Today, I had the epiphany I didn’t think anyone could fathom. Whereas mystics and assorted masters hit it in the comfort zone of their expanding minds, I had it through my asshole.

Yes, the one that over the years was a source of some of my most satisfying secrets. I’ve been calling it high metabolism, for the envy of people who go to the bathroom three times a week. All my life, I’ve been taking my seat there at least four times a day, take that you constipated prudes. And I’ve been happy, god knows I have, just to have this small, undeserved virtue.

But then, it gets back at me and it’s payback time. Yes, I can be many things but I’m not above the feeling that whatever I’m going through, it’s my own doing, lest not embrace the impression that some things, most of what happens at all, are completely out of our control.

I’ve been chained to the toilet bowl all day, or rather, to an assortment of them, public places, restrooms I’ve asked to use and, hopefully, I’ll never return to.

Bleeding profusely, I’ve thrown everything at it, cotton balls, Witch Hazel, suppositories, my old grandma, to quench what is now a big, red, dirty monster, coming out of me with a vengeance.

There’s no going back because the condemning eyes of the employees who let me use the bathroom and absolutely regretted it afterwards, are enough to make me never be caught at this part of town again.

What they don’t understand is that, each time, I had to use a whole arsenal to come out with a fragile chance of making it to the next stop, when inevitably the need will arise again. And it does, over and over again.

Did I mention that there’re many stages I need to go through, at this point?

The cleaning, which most people know all about, and then the extra cleaning, which equals to handling incandescent rocks in a fire place with wet rags, except that the fire place is your own butt and the rags are wet toilet paper, and the fiery flesh and the pouring blood.

Then there’s the blood, thick, ever running, even after one’s spent hours trying to stop it. You’re all done and ready to emerge out of hell and the last check shows you’re not nearly close of being done.

People outside who, god bless them, may also be in their particular agony, start knocking, touching the knob, trying to pry open the door, because it’s been a long time and you’re still not ready.

All you hope for is that that door lock holds, and when it doesn’t, well, overcoming the embarrassment is just the first step. You need to say something like, sorry, or hey, or whatever, and hope they didn’t glimpse at anything you wouldn’t like your children to remember.

There’s still the medicine to apply, the wipes, the always so vexing applicator. And it hurts, oh how it hurts.

So you use cold water and hot water and cold water again until there’s a reprieve. Just enough so, after thoroughly having washed your hands, of course, comes the moment to face the ever expanding waiting line outside the bathroom.

You hold your head high, as if you’re astonished that they’d think you took that long in there. You look straight ahead, walk as if you have a purpose, and leave them all to think what they would. Not your concern, anymore. Or rather, you exercise your lack of empathy to your fellow human beings to the best of your ability.

As the pain persists, you know this was just another step in a day that feels like a year. No time to think about the earthquake in Haiti, the suicide bomber in the Afghani market, the premiere of that new series on HBO. Which is just as well.

Pain that made great man rise reduces me to insignificance. There was a time I thought I could go through anything, but today I’m humble for my inability to overcome such an indignity.

As any third-rate comedian knows, that is where the source of endlessly unimaginative puns lay, and some manage to make a career out of it. Along history, high minds worked very hard to sow the foundations of divine knowledge as far as possible from that pit.

Moliere said it’s a good thing the human bottom is far away from the nose, which itself points to the opposite direction. And many a daft gunslinger fell easily prey to a poorly timed nature call.

Way before that, even the Bible advised the pious to never be caught there when the second coming arrives. At the end of this stinky, ill formed chain of unholy misfortunes, sit my shared initials with Water Closet.

So my epiphany of sorts is crooked. Whereas some would find inspiration in the limitations of their own body, have a glance into their own absurd claim at immortality, maybe have a revealing heart to heart conversation with their own divinity, I just wilt like a poisoned weed.

Reduced to my own multi-stabbed wounds, I can’t think about anything else. I live from one flare up to the next, thinking ill about anyone around me. I elect my asshole above all human suffering and can’t take the time to be embarrassed by my smallness.

Never mind the little children of Africa or China, the impoverished encampments of Sudan. I’m too consumed with my own waste to care. Somebody is knocking real hard outside and all this asshole is concerned with is how much of it is still out, purging blood and matter.

There must be come a time when fatigue will set in and I’ll be able to sleep and dream, just like the man in the frigid streets is still entitled to dream, just before he freezes to death; or the sleepy death row inmate who wanders in reverie and forgets his impending doom.

This privilege must still be available to me, and whoever is out there, going through similar calvary. I may still have a shot. Or my unconsciousness knows no limits. In any case, this was another attempt to fool my system that didn’t work.

I need to finish this and fast. Time out is calling me out again and it seems I became a frequent flier on that particular earthbound flight. No rewards from that, only black out dates.

I need to leave as if I have never started. My repeated woes won’t make me any more enlightened than I already fooled myself I was. Here’s comes the pain again. Whoa.