Navel-gazing

One thing I miss most about my previous apartment is the Hello Tushy. There’s nothing quite like a clean bum. Now, and on the road, I’m forced to use toilet paper. My first encounter with a bidet was in Thailand while visiting a friend outside of Bangkok fifteen years ago. He was staying with his girlfriend of the time, now wife, who had a squat toilet…in the shower. At first, I thought it seemed utterly unhygienic—showering where you shit. How could that be? And then I left the bathroom each morning with an entirely new perspective. Not only is water a far more hygienic solution, squatting relaxes and straightens the colon. Just what the hell have I been doing wiping with paper and sitting at a ninety-degree angle? Absurd.

I’ve had my morning coffee, evacuated, and am once again sitting in front of the computer at a ninety-degree angle, the position I’m mostly in. I’ve got a folder open from Dropbox, “Years,” with all of my writing, diary writing that is, since 2008. That’s thirteen years now of navel-gazing. There’s nothing I do better than staring at the old navel. It’s always been that way.

I was talking to my therapist again the other day about assertiveness, the preferred method of communication, and the other styles: aggressive, passive, and passive-aggressive, the last being the least desirable and also, where I have landed in entirely too many interactions growing up.

For years, I’ve been working on moving towards that assertive direction in therapy (“Assertive Andrew” we call him). I think the fear had always been that I would anger, disappoint, confuse, or generally just miscommunicate with the other person who I felt I needed to be assertive with. Once I dipped my toe in assertiveness, luckily, it seemed to be quite the opposite. The reactions were met typically with gratitude. But I cannot entirely credit therapy.

About six years ago, when I was living in West Oakland, I began doing Muay Thai. On a Saturday afternoon, I can’t quite remember how I worked up the courage, I popped into the gym—which is closed now unfortunately—to inquire about trying a class. The coach, who was leaning on the ropes in the ring with a couple of half-naked, tattooed dudes, handed me the class schedule and encouraged me to give it a try. I noticed a few hours per week of “sparring,” which, when considering the fellows in the ring, seemed entirely unattractive.

But after a few months, I found nothing but camaraderie and kindness despite the occasional bruised shin or accidental kick to the nuts (those groin guards don’t do much.) Punching things more or less allowed me to exercise an aggressive side, one I had buried for years, and to begin the process of expressing difficult feelings with others (probably in the back of my mind I thought, ‘well, if this doesn’t go well, at least I can give them a swift kick to the ribs’).

At the time, I was living with a couple of roommates. There were some issues building up that needed to be addressed as there always are with adults who have to live together. After many hours per week of liberating some pent up irritation in Muay Thai, I approached the roommates. With pen and notepad in hand (and feel free to steal this because that’s exactly what I did from an ex girlfriend who was far better at arguments and being assertive), I came prepared with questions and talking points that I wanted to address in the conversation.

I don’t entirely remember what the issues were at the time but it was a success. I achieved the desired result…which was probably to communicate that someone hadn’t been taking out the trash frequently enough. In either case, a small victory was won. With uncomfortable situations in life, it’s ideal when things work out and you can say to yourself that you’ve done something challenging—that you’ve built character. And when they don’t, it sucks.

Several months ago, I went to visit a friend in Arizona (same friend as the previous post so not to worry, we’re still friends) who invited me on a trip to Glamis, California to ride (I’m unsure of the verb they would use) the Algodones Dunes in his Razor, or dune buggy. He rented an impressive RV with a full kitchen, TV, bathroom, beds, couch, all of the comforts one might desire for a long ride and stay in the desert.

When we arrived, he informed us that we were to use the desert for a toilet rather than the bathroom on the RV. This certainly was news. I spent the remainder of the weekend, quite angry, hovering over a hole in the sand with little concealment and doing my best to avoid the red ants. While he was out on the dunes enjoying himself, I was bottling up rage as I was used to doing.

One of the methods I came up with to be assertive was to aim for aggressive. I figured that since I’m typically a sensitive and kind fellow, I could never be aggressive in communication. I would aim for aggressive, fall short and land right where I needed to be in assertive. Well, this time I aimed for aggressive and nailed it accidentally.

And I by no means Muay Thai-ed his ass. I just lost my shit, no pun intended, about the bathroom situation and was unwilling to hear his side. Luckily, my friend took it all very well and after I had my initial uncontrolled outburst, we sat and discussed like reasonable adults. He learned that I need a comfortable place to defecate and I learned that I need a comfortable place to defecate…and that I prefer a ninety-degree angle where I can keep an eye on the old navel.