Leaving My Mark

A few months back I was attending a gathering at the home of a quite well-known personality in town; his house is immediately recognizable to most passers-by, and thankfully for us, he was, at the time, in an entirely different country.

So there we were, a moderately-sized number of us, drinking over-priced wine that wasn’t ours and putting our feet on furniture that had likely never been sat upon by such a motley crew.

After a few glasses of wine I headed off to find the bathroom (third door on the right, roughly a football field’s length from the kitchen). After doing what one normally does in a bathroom, I contemplated while washing my hands:

The chances of me ever being in this house – this house – ever again are a million to one. I have to do something to leave my mark.

I stood in front of the over-sized mirror as I held the Egyptian cotton hand towel like a crying baby. There must be something I could do to conquer this territory!

But nothing came to me.

I considered taking an extremely large shit (nothing doing).

Perhaps I could quickly strip down and jump in the filling bath tub. (nothing doing).

And then it came to me:

I need to masturbate in this house.

That was it. There was no better way to (not so) symbolically consecrate the space as my own. No other act, save perhaps for killing a man with my bare hands (too suspect) would bring me the kind of satisfaction I had been craving.

And you know what? Now, when I walk up that famous street, with its stately old mansions that have seen famous faces come and go – I can turn to whomever I’m with and simply say, “There’s a part of me inside that building. Forever.”