Matt Pankratz
Fiction Writing Workshop

     
     At the gas station, people are never themselves.  Sometimes, they're travelers.  Driving thru a long prairie afternoon.  Sometimes, they're lost.  Just driving, until they get somewhere. They all have to stop for gas.
     We're the only station for 45 miles on this stretch of interstate.  Even in a modern commuter world, there are still stretches where you have to stop for gas.  Maybe the station is the loneliest is the country.  Sometimes, when all the candy bars have been restocked, and there's nothing to do but light up and think of books I haven't read, I think about all the people that have stopped in.
     Usually people are just looking for a break, anything to stop the dotted yellow from passing by for a while.  Sometimes they just wander around the chips and pop.  They just want a respite from the road.  
     Other people want to be your best friend.  I've got a great response to that.  I'll pull some Nietzsche or Kant or Derrida out of my bag.  I've got one with the title in HUGE type, just so people can tell what I'm reading.   Usually just one quote speeds up the end of the conversation. My favourite is, "One must still have chaos in oneself to give birth to a dancing star."  That's Nietzsche.  He went crazy and his sister made him famous.  Bet he never had to explain the difference between 3.2 and "real" beer.  Anyway, if I don't want to talk to someone, I'll quote Nietzsche.  If they show interest, I'll talk about Peirce.
     Ever since gas stations stopped offering full service, employees have changed from attendants to clerks. When I was young, I remember men in coveralls.  They've all formed into a congruent image in my mind.  One man out of hundreds I must have encountered.  Waiting. Today, people don't even know where to check their oil.  The attendant in my mind could service a car in his dreams.  
     The all looked the same, oil and grease expertly ground into blue and black stripped cotton one piece outfits.  A rag hanging out of the pocket.  What could they ever clean with that rag?  They checked the dipstick with that rag.  But why carry it around like the most improbable sanitizing utensil?  Attendants were never good at keeping anything tidy.  But, when you drove off, you knew the car would keep going.  You could trust them because they knew what they were doing.  You didn't have to ask questions.  They just did what they did.  They're all gone now.
     Now, I wear jeans and my designated shirt (which I need to trade in because I've been eating chocolate gem donuts again).  And I stay behind the counter.  People don't care about dipsticks or tire pressure anymore.  Usually they just ask where the bathroom is, and if it's clean. I'm probably not the one to ask.  
     I used to have to clean everything.  Then the manager caught on that I was better at stocking, and talking to people.  She counts on me to work the overnight shift, knowing that because I don't dream, I'll be alert until the sun rises.
     On the break of day, I go home.  I usually can't sleep, most of the time I'll stay awake and read.  If I had a dollar for every book I've read, I wouldn't have to work at a damn gas station.
     Driving home yesterday, something Sondheim stuck in my head. "No More Questions, Please.  No More Riddles. . . .No More."  I haven't listened to Sondheim for years.  And I like questions, especially if I'm asking them.
     Today, I have to do laundry.  Besides washing my "uniform", I've got to do something about my living conditions.  Uneagerly, I find myself closer to the bathroom.  It must be months since. . . . .
     Standing in the small putrid room all my senses can perceive the filth.  The bathroom is not clean because I am selfish.  I am the only one who uses it, the only person in the whole entire lavatory world who is afforded its growths, smells, and contagious peculiarities.  It is fine with me.  Fine with the way I live, fine with my personal hygienic tendencies.
     I have never liked to clean.  The bathroom, every surface requiring shine, should be left to someone more qualified to perform the necessary cleaning duties.  There is so much. Even a half-bath has too many concerns for cleansing.  The bowl, the vanity, the sink, shower, tile, down to difficult exchanges between surfaces.  Towel bar meets tile, caulked fiberglass meets plaster, tile to porcelain.  A bathroom cannot be swept under a rug or picked up with a vacuum. To clean is intense concentration and expense.  The necessary focus does not allow parallel processing of thought or memory.  You cannot clean a bathroom and consider existence simultaneously.  The bathroom demands singularity.
     This is the basis of my reluctance.  It is not How, but Why.  Detergents are easy to comprehend.  Motivation and necessity remain sullied.  I cannot bring myself to dispose the waste.  Next to the questions in my head, cleaning seems less than necessary.
