Germs

They piss everywhere, the men here. They piss, unashamed, and on the walls you can see where they pissed. A damp patch, darker than the wall, and then a trail across the pavement and into the road – someone pissed here. Smell it! Pungent, acrid! Smell it – evidence of a recent piss.

As you drive, you can see them pissing. Men, backs turned to the road, and an arc of urine, they do not spare us that – the golden arc. They piss by the roadside and drive off again.

Sometimes you will see children squat by the roadside, taking a shit. Shitting children and pissing grownups – how has it come to this? The adults are pissing, the children shitting: this is how it is.

And what of us, who are driven in our cars? Is our driver – one of them? Does he, too, when we are not looking, piss with his back turned to the road? Are the hands that turn the driving wheel of our car covered with piss? Are there germs even here, in our car?

We close the window as tightly as we can. The air-con is on as high as it will go. What of us, we ask ourselves – are we ever clean enough? Are we clean? At the dentists they give you a dye to show you were you are not brushing your teeth. And if there was a dye to show germs – germs all around us and all over us? We shudder.

We are in charge, we know that. We rule here, we know that, but for how long? How long with the germs multiplying, with men pissing and children shitting? Isn’t it the germs who rule? Aren’t we ruled by them – the germs? Germs: hold a magnifying glass to your skin and you will see them: men pissing and children shitting. Germs: pissing and shitting in our hearts.