The Side Effects of Endorphins

Tokyo 2024 – in a subway station directly downtown Bart Swavely decided he must use the bathroom. He was not used to foreign travel and the food from his first few days in Tokyo has made his stomach upset. He was not sick enough to stay in his hotel room as he had saved up and looked forward to this vacation for years. He had a challenging time with the customs and reading what exactly he was supposed to do.

Finding food was fairly easy as they couldn’t go wrong with udon soup or he just pointed at the menu. It took him a while to figure out the bathrooms. After he figured them out, he liked them. The bathroom afforded a lot of privacy. Some bathrooms even had a feature where they played music in the individual stalls so that other people did not hear you doing your business. He found this comforting as his stomach was blowing up in epic proportion.

He went into a bathroom right after lunch and urgently had to use the facilities. He went into the bathroom, straightened his hair, and put on a little deodorant, under his arms. He went ahead to use the bathroom and felt much better, only to grab an extra pair of underwear from his bag and changed into it. It is just the way it goes when you travel. When he was in the bathroom, an American pop song played. The technology was interesting because they must have picked something up as him being an American and the song played. And he hated that song. It was “We Built This City” by Jefferson Airplane.

The toilet flushed automatically and the light from the midday sun blinded him momentarily. A local woman, who appeared to be in her late 20s, approached him as he left the bathroom and looked at him with concern.

She looked at him and he started getting a little self-conscious. He checked his zipper and that was fine. He felt his trousers to make sure he accidentally did not wet himself. Everything seemed in order.

She said in broken English “is everything OK?”

He told her he was fine and headed toward the subway station.

“There was a terrible sound coming from your stall.”

She started singing the song that was playing in the bathroom. “We built this city on rock ‘n’ roll.”

Her version seems slightly better than the original.

He headed to the nearest convenience store and awkwardly bought a pack of Tums.