A Refugee in a Dance Club
An Immigrant Explains the Origin of an English Idiom

fictional humor by Chieu Toan
Free Press contributor

I still remember a special event when I had just come to America twenty years ago. At that time not too many Vietnamese people lived in town, though there were some Vietnamese stores around my neighborhood. I usually went to those stores to buy food or clothes because my English was really bad.

One evening, when I was feeling tired with my "Asian neighborhood," I took a bus to downtown. I got off the bus and wandered as far as I could. I was very excited watching the evening sunshine reflected on the skyscrapers. I went to a very large building. The first floor was filled up by hundreds of people who were dancing with excitement.
It was a huge hall with brilliant lights. All the ceiling fans were on that summer evening. I just walked around and looked. I gazed at the young, sexy ladies who were dancing like crazy. I was also scared that somebody might ask me something. Fortunately, nobody paid attention to me.
I penetrated that hall deeply enough to make me confused about how I would get out. Then I got a very serious stomach-ache. I walked around and looked for the rest room. But I could not find one, nor did I know how to ask where it was.
Suddenly, I had to take drastic measures. That room was too bright to find any corner dark enough to hide myself to defecate. There was just a wine bar with a happy old bald man standing and smiling at everybody. I wished that old man would leave the bar so I could hide myself there and do what I wanted to do. But he stayed there and kept talking with some drunken guys. I thought they were making fun of me when I passed with my diarrhea face.
Finally I saw a stairway in the corner. I hastily ran up. My whole body got sweaty. I jumped in another hall as large as the one downstairs. It was bright too, but nobody was there. Even if I couldn't find any rest room up there, at least I could use the floor for my convenience.
I was happy that there was a newspaper left on the floor. I thought I could use it for my purpose. When I picked it up, I saw a hole in the floor. It was a perfect hole! I sat down on that hole and opened the newspaper that would protect me from the sight of anyone who suddenly came up. If someone had come, they would have seen a man sitting down on the floor doing nothing but reading the newspaper.
I felt very comfortable. It was just like I was used to in my homeland. In my country, you know, a lot of rest rooms are built above the fish pool. People feed fish with feces. In my mind, they are the most beautiful rest rooms in the world. When you sit in there, people from far away can see your face. Some of those rest rooms have no roof. You could get a suntan just like you were sitting or stretching on the beach. It is no wonder that my people have a saying: "There are four pleasures in the world: eating, sleeping, having sex, and defecating." When you sit in such a rest room, you can imagine that you are flying with the cool wind blowing under you, or you might compose a poem while voiding feces from your bowels.
To me, there is nothing better than using one of those rest rooms, being warmed by the sunshine or sometimes the rains, feeling the wind under your butt, enjoying the music of the jumping fish to catch the things you don't want to keep, and then leaving with your heart full of charity. You have just done a good thing: feeding the fish, for later on, those fish themselves will feed you back. What a world without any waste!
But I'm going too far from my story. When I was done, I tried to compose myself, and then went back downstairs. What a surprise: That room with hundreds of people dancing just fifteen minutes ago was deserted. I couldn't see a soul. I just saw the broken glasses, the wine bottles, a couple of cowboy hats, a dozen high heeled shoes, 20 pairs of eyeglasses and many wigs on the floor. Did something horrible happen? I didn't know. I couldn't find any reason. With a trembling voice, I said: "Where is everybody? Anybody here?"
When I said it again louder, something that looked like a big mushroom rose up behind the bar. It was the old, bald barkeeper I still remembered. He, with his yellow spotted bald head, yelled back to me: "Where the hell were you when the shit hit the fan?"

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Contents on this page were published in the November/December, 1996 edition of the Washington Free Press.
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