Art by Kate Miller
The dulcet tones of “Happy Birthday” were still echoing in the room when my father placed the large box at my feet. The clumsy wrapping paper barely camouflaged what was inside. It had been a while since either of my parents had wrapped a gift so large and imposing. I was 34, after all, far past the age for such grandiose offerings. You didn’t have to wrap a gift card or a nice lunch at a medium-priced restaurant. I tore off the wrapping paper and uncovered the darkest phase of my life: A brand new Shop-Vac.
“Don’t piss into it,” my father said sternly, his eyes holding mine with a long, morose stare. He was a serious man and this was a serious request. Everyone around the table, my brothers, my mother, was silent. The thought hadn’t even entered my mind, and now it felt like it would never leave.
I had never felt as torn between my ideas of “right” and “wrong” as I was in those initial days. The box sat in the corner of the living room of my bachelor suite. I covered it with towels and spare bedding, but the bottom left corner of the box peaked out, touting its “Super Sucking Action.” What a tease. On the third day, with my hands shaking, my bladder filling, and the blood in my veins rushing to my head like the great Mississippi, I sliced open the packing tape and pulled out the impressively sized cylindrical aluminum body.
I feel that I must clarify something to you. I’m not some “weirdo.” I don’t have a neckbeard. My girlfriend is not a large pillow adorned with an anime character. I am very typical. You probably wouldn’t notice me on the street, let alone a sparse subway train car. I work in a marketing department where I liaison between the creative types and the accounts people. I am good-natured and am well-liked by my co-workers. I have had what I think is a normal amount of relationships that have lasted for a fairly normal amount of time. I am by no means a neat freak, but I am also not a slob. I am decidedly normal, almost to a fault. I have never pissed into anything in my house aside from my toilet. Until. Until…
While assembling the Shop-Vac, I kept telling myself all the cleaning I would accomplish with it. “I could get all the grit out of the BBQ, tidy up after whatever woodworking projects I decide to tackle, really, and I mean really clean the rugs of my car; also I can piss into it” — NO. I chastised myself for the thought. I tightened the last screw and took a step back to admire the finished product. “Wow,” I said out loud. The buckle of my belt banged loudly on the tiles as my pants fell to the floor.
The feeling was one that was hard to describe. I’ve never felt so empty. So totally satisfied with the act of urination. Every drop was gone, accounted for. I no longer felt the need to use any other bathroom. Why waste it? Nothing on that puny urinal was even measured in horsepower like my Shop-Vac. “No thanks, I’ll hold it,” I told people who noticed me grinding my teeth, sweating profusely, and shaking my leg. Letting loose a downright frightening torrent of urine into your Shop-Vac after a long day of work was what I imagined it was like to pray for your entire life and finally hear the voice of God.
I had never realized before how much time I was wasting getting up and using the bathroom. By simply keeping the Shop-Vac at my side at all times, I had opened up a magical door of endless productivity. My ideas were coming fast and furious. I’d fire off emails at all hours of the night, much to the chagrin of my co-workers whose effort level, when compared to mine, made it seem like they were spending their whole days walking to and from the bathroom.
“I’m so proud of you and all you’re able to accomplish,” my mom said into the phone. My big toe hovered over the power switch of the Shop-Vac, anxious for the conversation to end.
“You’re so much like your father. Like the world has more hours in the day for both of you.” We said our goodbyes, and I hung up the phone and evacuated into the Shop-Vac’s welcoming nozzle attachment.
But that sentence stuck with me. “Like the world has more hours in the day for both of you,” I recalled a memory of my father. It was a warm autumn day that seemed to be tinted gold. I was just a boy. We had been out for a long drive, and my leg shook like crazy. I was desperately trying to calm my swelling bladder, and soon enough, I noticed my father doing the same. The truck had barely come to stop, and I was already across the lawn and pulling at the fly of my jeans. I remember looking back at my father, who was gingerly walking to the garage. Even though I felt like I was going to burst, I stopped to watch this man, my hero, disappear into the detached garage. Before continuing into the house, I remember the muffled sound of a Shop-Vac.
Searching through the box of the Shop-Vac, I found a note. It was in my father’s handwriting.
“Don’t forget to take out the filter.”
Today, my boss applauded the extra effort I had been putting in at work and hinted that I might be in line for a large promotion. “Private Bathroom,” he said, lifting his eyebrows. I just hope it had a grounded outlet. I was a Shop-Vac man, and nothing was ever going to change that now.
