When my plane landed in San Francisco I knew the torture of the last two years was over. Leaving the plane, I promised myself that I would never step foot in Florida, Alabama, or the South ever again. The South and I had developed a deep loathing for each other and if I ever had to hear ”Sweet Home Alabama” again I was going to gouge out my ear drums with rusty ice picks. I had learned my lesson, California had its faults, but despite it all, it was home.

As I weaved through the airport crowd I couldn’t stop smiling and felt spank me twice and call me naughty, happy to be home. On the downside, I only had sixty bucks to my name and I was going to have to stay with my mom until I got a job and got back on my feet, but that was okay. Though basically broke and pseudo-homeless I felt free because I no longer had to deal with being called a Yankee by people who had more toes than teeth and humidity that steamed one’s balls just about every day of the fucking day of the year.

Returning to California, I wasn’t familiar with where I was going to live. All I knew was that it was a town near Modesto, which given its reputation, was trying to be the west coast’s answer to Detroit, but I hoped that would be very temporary. It was imperative that the time I spent staying with my mom was as brief as possible because after two days in her presence we’d be at each other’s throats like two starving wolves over the last pork chop. Still, despite the obstacles I faced, I thought my life was looking up.

Being new to the area, I knew it was going to be a challenge finding a job and that $60 I had in my pocket was gone after getting a haircut and buying a button-down shirt for job interviews. Facing poverty and the tension of living with my mom, I swore I would take the first job I was offered.

After a couple of weeks of pavement pounding, I was hired by Taco Bell. My job was a whole 15 hours a week for $4.75 an hour. The position was, “Lot Person” meaning I was to clean the parking lot, stock the dining room with condiments, and clean the restrooms before the restaurant opened. I didn’t complain because I was 19 years old and filled with the kind of optimism that only village idiots and Disney characters possess. It was just cleaning; how bad could it be?

The job seemed too easy until the first time I walked into the restrooms with a mop and bucket in hand. What I saw and melt was a god awful, biohazard filled example of how some human beings are not only happy to wallow in their own filth, but they are also eager to share their filth with others. After a few days of cleaning the restrooms I came to a surprising conclusion. The women’s room was by far the scariest, dirtiest to clean.

Now, let me just say that I have always felt that women are superior to men in every single way. I truly believe that women are the apex of human evolution where men are basically just a drunken evolutionary stagger in front of our knuckle dragging ancestors. A week of cleaning restrooms and my high opinion of women was crushed a little by reality

The men’s room was always what you’d expect. The trash can was full and the sink was filthy and often caked in a disgusting film of chewing tobacco. It was not unusual for boogers to be found on the walls, doors, mirrors, and even on the ceiling (now that’s talent). Of course, being a Taco Bell restroom, the toilets were always a cross between a sewer treatment plant and Chernobyl in terms of cleanliness and sanitation. I came to theorize that the state of the commode was a direct result of the fact that Taco Bell doesn’t always sit well with everyone’s digestive plumbing. After consuming this, “Quick Serve Mexican Food” many people experience the phenomena where their Nacho Supreme, Taco Supreme etc. races through their stomach, squeals recklessly through the curves of the intestines, and finally exits the sphincter with the speed of a behind schedule Japanese bullet train. The result was never pretty and not always contained within the confines of the commode. Lucky me, I was responsible for cleaning the aftermath of this burrito-based, porcelain destroying crime against restroom sanitation.

The women’s room was different. Oh, it had an overflowing trash can and grimy sink. One difference between the lady’s and men’s room trash cans was the addition of dirty diapers (both infant and disturbingly some adult). The toilets were just as bad (one could sense distinctively feminine daintiness to the aftermath of the taco-induced spontaneous rectal purge) as their counterparts in the men’s room.

What stood out in the ladies room, what haunted my dreams, was the diabolically inappropriate disposal of feminine hygiene products. Though it didn’t happen on a daily basis, there were times the women’s room looked like someone tried to perform a dinner theater version of Stephen King’s Carrie in there. Tampons and sanitary napkins could be found on stall floors, floating in the toilets, and one time it looked like someone threw a very used sanitary napkin against a wall, repeatedly. The reason the restroom was so abused was a mystery to me. Maybe it was a raving mad femme artiste who chose to work in the medium of uterine blood instead of watercolor or oil paint. Maybe it was a disgruntled employee. All I knew was I wished the panty-liner Picasso would practice her art at the Burger King down the street.

I have a strong stomach, but I was ill equipped to deal with what I’d seen. Instead of mop, bucket, and cleaning cloth, I felt this menstrual mess required a pressure washer, followed by a sand blaster, followed by an exorcist (the power of Mr. Clean compels you) for good measure. A couple of weeks after working as a lot person, one of my first purchases with my Taco Bell wages was a pair of rubber gloves I’d seen plumbers use. There was no way I was going to use the paper-thin plastic gloves Taco Bell provided to clean, IN THERE.

Though I was somewhat traumatized by what I had experienced cleaning the Taco Bell restrooms I did learn three things. First, I should be ashamed of my fellow males because most of us have the manners and cleanliness of an undersexed chimp watching a Planet of the Apes marathon. Second, not all women are polite and emotionally mature demigoddesses. Some are downright foul. Finally, I am a bit of a masochist because it took me thirteen years of promotions, punishment, being told to get a real job, and red sauce seeping from my pores to hand in my Taco Bell uniform and go back to school.

Billiard balls randomly bouncing around? I think not. I think waves are not particles and I think thought - consciousness - is but waves crashing against each other on this interstellar ocean. Organs, organelles, cells, molecules, elements, atoms, quarks. But keep slicing and dicing. Eventually the circles become dots and the dots become lines.

Perhaps the tapestry of spacetime - time, really - is indeed a tapestry, woven time and time again by this very fabric. Maybe there is just Time, Time is omnipotent, therefore there is just You - and You are omnipotent. Magic is just using your instrument in the right way. Spells are sounds.

In this kosmic symphony, life is what you make it.