Recreationally Offended

I was taking a shit and using my phone the other day.  There wasn’t anything spectacular about the shit part.  My elbows were on my thighs doing their job of putting my legs to sleep and leaving that telling red mark.  (I guess it’s only telling for people with lighter skin.  Black people won’t get that part, but I’m sure their legs fall asleep too).  Anyway, I was scrolling through all of those social media sites.  I’m a two thumb scroller, so I can really get the ball moving.  Skimming tweets and statuses and the amalgamation of whatever my online community has created for me.  That’s when I noticed my teeth were grinding.  It wasn’t because of the poop.  I was done, recovering at that point.  Yet a strain of irritability was crawling up my neck.

I had nothing to be angry about.  It came on sort of subliminally, the way the cold does in this apartment.  One minute I’m fine and the next minute I’m fucking freezing without any of the in between steps.  Tranquil, pooping, and then engulfed in this invisible funk of rage.

It’s not bipolarism, (or whatever the term is), I asked my doctor.  This sudden shift would happen from time to time and I could never put my finger on it.  It wasn’t until the other day, as I was perched on that broken toilet seat with red thighs, that I finally figured it all out.

Every third Tumblr post, every second Facebook status, ever eighth tweet – they were all bitching.  Bitching in a way that was only efficient in pointing out either obvious or trivial problems in the world.  “I can’t believe these people are like this” or “Why are those people allowed to do that.” “There aren’t enough of my people in this industry.”  “It’s offensive to call them trannies.”  

Shut the fuck up!  It’s all trivial nothingness.  Everywhere I scrolled some asshat was offended, outraged even.  And now, here I was in a post-poop depression because of it.

There are so many people looking to be offended.  They do it recreationally.  They’re probably at their houses, on their own toilets, with little red marks on their thighs, thinking of new things that they could be possibly be upset by.  They must get something out of it, some weird moronic tickle.  Maybe they feel like they’re helping shine a light on some injustice.

Initially, I wanted to come here to describe my revulsion for this “recreationally offended” genre of human.  I wanted to really lay it out there and let them have it.  Death by disembowelment, first born child aids, really nasty stuff.  I wanted those bitchy little cunts to read this, and I wanted to give them something to be genuinely offended by.

Then I realized I can’t do that.  Those whiney cocksuckers cut me off at the knees.  They’ve complained about everything.  They’ve made it so that the real, angry, vein-bursting gripes are swept under the rug.  It’s too much.  All of these outcries on nonsensical wrongdoings have callused us to actual issues in the world.  You scroll past misaimed drone strikes, massacres, and all of fucking Africa, because you’ve had it up to here with the complaining.  I do it too.

As I was thinking about all of this, furiously scrolling, I looked down at the toilet seat between my legs.  That little space, you know what I’m talking about – the piece of exposed toilet seat closest to your dickandballs.  For some reason, I glanced down and there was this asymmetrical drip of pale red.  I bent at the waist and examined it closer.  It only took about two more seconds, one-Mississippi, two-Mississippi, and I knew exactly what it was. 

One distinct and lonely drop of period blood, left by one of my degenerate roommates.  It had been sitting there festering the entire time, with me only inches away.  I was so caught up with my phone and the band of genetically inferior, the recreationally offended, that I didn’t even notice it. 

The muscles in my jaw tightened again, this time the anger was appetizing.  I had something real, something tangible and tasteless to be good and angry about.