Please Let Me Know If You Peed On Me in 2017
When I was a kid, my mom showed me “Baduizm” by Erykah Badu. Released the year I was born, it was an important album for her and it’s an important one for me. “On & On” is one of the world’s few masterpieces. Ms. Badu has gone on to continue to release fantastic music and do amazing interviews where she discusses aliens. I love her.
I was raised by a single mother. She’s a fantastic person who broke her back to set me up for success… not literally… although she did once get dragged by a car. It was crazy. She worked hard, I worked hard, and I ended up going to college at Brown. It’s the sort of story that makes Republicans cream their bootstrap jeans. I don’t want to make a whole thing about it. If you want to call me a hero or an inspiration just do it behind my back, alright?
So, I go to college. The year is 2016. The president? Barack HUSSEIN Obama. Billie Eilish? Hadn’t even been born yet. The president? Donald HUSSEIN Trump. What a wild time to be alive. I’d love to tell Billie Eilish all about it.
Imposter Syndrome is a really complex thing to grapple with when you’re a total baddie like me. Like, I know that I’m a gorgeous young man with a stunning head of hair and a brain that should, for better or for worse, be studied, but there I was, convinced that I’d conned my way into the Ivy League. Was I ready to hobnob with The Elite? Was I ready to hobnob with anyone? I had never hobnobbed before! My great uncle had just passed away!
These concerns eventually subsided… not the uncle dying thing, that still bums me out in a pretty major way. The other, hobnob related concerns began to pass. I quickly realized that there were plenty of dummies that were way stupider than me. Total shit-for-brains losers who paid their way in. They know who they are… and that’s about all they know. There were also incredibly lovely, smart people who were also kinda stupid. It dawned on me: this is college, everyone’s a little stupid.
I lived in a dorm called Andrews Hall. It was a large building with a beautiful view of the quad. Right outside, next to the front door was a window. And there was something on that window. What was on that window, Chautauqua!? I’ll tell you! Vomit! During orientation week, while I was meeting my lovely girlfriend that I’m sure folks back home assumed was a beard, someone drank too much Fireball (Do people still drink that? Sound off below!) and they threw up on the window screen. Do you know how hard it is to get vomit out of a window screen? No? Neither do the lovely folks at Brown Facilities, because nobody ever cleaned it up. It just slowly degraded and returned to Mama Gaia. But everyday I looked at that vom and was reminded that someone was really dumb one night. Poetic, no?
So, we get to the middle of the second semester. I had made dear friends and horrible enemies. I had learned quite a bit about Foucault and Buddy Cianci. I prefer Cianci, and I think the good people of Providence, Rhode Island will have my back on that. I became an on-air DJ for our radio station, WBRU. I co-hosted a show called Gentle Touch. It was a request show that played mostly babymaking R&B slow jams, often as a means of communication between incarcerated people and their loved ones. It was one of the more important things I’d done in my life even if I had to get on legitimately popular local airwaves and call a man “Daddy” on behalf of his lover. I loved it. I loved it because I love music. So, I was ready for Spring Weekend.
Spring Weekend was a weekend of concerts right before finals. Other schools did similar things, but I’d long heard that Brown’s was the best. Then, they announced that our headliners would be the talented (and currently unfairly jailed) Young Thug and the legend herself, Erykah Badu. I lost my mind. I couldn’t wait. This was going to be so much fun.
I don’t drink alcohol. It’s yucky to me. Tastes bad, hurts my tummy. There’s no sophisticated way to say it and there’s no stance, morbid or moral, that I have on it. I also don’t do any hard drug. Too scary and if I die from it, nobody’s gonna find it glamorous or punk rock because I’m Black. Others did. And they really did at Spring Weekend.
I don’t like crowds. People touching me is my nightmare. Hands off, pal! Everyone is sweaty and has their own little special stink. Keep your stink to yourself and your bedroom buddies! That’s for them. They love it. Not me. Not outside.
Needless to say, at Spring Weekend, a large outdoor festival of music and substances, I found that keeping a respectful distance was in my best interest. But I still wanted to see. I was used to being in the front at concerts and festivals. I went to a ton of them in high school with my best friend and we’d always weasel ourselves up to the barricade. There, I felt like I had a sort of bubble of space in front of me. Put me in row two? I’m outta there. I can’t explain it and neither can my therapist. Shortly before Erykah Badu, I found a spot. A tree. The area around the tree was elevated and sparsely populated. I had space and could see over everyone. It was fantastic.
Erykah Badu enters the stage. A dream. She sounds perfect. The sun has set and the vibes are terrific. She’s giving me all of the songs I’d hoped to hear. About an hour into her set, I felt a drop of rain on my right calf. It was weird though, because it was only on my right calf. And it was kinda warm. I turned to my right to check on it. I saw a woman. A grown woman. A peer. She was squatting next to me in a dress. The pee had been hitting the ground with such force that it ricocheted up to my leg. I was being peed upon! Outside! By a human! I was frozen. My brain short circuited as I was processing this information. I never saw her face. I don’t know who she was. She pulled up her underpants and disappeared into the crowd.
I don’t even want people sweating near me. Now I have urine on my shin. I was feet away from a security person and like a white lady talking to a manager, I told him what happened. He said there was nothing to be done.
“So we can all just piss on each other!?” I asked.
“As long as it’s not vomit, can’t do anything for ya.”
What a weird red line to have and if that front window at Andrews Hall is any indication, it’s not a hard line.
I went home to shower, missing the end of Erykah Badu.
My mother worked my whole life, I worked my whole life, to attend a good college, like I was supposed to. I played by the rules and kept my head down. And yet, I was covered in strange pee, missing the show.
Why would I write about this? The answer is simple: I’m looking for the Mystery Pisser. Who peed on me in the spring of 2017? Fess up. I won’t be mad. I’m past it, I promise. It was a wild time. The Chainsmokers were on the Billboard Hot 100. Everyone was out of their damn minds. I just want to talk. I just want to understand. There were so many available bathrooms. Why pee in the open? How did you get so close to me, sit down, pull down your underwear, and get 90% through a urination session without me noticing? How did you pee with that much force? Was it force or just a very wide spray? It’s gotta be force. If you spray that wide when you pee and you choose to do so outside of your own home, you’re a supervillain. I have questions that I need answered. I learned so much in my first year at college, but the thing that has most stuck with me is the thing I don’t know. I must solve this mystery. It is my White Whale.