I’m sitting in The Waiting Room That Time Forgot. There are
two red couches with gold accents that look and smell like relics from the
Elizabethan era (whatever that is), and the magazines in the ancient wooden
rack are yellowed to the point of near-disintegration. I suppose I should feel
fortunate that the receptionist still has a pulse.
Needless to say, I’m having doubts. See, I was offered a job
last week, but that offer is contingent on my ability to prove that I
don’t shoot black tar heroin into the little red veins in my eyeballs. I was
given a list of offices where accredited drug tests are conducted and The
Waiting Room That Time Forgot is the entry point to the office closest to our
house. As I understand it, drug testing has become quite sophisticated, but I
have trouble believing such technology could exist behind the walls of this
waiting room. In fact, I think I heard someone using a typewriter a minute ago.
As I wait, trying not to inhale scent of death, I consider
the inherent humiliation in having to urinate in the presence of others just to
get a job. There’s something weird about that, isn’t there? I get that no one
wants to hire a tweaker, but there has to be a better way to determine if a
given prospect is using. Don’t they have some kind of scanner or something?
With a long, high-pitched creak, a side door opens and out
steps a man who appears to have been born within the last two decades. He calls
my name and escorts me three steps into a hallway, then we stop. He opens an
unlocked cabinet.
“Take everything out of your pockets and put it in here,” he
says. He’s as friendly as a Doberman with low blood sugar.
Pockets empty, I’m handed the first modern-looking object
I’ve seen here: a clear plastic cup with four “feet” and some cool, space-aged
curves. The threads at the top indicate the cup has a screw-on lid, but its not
here.
“Go in the bathroom and fill the cup up to this line,” he
demands, pointing at a groove halfway up the cup. Do not flush the toilet when
you’re done.”
There’s no mistaking this guy’s point of view. He’s an
experienced member of the piss police and he thinks I’m here to cheat. I’m
intimidated, and what better emotion to feel as you’re about to take a leak
into a cup, right?
I go in and he closes the door behind me. I set the cup down
on the rim of the sink, unzip, and slowly empty my bladder into the cup. Then I
pick up the cup and see that its only one-quarter full.
“Come on,” I said to my bladder. “This guy’s gonna kill us
if we don’t give him half a cup. Come on. Work with me. Go to your happy place.
Think about rain and floods and waterfalls and rivers and oceans and great big
gobs of pee.”
“No,” my bladder said.
“Dude, who’s in charge here?” I said rhetorically. “Do it!
Tinkle! Think about gutters running yellow with torrential pee-pee. Turn on the
faucet. Puuuuuuuush!”
“No.”
Fucking bladder. You give it one simple job to do…
Knock,
knock.
“Be right out!” I shout. “Just having a little trouble
filling it up to the line.”
No response.
“This is your last chance, asshole,” I said to my bladder. “Suck
it up at spew.”
“I’m not an asshole. I’m a bladder. Big difference.”
“Nice,” I say. “Verrrrry nice.”
I zip up and carry my weak-ass cup of pee out the door. The
Doberman takes it, looks at it, looks at me, looks at it again, looks at me
again, then turns around and affixes a lid.
Then I came home and drank nine gallons of water. My bladder
begged for mercy. And now I think we know who’s boss.
