The Audacity of the Pisser
When I tell people that one time, in the middle of a tour, a man in my group unzipped his fly and began to urniate right then and there, I usually get the same response:
“That only happened one time?”
And yeah, har har, I get it. All you have to do is take a stroll down Bourbon Street and let the wafts of urine-scented sidewalks invade your nostrils to know that public urination isn’t exactly a rarity in this weird world I work in.
BUT… just to answer that question: yes, it only happened one time, thank you very much. Because even drunk tourists generally know it’s not okay to drop trough and relieve yourself in the middle of a group that’s intently listening to a tour guide whose in te middle doing his job.
Christ, even the French Quarter has standards.
This is why my name for this particular pisser is “ the exceptional jackass” because he is in a class all on his own.
Allow me to set the scene:
It’s nighttime, its Thursday, it’s mildly busy in the quarter, as Thursdays usually are, and I’m halfway through a haunted pub crawl tour and things are going good.
Not great, but good.
I’ve got a group of twenty that I’m taking from bar to bar, and I’m warming them over with each new story, dazzling them with my expert storytelling ability. In this group of twenty, there’s a party of twelve, a bunch of dental health care workers or something from Michigan. This is fine except with a large mini-group like that within you group there is more pressure to delight all twelve equally because they tend to hand out one big tip instead of a lot of little tips.
But whatever, I know how to make people like me, so I’m not worried.
Anyway, it’s just after our second stop, where I’m at the end of St. Peter Street talking about the horrible cheater of a husband back in the 1870s who gaslit his mistress to the point of madness, when I notice a man in my group- the exceptional jackass- begin to squirm in place in an odd sort of way. I see him look over at the bar we had just come out of with a sort of longing in his eyes. At the time I figure he’s contemplating whether to go back inside to get another drink. Now I know he’s actually thinking, “hmmm, should I walk the fifty feet to use the legitimate bathroom, or… should I just turn around and piss behind me like an absolute animal??? Decisions decisions!”
Of course, all of you readers know what path he takes. But in the moment, I watch it all unfold in real time. I watch him turn around and scoot a little closer to the backwall- and he’s doing it in that shifty obvious way that drunk people do when they think they are being sneaky and incognito- and then I notice his hand move down to the generally area where his crotch is, and then he looks over both shoulders to see if anyone is noticing. And, to my ultimate frustration, I see a little devilish smile appear on his face, as he seems to believe he’s in the process of committing the perfect crime.
And that’s when something breaks in me.
Keep in mind, I am still in the middle of teling a story as all this goes down- we tour guides must learn to master the art of multitasking- so when I lash out at this exceptional jackass this is what it must have sounded like to the rest of my group:
“Then the mistress, full of fury and resentment, breaks into her lover’s mansion, runs up the stairs to the master bedroom where she- NO! NO SIR! YOU DO NOT DO THAT ON MY TOUR! COMPLETELY UNACCEPTABLE! YOU CAN LEAVE NOW IF THAT”S HOW YOUR GOING TO BEHAVE! I COULD LOSE MY LICENSE FOR THAT!”
Of course, the rest of my group is dizzy with confusion as this all goes down. The exceptional jackass, now realizing his perfect crime isn’t so perfect after all, whips around as he tucks in and zips up and acts like I’m not the one he’s screaming at. And so, yeah, there’s a general confusion in the group, but then the smell of urine grows strong in the air, and people start to look at that back wall and frowning to themselves and steal glances over at the exceptional jack ass, who’s now wearing a big sheepish smile on his face, and things become more clear to tem.
Not trying to soak in an awkward moment, I continue with my story, as we’re just getting to the good part. The mistress is on the balcony on the top floor of her lover’s mansion, looking down at the courtyard below…
But now I’m realizing my group isn’t responding they way they were before. The laughs are weak at best- if they come at all- and there is muttering and consternation coming from the people. I then notice that a few of them are moving toward the exceptional jackass and whispering back and forth.
This is when it hits me. The pisser is a part of the twelve person party.
Fucking hell, I think. Of course.
I know now whatever amount of tips I had hoped for before I might as well just cut in half.
God dammit.
But it gets even worse. And here the exceptional jackass truly earns his name.
“You know, that really wasn’t cool,” he suddenly speaks up, looking directly at me with glassy, indignant eyes.
“Excuse me?” I respond in disbelief.
“Calling me out like that, really not cool.”
“Dude! You understand if you got busted I could have lost my license. In no way was that okay.”
“Yeah but I wasn’t even doing anything wrong. I was pissing in that flowerpot on the ground, so it wasn’t even getting on the sidewalk.”
Yes, he fucking says this. Yes, I want to murder him. Instead I just blankly stare at him and wait for him to keel over and die from an overdose of audacity. But he never does. And pretty soon his friends start chiming in too, telling me I could have been more polite about it.
Long story short, they left the tour about a minute later, and I got shit tips, thanks to one exceptional public pissing jackass.
THE END
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