Shitfone

Thursday was Mary's first day of freedome, i.e. Done-With-Work. She earned a sleep-in and I can sleep all day if I'm not needed in the shop. We began our day around 11 and left the apartment an hour later.

We both decided that we would call home. We stopped at a payphone near the apartment by the monorail station. Mary went first. She had a calling card that her parents left her to use and this was the first time she attempted. She lifted the receiver from its cradle and put it to her ear, and crooked it in her shoulder as she looked over the card's instructions. I thought to myself that this phone was dirty because there was a big stain in the part of the cradle where the ear piece goes. Hadn't been cleaned in awhile.

Mary commented that she hates payphones because more often than not, they are pretty rank. The homeless congregate around them, or they go uncleaned for too long, but invariably, they just smell horribly.

She said this payphone area in particular smelled bad. I was a few feet away and didn't really smell anything above and beyond a typical payphone. Then she slowly began to interpret this phone to have a really vile smell, an unusually nasty scent way worse than normal. She had had enough. She looked at the receiver and noticed there was something on it. She looked at me, and with wild eyes and tears beginning to well up in them, tumbled out the words: "What is that? Is that shit!?!

I was totally disgusted at the idea. But I looked and I smelled and yes, I confirmed that it was.

"That's not only shit, Mary, that's human shit!"

She let out some primal noises that one would make after discovering someone else's shit on your face. I, meanwhile, could not stop laughing. I honestly don't know if I've ever found anything more funny. I think I stopped breathing for about five minutes I was laughing so hard, especially when Mary was gagging and spit was falling out of her mouth. I was certain she would throw up. Then she wondered if any got on her ear. I didn't see any, but I smelled her hair and ear, and indeed, the shit had lifted from the phone and landed on her person. Like lice, but shit.

The whole walk down the stairs was internminable because she was paralyzed with disgust and I couldn't stop laughing. We went into the Harbourside Mall and she washed her ear out and her hair and came back out and said "I don't want to talk about it for the rest of the day" in her matter-of-fact way. We couldn't fathom who would do something like that. How did they do it? Did they wipe their ass with the phone? Did they shit into a cupped hand and smear it on the receiver? Did it involve a plastic bag transfer like a reverse C.S.I.? Was he/she nearby watching? Was he/she perfectly content with the knowledge that of what he/she did and was safely ensconsed in his/her cubicle getting off to the sick sick act?

Mary said that she never used to believe in the death penalty, but that person should be give the chair. Or maybe a firing squad.

We never found another pay phone all day; we wouldn't make those calls for two more days. The memory of the fresh shit on the phone was just too much....