Before I stumbled into the postion which would become by present occupation, I spent a few years working the Saturday shift at UMass Boston’s Healey Library. It was a pretty sweet assignment. UMB is a commuter school, which meant that most Saturday patrons were students and professors there for a clear purpose, with the occasional harmless weirdo thrown in for color.

It was serious dead time, and I spent most of it browsing through the library’s collection of wonderfully dated books — which included an annotated bibliography of nuclear war fiction, Who’s New Wave in Music, bound tomes of film reviews from 1981-1983, and a comprehensive selection of depressing young adult novels from the 1970s.

Come closing time, I’d catch a northbound Red Line train to Central Square, hop off, and work my way up Mass Ave’s many used record shops until I arrived at the Harvard Square cafe where Maura was finishing up her own shift. Good times and fond memories (though Maura may beg to differ due to residual post-traumatic wait staff stress).

The only part of the job I truly hated was the commute into Dorchester from Woburn, a nintey-minute hellride by bus, two subway lines, and bus again. Getting to UMB in time involved leaving two hours early, which meant getting to the bus stop by seven in the morning.

The commute I remember most vividly was the stuff of nightmares. I had just boarded a southbound Orange Line train at Wellington Station when some mild gut discomfort turned into the  sharp, raging gut pains that preface an explosive colonic purge.

As it was well before opening time at any of my usual restrooms of choice, I had to settle for the one at North Station, then in the process of being restructured to accomodate what would eventually become Banknorth Garden. The MBTA staff kept the bathrooms locked, which required a excruciating wait as the guy behind the ticket counter tried finding the person with the key.

One the door was finally unlocked, I was granted access to a scene which made Bosch’s works look like a Thomas Kinkade painting — broken seats, no doors on the stalls, a palimpsest of filth and layers of paint dating back before the dawn of recorded history. The bowel demands what the bowel demands, however, and I was in no position to argue.

I tried to make the best of it (“best” meaning “escaping with a scrap of diginity and no incurable surfaceborne illness”) by using my longcoat as an imperfect curtain over the door while I tried to avoid coming into direct contact with any part of the toilet. I was halfway through my second wave of intestinal purges when a homeless man staggered into the bathroom. He saw me on the shitter, did a slow-motion double take, and spoke:

“Not on my worst fucking day, kid. Not on my worst fucking day. I’d sooner go on some newspaper in the alley.”

His words spring to mind whenever I hear or read about someone preparing to trek out in search of “deals” on Black Friday.

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