She could scarcely process what she saw before her eyes as she flushed the toilet in the public bathroom to unveil a cobra-like in size coil of shit. It was as though the mold of a snake had taken shape in shit, curlicued into the same exact form. But with the obstruction of toilet paper and water–paired with the urgency to relieve herself of a backlog of urine–Roselda was, as usual, careless in her actions. Actions that would ultimately lead her to be blamed for this behemoth of an excretion that she was convinced no human could have been capable of. How had she managed to choose this, of all the cess pool stalls? It could have been any of the other literally twenty in the venue, but no, it was just her luck to have settled upon the anti-jackpot. The worst possible option of all the, granted, many bad options–but still, the worst one she could have possibly chosen.

Outside, she could hear two girls, presumably in their late teens or early twenties, (because it was that type of show) though, of course, all shows tended to attract youths unless it was a band digging itself up from the 90s for some extra cash. But this particular one was at the sort of DIY venue with the funding of a rich child’s parent who wanted so desperately to see his son live his dreams through the magic of funding, ergo vicarious existence. Whoever’s son it was had opted to name the venue Stank. Roselda thought it was all too derivative of The Smell, but she doubted anyone in this crowd even knew what or where that was at this point. In fact, she could feel herself emanating a certain rage and contempt for the music scene of New York as compared with L.A. At least of late. All New York had managed to produce was Cardi B. What was the world supposed to do with such a thing? Gone were the days of Stefani Germanotta and Lizzy Grant whoring it up on the Lower East Side to make something happen with their music. Now it was just straightforward sex trade workers that could manage to finagle a career. It made such venues as Stank feel totally pointless. Because no one was ever going to be interested in the Interpol/The Strokes sound again. Or even A Place to Bury Strangers. It was just so decidedly…white male. And even despite the current president, no one was really interested in what that ilk had to say anymore (and who knows if they ever were, so much as that was all that was made available for mass consumption?).

As she ruminated over all of this while staring at the massive shit coil that now seemed to be pulsating from the hole it was embedded in, she had the distinct feeling she would not be able to leave the stall without somehow being spotted. Without the epic blame for the cobra turd being pinned on her despite the fact that, based on her girth and size, there was no feasible (fecesble?) way she could have produced such a massive dump. It just wouldn’t have made good anatomical sense. But you try deflecting the liability for an embarrassing snafu of this nature when zygotes are involved. They simply won’t let anyone slide for anything pertaining to the “hilarity” of bodily functions. So goddamn droll to them, for whatever reason. Roselda couldn’t fathom how she had found herself in this scatological whodunit. It was, in all honesty, the final straw in an already trying week in an already trying life. She was thirty years old, on a “date” with a twenty-five year old who thought she was twenty-seven and seeing a show by a band that would be forever mired in obscurity despite their best attempts and plucky beliefs that if they worked hard and long enough, they would make it.

The shit was moving again, shaking about to the rhythms of the music as she realized that she could identify with that band. For in her mind, even still, some sick part of her also believed she could succeed after “enough” time put in. She wasn’t sure what, exactly, that success could be, being that everyone looked upon her as though her life’s work–being an artist–was an utter charade, a thin smokescreen used to avoid the glaring fact that she was somehow “lazy” for not wanting to work under the thumb of a corporate oppressor. Yet oh, at the same time, how she did. For those were the ones who gave you money to live so that you might climb in your own slow, painful way the pyramid known as Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

She stared up at the molding ceiling, thinking, “Wow, it’s almost as if the patron of this venue paid extra to make it look as gross as possible.” That was the rule, after all. The fouler the venue, the more mythical. That’s how CBGB transcended into the stuff of legend before it became nothing more than a commodifiable logo. Maybe Stank would do the same if it could afford the rent ad infinitum in the face of it all. Even half of Amazon’s headquarters coming to New York. Meanwhile, the tittering from the world outside the confining environs of her shit-filled bathroom stall seemed to grow louder. Could they sense that she was in an impossible situation? That to risk exiting was to risk rumor of the shit that would automatically be assigned to her spreading throughout the entire space–most assuredly to her date. The one she was hoping would take her home tonight as she didn’t feel like schlepping all the way back to motherfucking Hoboken, where the height of her failure resided in an apartment that might as well have been in the East Village for as expensive as it was. She didn’t feel like trekking in her condition of self-loathing, felt that the contempt and aggression would be better channeled through lackluster sex than going home and getting drunker. And just when she was sure that she would have to give up, just surrender to the idea that people would have to think whatever they wanted to think about the origins of the snake turd, the pulsating of the drum machine loosened the shit from its hole enough for Roselda to flush it down, and with it, preserve at least some smidgen of what was left of her dignity.