Someone Else’s Sh*t. (Literally)

 

Good morning and happy Friday!

In case you are wondering, yes . . .the picture and the title of this post DO have something in common, insofar as the title describe the picture, which is of my front porch last night at approximately 1am MST. 

About 15 minutes before this picture was taken, the dogs woke us up barking like mad. We shushed them and tried to get everyone back to bed, certain the barking had been inspired by a bird or a car on the road. A few minutes later, there was a knock on the door (or, what sounded like a knock on the door, anyway.) La and I got up, went to the front door, and peeked out the window. That’s when i saw this:

 

Which isn’t a HUGE deal  . . . I mean, toilet papering houses is a long standing American adolescent tradition and while it isn’t fun to clean up (especially if you have giant trees that get papered, like my parents did when I was a kid) its pretty innocuous. 

We opened the door, and that’s when I found the poop. Its sort of surprising that I was so confident it was human poop, but I had no doubt in my mind. Of course, the crumpled bit of TP that had clearly been used for butt wiping might have given it away. The puddle of piss is a good clue too.

Last night I was scared-angry. La was just angry. She took the toughest of the dogs with her to search the neighborhood while I called the non-emergency police line. She didn’t find anyone. neither did the patrol cop who was sent out to cruise by our house and through our neighborhood. We filed a report and were added to the extra patrol list – a privilege of whiteness and middle-classness I feel uneasy and conflicted about. 

Probably, it was a prank. Maybe it was a student of La’s, or the sort of rowdy neighbors a few streets down, or just some stupid, douchey kids from somewhere. But when you’re gay, you always wonder. Your first thought is how out you are and who might care enough to do something crappy. Is it the rainbow flag hung in our shed, visible from the street? Have we been ‘too’ out or incurred someone’s wrath?

Because TP is whatever, but the audacity to drop trou on someone’s front porch, take a giant dump, then knock on the door . . .well, it sounds personal. It FEELS personal. Because there is something truly humiliating about cleaning up another human’s shit when you are not A)related to that human and B)aren’t getting paid to do so as your job. 

This morning, I feel more angry and less shaken. We’ll get a motion sensor light for the porch. It was probably an isolated incident. I don’t face violence and harassment for being queer on a daily basis, like many others do. I’m ok. 

And I kind of can’t get the smell of someone else’s shit out of nose completely.