People in San Diego, California have an odd and unique view of the weather. If the temperatures go above 85 degrees for more than a day, they start anguishing that the world is going to die of heat exhaustion. On the other hand, if the temperatures drop below 50 degrees, they start to believe that the next Ice Age is upon them.
So, it was with considerable consternation that I barreled down the Pacific Highway and onto Harbor drive, with the temperatures hovering at 45 degrees. I was riding my scooter with the sidecar, and was dressed for the cold, in electrically warmed clothing. However, it had me looking like a Martian, newly landed from his/her/its spacecraft.
I was in town to try to do something for my elderly mother, the one who'd disowned and disinherited me a couple of years or so ago, in a Neo-Victorian, possibly demented, pique. I knew she was in money trouble, but I also knew that I had to act from behind-the scenes.
Especially since I'd received a couple of letters from her, telling me that I was reinstated in her will and that I was her Oochums-Smoochums Witto Baby Boy, who needed his Muh-Du to make all his decisions for him, and who had to see him right now, one last time, before she died.
This would have been—let's see—the fourteenth 'one-last-time'.
Thus, driving down the road (you ride a motorbike but you drive a sidecar rig), I was warm with electrically heated gear, but my thoughts were getting frantic.
The last breakfast I had, out in the desert, was grease-city Tex-Mex, and my bowels were letting me know that I had better attend to them ASAP. I thought I could make it to a residence inn over near Ocean Beach, but as I crossed Rosecrans and powered up Nimitz Boulevard, I knew I had to find something a lot closer.
So I blew up the road, and my bowels ended it for me in the little shopping center just to the south of the Point Loma high school. Shaking and going, "erk, erk" I shot passed a couple of Pacific Gas & Electric vans, got off my motorbike and shambled into the first open office I saw. I stumbled into the open door and asked, blindly, "please, oh please, can I use the bathroom ... erk, erk!"
All I saw was a dark head of hair and a pale face, and one hand languidly pointing into the back storeroom. I dashed for the indicated direction, and found the toilet. It was set in a little closet-like area, with no windows.
I struggled out of my electric gloves, helmet, balaclava, riding jacket, armored over-pants, long underwear bottoms, boxer shorts and 'gentlemen, be seated.'
Not wanting to give TMI (Too Much Information), about all I can say was that I was shitting as I fell toward the seat. It seemed as if my bowels had been saving up all the world's foulness, because I shat and I shat and I shat.
I fumbled around and found the light-switch, which also activated the fan, hoping to clear the air of odor that could have peeled paint off the wall.
Suddenly, and without warning, the fan and the lights went off. I was left in total darkness, sitting there, immobilized by my bulky, armored clothing, and shitting my heart out. I groaned, and flushed, but still continued eliminating the waste of a thousand years. Then, in-between bursts of anal agony, I noticed that the toilet hadn't refilled the tank.
My noises must have alerted whoever it was that had gestured me into this cave of olfactory horrors. I heard a delicate female curse, followed by a scraping and then a glow. A feminine form, dressed in a business suit and skirt, came into view with a lit candle. She very pointedly held her nose with one hand while she planted the candle's base on the tiny sink in front of her.
"I can't flush again, and I've just got to," I whimpered.
She said, "the lights and water's been turned off, just after you arrived."
She put her finger in her mouth, which would have looked delightful, if I hadn't been sitting in a pile of stiff clothes, half naked, and surrounded by the dung heap of the ages.
She snapped her fingers, and said, "Got it!" Then, to my wonderment, she coolly reached behind me and pulled the cover off the tank. Then she reached down, beside me and came up with a case of one-liter bottles of expensive spring water. One by one, she poured each of these down into the tank. This took about ten minutes.
She worked in silence, until I heard, "Hokay, now do the paperwork and flush."
My savior walked away, giggling.
I performed the required documentation, and flushed, standing up ... and then screamed and sat right back down again, as my traitor bowels let loose one last, prolonged blast of 'brown gas'.
I groaned again, as my still-savior female person came back, and said, "Damnit, again?"
She hauled out the rest of the water, and re-filled the tank, saying, "This had better be your last blast, cause there isn't any more water in the office."
After I was sure that my bowels were totally emptied for the last time, I did the final paperwork, and flushed. Then stooping, I re-dressed in the reverse sequence, but holding my armored riding jacket & helmet in my hand. I unstuck the candle from its place on the sink, and made my way back to the main office.
My savior was sitting there, face hung over a dimly-lit laptop terminal.
"Uh, hi," I said, intelligently, adding, "thanks for rescuing me."
She looked up and stared at me towering over her. She was like 4 foot 10 inches, Asian (I couldn't tell from where), with shoulder-length black hair, sort of 30's-ish and an expression of total frustration. She had two candles burning on her desk, and she was working hard at what seemed to be a long save onto a hard disk.
She said, "God-damned, motha-fuckin save, and I'm running out of battery power. Yeah, yer welcome. Sit down an' shut up."
Taking the offered chair, I sat in silence, watching her work frantically to extract all of what she thought was critical onto the computer's memory. In the ghostly reflected light coming from the laptop's monitor screen, about all I saw was an Asian face, concentrating on her work, and a business blouse and jacket.
Absently, she pushed a spare bottle of water at me, as she took a healthy slug from her own bottle. I drank mine slowly, as she cursed in two languages, and finally mousing the machine onto save and shut-down. Then she started trying to get the hard-drive out of the computer.
"Uh, why are you doing that? Why not just take the whole machine back to your car"
She looked up at me, started to curse in those two languages, and then, unexpectedly, giggled. She said, "Because I don't have a car any more. It's rainy-cold outside. I can't carry everything and hold an umbrerra, I mean umbrella, too. I have to take the bus, which won't run for another hour, and its two miles to my house. So I have to get this god-damned motha-fuckin' drive outa here and put it in my pocket."
I said, "I don't want to impose, miss, but could I offer you a ride home? That way, you can take the whole machine."
She answered, fairly reasonably, "I may be a pretty, divorced Chinese lady, but I can't carry my papers and the computer, and still hang on to you on a motorbike."
My turn to grin, as I informed her, "Mine is a motorbike with a sidecar. I've even got a spare helmet and a heavy blanket for you to wrap up in."
She turned to me, and suddenly grinned, saying "Hookay. Let's brow this joint."
She shut down her machine, grabbed up a stuffed briefcase, and we both were out the door in a couple of minutes. I loaded her computer and briefcase in the toe of the sidecar (the trunk being full of my traveling gear), and I made a great show of putting on my balaclava, electric-heated vest, armored riding jacket, helmet and gloves. All this, while I was covertly watching her, as she struggled to get into the sidecar's seat.
After a couple of attempts, she just said, "Ah, shit," hiked her tight skirt up over her hips—and thus exposing a lot of pale thigh, and what I thought might be a flash of black panties—and stepped into the seat.
As I fastened the spare helmet on her chin and pulled the riding quilt-blanket around her, she looked up, grinned even wider and said, "Enjoy the show?"
I had to clearly say, around the muffling of the full-face helmet, "Busted!"
She giggled again.
We turned off onto Voltaire, and headed down toward Ocean Beach. I got completely lost, as she had me maneuver around side streets, now in full darkness with no moon. Eventually, I came to a cull-de-sac, and I was directed to pull into what looked like a covered car-port.
I backed and filled the suddenly clumsy machine, to fit into the covered passageway. Then I got off my machine, and stood next to her, still in my full armored gear, and offered her my hand, so that she could climb out.
