Amongst several other jobs of varying secrecy, I work as a fact checker for a pornographic playing card company. I won’t tell you which one exactly, but it’s in the top three. (Okay, it’s Queens of Spades. Happy now?) Being a fortune something-hundred company, you’d expect the bathrooms to be swank, and you wouldn’t be disappointed. I’ll tell you this: there’s no way I’m going back to a non-solid gold toilet. It’s not so much the luxurious luster as it is the form-fitting comfort you can only enjoy from one of the softer metals. True, pewter can also feel pretty nice, but you end up looking like your ass has a black (brown)eye.
So I was sitting on the solid gold toilet looking for something to read, as I’d forgotten my copy of A Pocket People’s History of the United States. (I have large pockets and am also a semi-socialist.) To alleviate their guilt over clear cutting literally millions of acres of virgin forest in search of the perfect pulp for making pornographic playing cards, the executives of Queens of Spades often take nature-specific vacations. You know, things like mountain climbing and kayaking and shooting exotic, caged animals from the back of a Land Rover. So there was a copy of Outside magazine sitting on the toilet tank. You could tell it was a periodical for rich, white, active types, since Lance Armstrong posed for the cover. I didn’t dare pick the thing up and flip through it. There’s no telling what kind of dick juice and fecal matter caked its glossy surface. But according to the cover, there was a feature on page seventy-eight all about “your dirtiest enviro-confessions.”
I’m a fairly environmentally friendly guy myself. I aim my frappuccinos for the garbage can and take in lost, sexually confused animals. But I’ve also been known to set fire to my oil moat to keep out paparazzi and the A.T.F., so one of my dirty enviro-confessions wouldn’t be too surprising. In search of a scoop, I called my old friend Ed Begley, Jr.
“Why so winded?” I said.
“Oh, it’s this damn bicycle toaster oven. You know how many miles I have to clock to heat up a Hot Pocket?”
After I explained that every Hot Pocket crisping sleeve is made of petroleum-rich plastic byproducts, Ed’s bike hissed to a stop. He cried a little, but at least I didn’t have to deal with all the heavy breathing. I asked about his dirtiest enviro-confession.
“Let me think about it,” he mused. “You remember Transylvania 6-5000, right?”
“Of course,” I said, humoring him.
“Well, we shot out near Lake Tahoe. Beautiful place. The sexiest, loneliest squirrels you’ve ever seen. I’m out scavenging for granola. This must have been a Sunday. And I come across Goldblum down by the lake shore.”
“Jeff Goldblum.”
“Right. Anyway, he has his hands wrapped around this duck’s neck. And he’s just squeezing the thing. And I’m just laughing, because I think this must be one of the props. But he keeps squeezing and squeezing until this stuff starts oozing from between his fingers. Like he had a fist full of tomato paste and tiny little bones. I felt terrible about it, Jeff strangling that poor duck and all, but I never said a word. I just came back later and quietly buried it.”
“But that’s not really your dirtiest enviro-confession. If anything, that’s Jeff Goldblum’s.”
“Yeah, but he’ll never tell you that.”
“So why did he strangle the duck?”
“Couldn’t say, really. Geena made him do some crazy things in those days. Crazy, dark things.”
“Geena Davis.”
“Mm hm. Hey, you wanna come jump on the trampoline?”
“Maybe this weekend,” I said. “Right now I’m at work.”
Suddenly I realized I’d been sitting on this solid gold toilet a really long time.