Other people’s bathrooms: Weird pleasures part II

The idea for this blog hit me as I sat catching up on my emails at an internet café somewhere in Roodepoort a few weeks ago. For some weird reason I found myself rubbing my hands in glee at the mere thought that I was reading my emails from someone else’s PC.

I know; this probably seems absurd to the umpteenth degree. After all, what could possibly be enjoyable about using someone else’s PC versus one’s own, which one is used to? And this is when the realisation hit me: as a rule of thumb, I enjoy other people’s things more than I enjoy my own. I performed a snap survey before starting to write this blog (that is, I asked my wife what she thought) and I discovered that my enjoyment of other people’s things makes me a pretty weird individual.

I think Larry the Liquidator, the Danny de Vito character in the 1991 Hollywood flick Other People’s Money, captured it best: “I love money. I love money more than the things it can buy. There’s only one thing I love more than money. You know what that is? Other people’s money!”

I must hasten to add that I have a morbid character flaw that ensures that I have very little appreciation for money — or the things that money can buy. But I identify with the general sentiment. Here was a man admitting what I have been too embarrassed to articulate: the fact that he loves other people’s money more than the money itself or the things that money can buy.

I completely identify. You have no idea just how much pleasure I derive from sitting behind the steering wheel of a vehicle I do not own. For the past three weeks or so, I have been rolling around town in a Range Rover Sport and a Discovery 3, courtesy of Land Rover. These are both excellent vehicles — scratch that, these are awesome cars to drive. Especially when, like me, you’re used to the rattling of a 10-year-old jalopy. As I explain in the article I’m writing about the Land Rover experience, these cars brought out my inner BEE kugel, which I hadn’t realised I harboured.

But I cannot even begin to describe the thrill I got from the knowledge that I was driving someone else’s car, sitting on someone else’s seat and resting my arm on someone else’s comfy armrest. It’s the type of feeling that sent me into unprovoked giggles as I drove on the M1 south headed for Soweto. I found myself saying out loud, to no one in particular (I was the only occupant): “I am driving someone else’s car!”

Now, you might be forgiven for thinking that this has something to do with an extreme form of selfishness. I have given this some thought and come to the conclusion that this is not the case. It’s not as if I derive some weird pleasure from realising that by driving someone else’s car, I’m saving my own. Not at all. The endorphin rush I get stems purely from the realisation that … well, I’m driving someone else’s car.

My close friends have known about this sickness of mine for a while. So when I come a-calling at one of my buddies’ flat, he always locks the bathroom and hangs the key around his neck. That’s right: I also have a certain fetish for other people’s bathrooms. I have been known to leave my own houses with the realisation that I need to go — yeah, the sitting-down business. (The standing-up business just doesn’t give me the satisfaction I can get from the other business.)

When I arrive at a friend’s place, I engage in useless banter about this, that and the other. Yeah, Chiefs won again and Pirates lost. (Two tiny steps in the direction of the bathroom). Yeah, Zille’s funny, what with all that whining for the sake of it. (Shuffle, shuffle.) Spot on, man; what a party we had last weekend. (Jump, leap and I’m in the bathroom! Ha, ha! I win; the sucker loses!)

The joy I feel sitting in someone else’s bathroom is unparallelled. If it’s a complete stranger’s bathroom, even better. I love studying the intricacies of the whole set-up. Do the tiles match the floor? Do they have those archaic hand-held room fresheners or the automatic ones that squirt out sweet, anti-sulphuric fumes? Single-ply or double? Is the roll set up for clockwise or anti-clockwise dispensing? (Let’s all agree that clockwise is for savages.) But more than anything, I start whistling. Pure joy. This is someone else’s bathroom!

Some of my best writing has been on my wife’s PC. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I am typing this on my own PC. This is why this whole retarded post has dog crap written all over it. Sometimes, just to get a good piece out of myself, I close my eyes and pretend that I’m typing on someone else’s PC and I’m pounding on their keyboard. I tried that trick when I started this drivel, but it didn’t work.

I know the reason. Today I woke up in my own bed, ate my own food, did my business in my own bathroom and drove my own car. That is no way to live.

I invite the professional mindfuckers to tell me what’s wrong with me.

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