     Yet, in the doorway with brush and TidyBowl stand I. Because last night, in my first
remembered dream in months, the toilet, she spoke to me.
     She was on fire.  Blue, flaming toilet bowl goddess of heat, condensed air pressure, intense visual shifting patterns, and parts of me. . . .burning.  Beyond sparkling, beyond sanitary, the goddess made the sky.  She was so clean.  Cleaner than I remember her being installed, before the water was turned on, before she got caulked in place, before budget accessories were added to collect all the things that missed.  Her brilliant porcelain beauty lit up and flashed my eyes. As she burned, I stumbled forward entranced.  The distance between her and the entrance I progressed from exploded from a simple foot according to memory.  Now it was an ocean, the largest expanse I could even fathom in my dreams.  An ocean of fire, a lava, magma, bubbling rock composed eternal landscape of cosmic power.     To span the expanse became impossible desire.  To reach the goddess paramounted my choices.  Burning flesh could be sacrificed, if I could only get to the goddess.  Swimming the burning sea would reward me with knowing how, and why, and who.  The blue-flaming porcelain goddess wanted me.  All my expenditures yielded nothing.  I could not reach her, could not attain her seated pleasure.  She called, she viscerally pulled me to the top of the exponential Olympus that bore her throne.  And it was my bathroom, there on the Mount.
     My economy sized, added on unfinished bathroom became the temple for the goddess. My bathroom, filthy and being consumed by the goddess.
     There the goddess.  My mute cries for explanation, for understanding, for meaning of her actions, her intentions, her abilities left me as piles of filth, ending on the floor surrounding her.  
     The heat was inside of me.  She melted the floor, the corners infested with body hair, the patches of dried urine, all my piles.  She turned the counter-top into melting plasma (something
all the burning I had ever done could not do).  Scaly build-up fell off the shower door in sheets. The mirror melted, reformed, and perfectly reflected my fear.
     I fell to my knees in a sparkling, utterly sanitary produced dumbness.  And the goddess flamed on.  Attendant upon her words, I waited.
     The blue toilet goddess spoke:
     "Upon this face you foist death, excrement, the rejected portions of a thousand beings. Here, you force the plague of nephritis hoping to crumble me.  ATTEND, FOR I SPEAK TRUTH!  Can you not see that my body is well-shielded and strongly made.  You have witnessed my consuming power in all you have sensed.  I was borne of Necessity and Function for the purpose of Endurance."
     My face pressed the linoleum.  I prayed that my supine posture would appease the goddess and save my existence, that the dirt of all my sins of neglect had really been consumed.
     The words rang from her.  "Fear not!  I am forgiving.  Touch me.  You will not feel the flames.  They are flames of Purity, waiting to cleanse you."
     My trembling hand moved.  I knew I must.  I must touch the face of the goddess.  I knew the salvation that awaited me.  I knew that all my questions would be answered.  I would dream again.  And I reached, out, farther, past my sins, through the consuming heat that would not consume me.  What before had been frightening power became joy.  My hand, infinitely close to the goddess. . . .
     That's all I remember.  I cannot remember what her face felt like.  I don't recall pleasure or ecstasy.  All of my remembering ended.  Even the power of the goddess could not return a conclusion.  The dream ended.
     The chaos was there.  I could feel a thousand dancing stars lined up to buy processed cheese and outdated sandwich meat at exorbitant prices.  All the books became a single monolithic text of complete meaning.  The letters on the front were emblazoned, "Remembering Your Dreams!"
     In a state, I call in sick to work.  At least for now, people can run out of gas and I won't care.  There is something to do, action to take.
     Now, I advance on the bathroom with an arsenal of cleaning products.  The linoleum, the shower, the sink, the mirror, they all fall to my cleaning endeavours.  To clean.  To be.  Here, I am the burning expanse.  As a disciple of the goddess, I know the pure way.  I know of cleanliness and holiness.  I remember how to consume and purify.
     And it is clean.  I have murdered my wondering mind enough to accomplish.  I did not dwell on the peculiarities of the soul, or the troubles of existing, and how.  I did not ask questions.  I cleaned.
     All but one.  I know I have left the toilet bowl for last.  My brush reaches into the bowl, and I remember the end of my dream.
     I flushed.