“Don’t worry about it. That’s just the way he thinks—” The man who spoke wore a CAT Power Equipment hat. He turned from one of the rust-stained urinals. The other man wore a neck brace and stood in front of a row of mirrors that formed a realistic frieze along the wall above the sinks. The man in the CAT hat quit talking when he saw the poet enter the restroom. The man with the neck brace also saw the poet. He looked away from that illusion and examined the illusion of a blemish on his reflected face. The poet staggered to the centre urinal and noisily unzipped his fly.
The man in the CAT hat went over and stood beside the man with the neck brace. He looked in the mirror at himself, at the man with the neck brace, at the back of the pissing poet.
Urine splashed steadily on stained porcelain. The two men at the sinks fidgeted. The room, usually filled with the violent melodies of argument, filtered jukebox, dope deals and running water, was silent. The man in the CAT hat and the man with the neck brace swallowed their words as they came up in their mouths. The man with the neck brace, thin and pale, drew a broken comb through thin pale hair. He watched the reflection of the poet turning towards him from the urinal
(who was me, drunk, ever-so-sensitive to reality: I had walked into the toilet and saw two guys, one doing up his fly and saying, “Don’t worry about it, kid. That’s just the way he thinks,” and the other standing by the sinks toying with his neck brace. Making sure I didn’t stare or seem to be paying attention, I swaggered to the urinal to the left and quietly unzipped my fly. I focussed on this living vignette, trying to fix an image of the situation from the inadequate sensory information I could glean from my surroundings. On the chrome elbow of the urinal pipe I could make out the funhouse image of two men facing each other. Through the wash of water and muffled bar noise, I heard the breathing of the two men as they mumbled: one hard and even, the other raspy and sick. I heard the soft whisper of a broken comb passing through Brylcreemed hair. My sensitive ears heard all, my sensitive eyes saw all. I turned from the urinal and looked straight into the reflected eyes of a man by the sinks)
and he said, “I dunno. Maybe I’m paranoid.”