My Sweet Lord

A taco truck parks just down the block from my work and for lunch today I ate a 1 ½ lb “Wet Carne Asada Burrito”…

I’ve been stung by this foul temptress before, but today I found her refried whiles irresistible. Aromas of grilled steak, Spanish rice, sour cream and salsa fresca swirled in front of me like the dance of the seven veils. I was helpless, it was impossible to resist the temptation. I thought maybe this time maybe it would be different; she only hurts me because she loves me right?

But that bitch backstabbed me again. She hit me right where it hurts most…my puckered brown eye. Sadly this time around my escape to the lavatory would not be such a smooth operation.

Almost everyone in the office was out to lunch and I could not leave my post. I contemplated hastily scribbling an “Out to Poop” sign with a sharpie and posting it on the door or just going behind the copy machine and blaming it on the cleaning lady.

In the end, I covered myself in post-it notes, got into the lotus position and did some meditative breathing with the occasional Om or “Hare Hare Rama Govinda Hare” chant.

After a few minutes I felt a lot better; the whole experience got me to thinking of a similar time when I was not so lucky…or was I?

About 2 1/2 years ago I was working on a freelance construction job in West Oakland. Our cheap bosses had not procured a port-o-potty for the site yet so we all had gotten into the habit of dropping a load before work and throughout the day simply draining our lizards onto the pile of ripped up foundation in the back. This worked out fine for a couple of weeks, until one fateful day…

I was at the site all alone for a few hours while the other guys I was working with went out to get supplies. In my folly earlier that afternoon I had ingested a taco truck burrito, that time it was Carnitas.

*Health Note: When ordering Mexican food from a truck in West Oakland…choosing pork may be a bad decision*

Anyway, there I was measuring tar paper for the roof of the building and listening to Led Zeppelin on the sawdust encrusted boom box. It was at this moment that the seasoned swine surfing the swell of sloshing suds in my stomach chose to strike.

A violet cramp sounded the alarm and told my brain that something was wrong. The gelatinous command center then sent an express message to my winking starfish and told him to prepare for the worst.

So there I was in that familiar position of imminent crap with no where to unload. Robert Plant was crooning about a “Stairway to Heaven” but I would have been fine with a “Hallway to a Bathroom”.

I proceeded to wander the premises is search of some sort of magical leprechaun toilet that may have appeared at our ill equipped work place overnight, but sadly there was nothing but a barren wasteland of dirt, rock and lumber, fully exposed to the surrounding ghetto.

Just as I was about to drop my drawers right there and hope that the shambling citizens in the surrounding area would mistake me for an incontinent crack head and leave me be, I saw the face of Krishna before me…

You see our little dust bowl of a construction site shared a backyard with an abandoned Hare Krishna temple. As the former tenants ascended to nirvana they expressed the most gracious brown rice infused generosity and allowed us access to their back yard for additional storage of lumber and hand held tools.

I immediately sprung into action. Rifling through our trash bin I found a rumpled plastic Safeway bag with the remnants of some pre-packaged California Rolls. Dumping the rubbish into the bin I jammed the soy sauce encrusted sack into my front pocket. Stopping to rifle through my back pack just long enough to tear two sheets of college ruled note book paper from my book; I made a b-line for the paved Zen garden that was the gated “Krishna Rama” parking lot.

I could still smell the incense permeated into the wood and the ghosts of resonating chimes seemed to tell my rectum, everything was going to be alright.

I headed towards the darkest corner and found a sight block provided by a sheet of green corrugated plastic. The warm sun filtered through, casting my skin in a chartreuse hue as I pulled down my paint splattered jeans and squatted. Laying out the shopping bag on the ground, I crinkled it into a bowl like shape.

After a moment of hesitation a brown river began to flow through the mountainous valley to cascade into the white plastic basin, proudly adorned with the name of America’s Favorite Food Store. I closed my eyes and could almost hear Krishna himself trilling upon his divine flute by the banks of the river Ganges.

As the last chucky squirts wheezed out of the darkness and into the light, I opened up my eyes to see a roughly painted lotus flower on the support beam providing my shelter.

…I had never felt closer to god then at that moment…

Hare Hare indeed my friend…Hare Rama indeed…