If you are holding on to a serious load for a long time under difficult circumstances, you’re going to need concentration.

You’ve probably heard the joke about the fellow who was given a powerful laxative instead of cough medicine by the dumb pharmacist’s assistant.

‘That’s not cough medicine, you idiot, that’s a laxative!’

‘See that feller out at the bus stop?  That’s him.  He aint coughin, is he?’

OK.  That will suffice for a very, very loosely attached relationship, which I still don’t really get, because I never felt that pissing required “exact concentration”. 

All I ever required was a suitable place to generally aim it at.  Once I found that, old books in suitcases were the furthest thing from my mind, instead, scouting the writings on the wall for interesting telephone numbers became of some interest.

I don’t want to get too graphic here, but I will say that in my experience, long carrying a substantial load of excreta of any sort that urgently desires release can combine feelings of pain, panic, fatigue, weight and heat, and like old books, may require considerable and exact concentration.

Last post, first line:  “metaphors have TO work” 

Sorry

No, not restrained style, but metaphors have work, don’t they?  It doesn’t work for me.  There is no reasonably established similarity which is required for the metaphor or analogy to work. 

I think the only similarity you would want to establish for having to piss after a long train ride would be the “urgency”.  But there is no urgency to putting down something heavy.  You can put it down pretty much at will. 

It would be:  “I had to piss like a diver who has been underwater too long without oxygen”  There is the urgency angle. 

There was no other similarity that I could see, not heavy, not old, not books, not suitcase.  What am I missing? 

This overuse of metaphors is tiring and boring.  Everything has to be “like” something.  Fish’s writing displays this.

You can just say, “I had to piss real bad after that long train ride”  and leave the heavy books and suitcase out of it.  But that’s just me.  And from the comments, I see there may be some others as well.

But mostly, I think the writing is just out of place on Truthdig, so the style sticks out more than it would if it were contained in a paperback novel. 

But that is why Fish writes this stuff, so he can laugh at our crazy comments, as though we think he is trying to do something serious.  In that light, the writing is genius, and he is laughing all the way to the bank with his coffee cup and tea shirt money.

I thought the old-books metaphor went along pretty well with the general tone of the story.  We’re not reading something in restrained style here.

“I needed to take a piss, like needing to set down a heavy suitcase full of old books.”
———————————

That is not good writing.  Needing to set down heavy books is absolutely nothing like having to take a piss, when you are not presently located inside of a restroom.  Completely different. 

Change the comma after piss to a period and ditch everything after it.  You don’t have to stretch to come up with a cute analogy for every two words you put to paper. 

Why do we all turn into critics every time Fish writes something?  Strange, isn’t it?

This guy dreams many lives, all at the same time.

I do quite a LOT of writing, JimBob. You?

Clods.  That was brilliant writing.

I think the very kindest critique that could be made of this… “piece”... is to congratulate Mr. Fish on being an absolutely outstanding editorial cartoonist.
I repeat: AN EDITORIAL CARTOONIST.

I think Fish plagiarized this from a dime store novel I read when I was 15.  I remember it well.

“So, with my crotch screaming like a teakettle and the sudden realization that pissing might allow me greater focus on exactly what I might like to say to this girl, this Eve, something to make her want to see me with my pants off and my glasses on—assuming that after pissing I would somehow be able to muster up the courage to cold-sell my nuts and personality to her, in that order”

Does it get any ...... than that?  You fill in the blank.

I liked it.  Hey, Billy ‘n’ Darth—let’s hear you do
some writing!

Reads like a freshman creative writing essay.

What the heck is Mr. Fish talking about for four long pages???
Adolescence?