Heightened awareness of all I touch

WARNING the following story will be inappropriate for people who don't like poo (he he that means if you read this you are a poo lover--eew)
This might seem silly to some, disgusting to others, and way way too much information...but then there are some of you who will appreciate this, be able to commiserate and even some of you who are curious but too afraid to ask.  So, this is for you, the rest of you can just stop reading now.

I finally did it!  After 290 days in India, I had to go to the bathroom and I didn't have toilet paper.  And we're not talkin' #1 here were talkin' #2 - oh yes.  Id been doing the no TP thing for peein for a long time now.  Something about using water to wash away a liquid is no big deal.  BUT Somehow, there is a mental barrier for touching anything "solid" that comes out of a human's anus...though strangely enough I have no problems sticking my fingers up a deer's butt to extract fecal pellets (those poor deer in AZ!). 
I have always managed to have some sort of tissue paper or newspaper for myself, until today.  Well, technically I could have walked home and use my bathroom, but that trip in itself would waste at least 30minutes round trip.  The bathrooms here on campus have no toilet paper, just a western style toilet and a little faucet off to the side.  Most bathrooms are like this IF they have a western style toilet, otherwise its the squatty whole in the ground - which I must say is a lot more comfortable than a toilet.      The squat toilets are easy to use - its like when camping.  They also, according to Ridhima's father, position your body in such a way that pooping is much faster.  It is not conducive to sit there for hours and read a book like the western style toilets do. 

I was pretty nervous cuz the western style toilets are not constructed to positioning the body to easily pour the water, swish,  and not make a mess...Cuz you have to squat and it seems tilt forward and reach either between your legs or from behind as the other hand holds the pitcher or water bottle and pours the water down your butt or on your hand.  If you pour it on your hand you have to splash it back up at yourself, if you pour it down your crack, it follows gravity more than the contour of your body and therefore drips into your hand, which you then have to splash back up and swish around.  I am not sure if this is the way, but it worked I suppose.  Messy, but worked....I say messy because as I looked back at the toilet there was water everywhere.  And if you think about that, every time you go into a western style toilet and see the seat covered in water - what was splashed everywhere?  My splashing and swishing was so exuberant that I got my pants all wet - which is OK since I was wearing a kamise (long shirt), but still - wet bum, wet undies, wet pants in humid weather - ugh.

Now I am having my senses extremely heightened and totally aware of my hand - what it touches egads!  Door knobs, keyboards, faucets, and of course just trying to pull up my own pants and get out of the bathroom stall.  Up till now, I knew why people only eat with their right hand, but now I KNOW why people only eat with their right hand.

OH and to make things even more icky - your like, OK I can do this cuz it will be fine, just wash my hands well after doing my business...and I go out to the sink - no soap!  Yup, most bathrooms don't seem to have soap either.  Now, think back to all the other times Ive had TP and others didn't, and then tried to wash my hands but didn't have soap so used water and then lots of hand sanitizers. Now, think of those people who don't have hand sanitizer!  eew.

After all this excitement, and me being so proud of myself I went back to my office (used hand sanitizer) and went searching for a bit of candy only to find a roll of TP in the bottom of my bag!

Let the Mutilation begin!

So, yup...got me another whole in my head.  Can't seem to keep my brains in, so thought I would just give it one more place to eeek out of. 

Nadia and I decided to go and get mutilated together.  But first I practiced with bindi - sticking it to places instead of forehead. ------->

We went to Pultan Bazaar and found a shop that would pierce us for 200rs (Gasp! you say!) yup.  Well, we then talked with the woman for like 10 minutes trying to find out a couple of things.

1.  If I was going to get another piercing I wanted it to be SUPA small.  No big gaping wholes (my brains need to slowly leak, not gush).

2. How was the piercing done you ask (oh wait, no I asked)...well, some times its by gun method - which I am sure most of you are familiar with.  Or did they do some other method?  this was starting to bring back memories of my own piercing applications...
3.  How about the pain or cleanliness?  the night I pierced Whitneys nose...that wasn't so bad...Or the night we pierced what's his name - Steve's ear...The best was Janine and I in the break shack at the fish hatchery on our 15 minute break from pit tagging silver salmon.  Couldn't think of anything better to do then to give ourselves piercings.  Could I trust they would use hypodermic needles like we did? - HEY! the needles were new!...who cares that they were meant for the fish....Would the earring be clean? - I just took the earring I was wearing out of my ear and shoved it thru the whole in my belly...India couldn't be worse...right? 

Well, the lady kept insisting that there is nothing smaller than the studs she presented to me...which were rather big I thought.  But if I didn't want to do the stud, I could do the ring.  And she did not have a gun at all, and did not know of any store around that did.  In her store, they just rammed the pointy stud thru your flesh. So it was looking like I could just do it on my own again and be fine instead of paying someone.  However, I wasn't sure I wanted to do this one on my own.  Her store wasn't the cleanest either, but that was neither here nor there.

We ended up leaving that store and going to a strip of stores with really fancy jewelry shops.  It took a while to find another store that did piercings, but at last - Bombay Jewelers did the trick and for 100rs (that's like $3).  We went in and my nerves almost went out on me with the realization that this was really gonna happen. There was a bit of confusion with how things would be done - they said they had the gun method, which was the only way Nadia wanted to get her piercing, but then it turned out they only used the gun on ears.  They also said they would put a stud in, but again, this was only with ears.  For noses the only way was to do a ring..It took a bit of convincing but Nadia, who almost chickened out, finally agreed...that is after she grilled me on the pain factor...what pain??

So yeah, I went first. Its only a very select group of people I would ever let put their fingers up my nose, and this guy is now in that group and I don't even know his name!...what an honor!...it was strange.  It was also unexpected but I cannot really tell you why.  Logically he's gonna have to hold onto something!  He took a bit of silver wire and rammed it into my skin and then quickly, though not as deftly as I would have liked, bent it into a loop, pulled it thru the closing and using wire cutters snipped the excess metal off.  It stung like a mother and my right eye teared up. It stung like when you get a shot from the doctors, that initial sting, then if you've ever had someone miss your vein and "dig" for it...thats what it kinda felt like afterwords, he had to continue to twist and shove the ring through.  It all took less than 1 minute once I sat down.  Now, 2 days later it does not hurt that much, only when I absentmindedly touch it.  If its a purposeful touch its fine.  Guess I'm braced for the tweaking sensation that comes along with it.