TP'd

The online toilet paper calculator confirmed it, I had to confront her. I waited anxiously in the kitchen until my wife came home from work. Fucking nurses, who takes a job that makes you go into the fray no matter what? That pregnant woman from China, used as propaganda when the virus first started, was a nurse, right?

Whatever, her paycheck is great, but at what cost? COVID-19 could kill a tough old bastard like me. Or was it the young? Maybe the stupid? It was hard to tell, damn fake media, presidents, doctors, vaccines.

About a half hour later, she enters the house and I’m ready. “Hey, you’re bullshitting about our supply of TP.” “What?” “There’s no way we’re going to have enough. Twenty-seven rolls, four people (two adults, two young kids), and five trips to the bathroom requiring toilet paper per day. That’s less than a thirty-day supply, and we both know this is gonna go on way longer than that.” “Stop, just stop. How do you know this?”

I tell her about the website, and with great exasperation she agrees to check it out. I plug in the numbers and she groans. The prediction becomes even shorter after she corrects my guesstimate of trips that require wiping. Women wipe every single time. Is that for real?

She launches into some diatribe about my panicked paranoia, which I feel is healthier than most. I stop her when she hits the bidet part of her fantasy. “You want me to use a bidet toilet seat?

I got hair on my ass, hair on my chest, and hair everywhere else, except my back, and you want me to lave down there?” She pauses, nods, and goes off about the practicalities of a bidet. I interrupt with, “Only escorts and posh celebrities use them.”

She sighs and pours boiling water into her cup of chamomile, slumps on the couch, and begins reading, or pretends to read, her Kindle. I try to let it go but can’t. “I’m part caveman, using a bidet is like the Yeti—or is it a Yeti—getting a Brazilian wax and full mani-pedi after its hour-long Pilates session.” Unwilling to reengage she offhandedly says, “In other parts of the world it’s quite common to use your hand and then wash it really well.” I grumble, “Touché” but persist because I’m unwilling to concede for reasons I can’t fathom.

She gets five minutes of reprieve as my upbringing on a dirt farm in Nebraska comes to mind. For fuck’s sake, we didn’t wash our hands unless it was time for dinner. That and my self-proclaimed

Neanderthal hedonism, have me cornered. And I’ve no doubt she, in time of need, would wipe as she’s prescribed.

Probably even did it when she was in the Peace Corps filling a slot in some place named Azerbaijan.

I take a sip of whiskey and say, “At least accidentally bring home some face masks from the hospital. We’ve only got about forty left.” “Little good they do you with that facial hair swatch you’ve been growing for seven years.” I tell her to leave my beard out of this and plot how to resolve the impending catastrophe. I think about reinstating our newspaper subscription. In the old days, they used softened newspaper—crumpled again and again by young’uns for a penny a page—before toilet paper was invented.

God, the havoc it would inflict on our septic system makes me want to do my biz in the woods, use my hand to wipe, and go on the fasting diet.

Experimental David Grubb

Cumberland, Maine, USA

After she’s gone to bed, I endlessly search online for toilet paper, but it’s all sold out. Is this how things devolved in the movie Mad Max? First toilet paper, then bleach, surgical masks, followed by tests and ventilators until it’s all gone, and we fight over dirty gas, which is at an all-time low of twenty dollars a barrel.

I’m at my wit’s end when the idea comes to me from deep within the recess of my aging mainframe. We have threeply toilet paper. If I separate the plies and re-roll them, I’ll triple our supply.

Fucking genius, although I can’t take the credit, I saw that malarkey on a super old reality show during the mid2000’s. Some over-the-top frugal morons doing the nuttiest stuff possible to stretch their dollars. Who knew they were ahead of the salvation curve for our incredibly chaotic times and the new green movement?

In bed, worn out from rerolling, I still toss and turn. I get up and flip open my laptop, then plug in the new number of rolls I’ve stashed in closets and lined up on the shelves in both bathrooms. The larger number on the screen puts me at ease. I can tell I will get a good night’s sleep for the first time in days, maybe even a week.

If she’d listened when I told her to grab copious amounts of Charmin ultra-strong mega rolls before the crowds caught on, we’d be in great shape.

She never listens to me. Before falling asleep I fantasize about the extra fat puffy rolls we should have— and if we had them—the soothing task of separating the plies and re-rolling them. We could outlast coronavirus and every pandemic that follows.

In the dark she whispers, “Hey, did you get the Instacart order to go through?” “No, I thought you did it.” “Jesus, Greg, I ask you to do one thing and you get so strung out on the wrong issue you forget about everything else.”

She’ll stop after work tomorrow and get all the stuff in our Instacart order, at least what she can. It’s not fair and I should apologize, but I roll over and try to go to sleep yet fret about the half-bottle of Clorox cleanup we must ration because anything with chlorine has vanished from the shelves, the internet, the damn world.

Days later, coming back from a senseless search for TP, I slam on my brakes near our local gas station/variety store/pizza joint. The large info sign says free roll of TP with LG pizza. It’s too good to be true.

She comes in the house after working a twelve-hour shift at one of the

COVID-19 testing sites. She’s deflated and edgy until she spies three large pizzas, a six-pack (half gone), and a scratch off lottery ticket on the counter.

I smile and do my best to act as if it’s merely a much-needed treat, but we never order more than two at a time. “Three? Are you panic buying pizzas now?” “Can’t ever have enough pizza, right?” She picks up a cold slice and gobbles it down, my ravenous heroine is aware something is amiss, but she can’t quite figure it out. The surplus rolls are safely stashed away after being separated into six rolls; twoply handouts are better than none.

A week later, my wife sleeps in on her one day off from a long weary eight day stretch. I pace in the kitchen while making her an epic breakfast because we fought about rerolling our toilet paper into single ply rolls; she’s not a fan. I serve her steel cut oatmeal, fresh berries, and a Hef-mosa, half Hefeweizen and half OJ, like a Radler only way better.

After she’s done eating and I’ve somewhat apologized one and a half times,

I rue the implications of feeding her so much fiber—a vegetarian needs more fiber like the Trump administration needs more corruption. Eggs. Why didn’t I serve her a four-egg omelet and toast?

Day thirty — Down to seventy-five rolls.

Desperation begins to set in. Day forty-five — Sixty-six rolls including those from another “impromptu” pizza party. Day sixty — <Fifty rolls forces inquisition on additional burn through rate. No confessors…rationing put in place with extremely harsh penalties and very limited sheets for use.