Professor Yeti

We all have our suspicions, unfounded though they may be: I for one — and I think many people feel this way secretly, deep down inside — am often worried that the world is preoccupied with me and everything I do. When I see a couple of girls laughing, I immediately think they’re laughing at me. When my boss praises the work our department has done, I immediately think, as his eyes briefly meet mine, that he wants to praise me and me alone, but he doesn’t because he feels such actions would be detrimental to the morale of the group.

It’s silly, I know, but I can’t help it. Sometimes I wish I could, but not always — just the other day I was at my friend’s apartment — she’s a writer — and I was flipping through this thick book of poetry while she was putting on her earrings. She was nearly ready when I happened upon an incomprehensible poem with the title of “Daffy Duck in Hollywood.” I puzzled over it for a few minutes — it was written by John Ashbery — and then, in my annoyance, I shouted to my friend, “‘Micturate’? What in the hell does ‘micturate’ mean??”

“Oh!” she says, “That’s one of my favorite words! I have it in my thesaurus, you should—” and then she broke off and came charging out of her bedroom and grabbed a notebook labeled THESAURUS off her coffee table and said, “Never mind.” She abruptly went back into her bedroom, taking the notebook with her. I didn’t question her about the notebook because I knew — I just knew — there was something in there about me and I didn’t want to let her know that I knew. Instead, I played it cool, she finished getting ready, and we were off to dinner.

The whole time I was at dinner, though, I was thinking about it: Who keeps a notebook labeled THESAURUS? What could be in there? Sure, Stella was a writer, but, I mean, come on: keeping a private thesaurus is weird. Over the entree I began concocting schemes on how I could get fifteen free minutes in her bedroom — I needed to gain access to this so-called THESAURUS. By the time we paid the bill, I had a plan: I’d invite myself up to her apartment and then mention that I had a headache. She’d offer me some aspirin, but I’d say that, no, I only took Ibuprofen and besides, I wasn’t sure it would be healthy to take either after having had a couple glasses of wine. Then I’d tell her that what would really help would be a bit of ice cream — Wouldn’t it be fun to have some ice cream together? I say. She’d agree and volunteer to run down the block to the corner store and buy some. I’d say that that was a great suggestion and would ask if she wouldn’t mind if I waited in her apartment, since I had a headache and all. She wouldn’t mind at all, she’d say, and that’s how I’d do it.

Much to my surprise, the plan worked quite smoothly and I found myself alone in her bedroom, rooting through the drawers, trying to find the damned THESAURUS. After a lot of searching, I found it under her pillow and opened it up. Inside were words she’d written down, followed by synonyms and scenarios. It was loosely in alphabetical order but since it was handmade it wasn’t strictly so. Finally I found her entry for micturate: “to urinate, technical. Peeing, pissing and so forth. Worth using in situations where pedantic adds, or where obvious is too crass. Good for describing ‘golden shower’ without saying ‘golden shower.’ Ex.: Marcus micturated in my mouth as I massaged his perineum. Sounds much better than ‘He peed on my face while I rubbed that spot behind his balls.’ Also, humor: ‘Jefferson micturated himself and had to return home. Head bowed, he walked down the sidewalk, wearing borrowed jeans, carrying his trousers in a plastic grocery sack.’”

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg — there are all sorts of sentences and every time someone pees (or micturates) his pants, that’s person’s name is Jefferson, which is my name! It was very embarrassing! I mean, she had pages of this stuff, and she clearly has some guy named Marcus who she wants to pee on her and she clearly wants to see me urinate myself. She even has a detailed drawing of both the male and female genitals, with the technical terms for each part labeled. I couldn’t believe she’d do such a thing! I was so angry that when she returned with the ice cream, I asked her if she were a writer or a pornographer — it took her about five seconds, but once she realized what I had done (she figured (correctly) that my headache and everything else was a lie) she started shouting at me and turned me out of her apartment. I haven’t talked to her since, and in a way, she’s right: I’m a paranoid freak who doesn’t give people their privacy — I’d even asked her who Marcus was and, really, that part of it was none of my business. But in some ways, I was justifiably paranoid! She had been talking and thinking about me! So I’m not sure what I should’ve done: I regret having gotten caught and everything, and I’m sure that not everyone thinks about me all the time, but even so, Was what I’d done wrong?

. . . Only a little bit, I’ve decided. Definitely it caused things to get hairy, but I just couldn’t help myself: she had made her business my business by putting me in that book and, frankly, I wish I could get access to it again, so I could see if I’m in any other entries. What I really need to do is find that Marcus guy and ask him about it. Would he be offended? Would he be surprised? Or had he actually done it? I just don’t know, but it seems like I should find out.

Alex Starace (alex@professoryeti.com) lives and writes in Minneapolis.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 15th, 2005 at 5:42 pm and is filed under Humor. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.