother her when she’s born.”

James snorted, finished his whiskey, then walked to the kitchen.

I took off the potty tape and stared at static for a minute or two
until James returned. He wagged a finger at me and grinned, “It’s a
Hoo-ha.”

“Ah,” I tapped my nose, “I will agree with the Senator from the State of Inebriation.”

We finished off the evening with the last two hours of The Sound of Music then the Dr. Who serial The Mark of the Rani
on PBS until, at 2am, I let James drive home blind drunk and turned off
all the lights in the house. There, in the embrace of strange darkness,
I sang the potty song quietly to myself and, for some reason, ran a
vodka bottle, a whisky bottle and seven bottles of beer through the
dishwasher. Maybe my ex girlfriend Eileen has a point – I should find
myself a wife or something. That’s always a hard thing, though, because
when I look at a woman I think of only one thing: Hoo-ha. The way it
feels, the way it tastes, the outer walls of the castle. My wee-wee has
always loved hoo-ha.