SHITHEAD
By Sharon Fogarty


Once upon a time there was a woman who had a toilet for a head. I know, it sounds completely impossible. Where was her brain? Her mouth? But I swear it’s true. She grew up in New York City, where only if you sit down for a meal are you allowed to use a public restroom. For this reason she got dumped on constantly. It sounds unpleasant, but Pottie would see someone struggling to hold it in and she would simply lift her lid. Unlike non-human, floor toilets, Pottie did not have the ability to flush. Any normal toilet could flush without thinking. But Pottie unfortunately had to digest the already digested excrements of her dumper and relive each moment and memory, until the experience passed.


When Pottie was fifteen, her parents moved her to the suburbs with hopes that she might have a gentler existence. But still, Pottie did not have the nicest life. Not having lips, she had never been kissed, was mercilessly mocked at school where everyone called her Shithead and only went to the prom with someone who had lost a bet, who was so drunk by the end of the evening that he vomited into her before saying goodnight.

Pottie’s parents rarely spoke to her. They felt guilty that she was a toilet head, and had no answers for her. Pottie couldn’t enjoy food and when a therapist recommended she go on an anti-depressant, it basically went right through her without any effect.

One day, Pottie found a wooded path in the park near her house. She herself had to pee which seems ironic but true. She squatted down in the woods near a tree and after relieving herself, thanked the tree and the earth for taking her pee from her. And then she heard a voice.

“Aren’t you going to need some paper?”
“Thank you,” said Pottie. “I’ve already pulled up my pants.”
She turned to see who spoke, then realized the question had not been posed to her, but to someone standing nearby buying marijuana. She watched the dealer and the buyer finish the deal, smelling the weed from a Zip-lock bag, rolling a joint, licking the paper, lighting it, smoking it. The buyer and the dealer did a funny handshake that had five parts to it, regular, backwards, up, down then a funny little wave of the fingers in front of the mouth. Pottie smiled and enjoyed the smell of the burning weed.

The buyer strolled away and the dealer suddenly turned in her direction. She pretended not to see him, and apparently he did not see her as he proceeded to take a leak. Pottie spied his jet black spiky hair, his dirty hands, his skinny arms tapestried with tattoos. He was beautiful as a dream. She prayed for courage and could not stop her legs from walking to him.

“Hi” she said.
“Jesus” said the dealer trying to hide his busy penis.
“It’s alright. I’m used to it,” said Pottie.
“Yeah, I guess you must be, huh?” said the dealer.
“Yeah,” said Pottie. “Thanks for going on the ground.”
Its bladder empty, the dealer’s penis swam nervously inside its jeans and would have buttoned the fly were it more digited.
“Oh, I would never pee in you,” said the dealer. “That would be like, I don’t know, sitting on top of a wheelchair guy’s lap, like on the subway, because you needed a seat, you know?”
“Yeah,” said Pottie. That’s cool, she thought. He’s been on a subway.
“Or like,” the dealer felt the need to continue, “using a blind person’s cane to knock a roll of toilet paper off the top shelf of a grocery shelf, you know what I mean?” Wow. He’s been shopping.
“I guess,” said Pottie. “I’m Pottie.”
“I know. I’ve seen you at school. I’m Johnnie.”
“Huh, that’s funny,” chuckled Pottie.
“I guess that means we’re related,” joked Johnnie and this made Pottie laugh.
“You wanna get high?” said Johnnie
“Um, sure. I mean, I could try.” Pottie worried a bit because she had never been high before and of course there was that no lips thing.

Johnnie lit another joint and took a deep inhale. He rubbed his dirty finger on the lip of Pottie’s lid and her hips went soft and moist.
“Ready?” Johnnie said with a held breath. Pottie nodded her bowl.
Johnnie lifted her lid which made her breasts feel like they were sighing. Johnnie blew the musky smoke into her bowl and she trembled with pleasure. Johnnie continued, hit after hit, and Pottie noticed moments of peculiar awareness, like how there were no straight lines in nature. And how she would someday like to paint portraits of trees.

Pottie noticed Johnnie’s very calloused hand was holding hers and she wondered how long that had been the case because she had no memory of the initiation. It was like holding hands with a coconut. Johnnie was telling a story but Pottie could only pretend to listen to what sounded like wind chimes. They sat beneath a sticky pine tree with no noise but the breeze.
“I always thought I needed a mouth to get high,” said Pottie.
“Have you ever shot up?” he asked.
“God no,” said Pottie, “I’d be terrified of that.”
“Its a lot cleaner and safer,” he said, fingering the small bones of her wrist. Pottie lay on her back, her lid open next to Johnnie’s hips, knees bent.

“How do you see?” he asked. “I mean, how can you see me?”
“I imagine,” said Pottie. “Everybody does. They think they see with their eyes, but mostly they imagine. I know you have beautiful black hair. Like a mane. I see your tattoos.”
“Cool,” he said. “Do you want a shot of B12?”
“Sure.”
Johnnie prepared a vitamin shot, filling a syringe with a brownish fluid.
“Best in the butt,” he said.
Pottie pulled down her jeans and Johnnie’s rough hand went right to her silky butt.

“You’re so pretty,” said Johnnie.
“Oh, God,” said Pottie. “You’re talking to a toilet.”
“You’re not just a toilet,” said Johnnie.

Johnnie moved his hand from Pottie’s bottom towards her vagina. It felt too good to protest. The sun was setting. A robin watched.

Pottie rocked her spine over his calloused finger. She thought that if she got rich and died, she would leave all her money to that finger.

“See?” said, Johnnie. You’re definitely a girl.”

A sudden jab in her bottom made her yelp.

“Ouch!”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “It was the B12.”
“I forgot about the shot.”
“With some methamphetamine.”
“What? Is that like acid? Or speed?”
“Yeah.”

Pottie rubbed her now welted bottom. She wondered if Johnnie would like to come to her house to drink beer. Her father always kept beer in the house. Her mother drank wine. When she was little, she thought boys drank beer and girls drank wine, like people call dogs ‘he’ and cats ‘she.’ Pottie wanted to show her drawings to Johnnie.

She drew each day and wrote a caption under each. One was of a used teabag on the table with the caption:

“Are you done with me?”

Pottie thought this would make Johnnie laugh. She turned to tell him, but he wasn’t there. Not to her right, or left. Not through the trees. He must have said goodbye and she didn’t hear him. He was nice. He would say goodbye.

Maybe she imagined him.

It was dark but Pottie could see the lights from her neighborhood. She stumbled into a hole that swallowed her entire leg. Why would anyone dig a hole like that? For a telephone pole?


She tried to steer towards the back of her complex to avoid contact with anyone, but took a wrong turn and ended up on Main Street. She tilted her seat down and hoped not to be noticed, as if.

Her arms folded beneath her mini breasts as she neared the movie theatre. Three rednecks stumbled to ask “Can I jiggle yer handle?” “What’s under that lid?” and the third unzipped his pants in confusion muttering “So many holes...” The last was feeling his cock while smothering her breast with his hand. Pottie kept walking when two more joined from the pub. The violence was immediate. One threw a cigarette down her lid, the other pissed on her feet and then her would be face. She flailed useless arms and kicked with the effect of a shadow. She hit the urine soaked floor of the van with the sound of a bleating calf hitting a butcher’s table. They raped her vagina, then her anus, sped some fifty yards then threw her into a field of poison ivy.

Moments passed. Without clothes Pottie peered for her neighborhood. No lights. Wood was burning in a fireplace somewhere. She followed the scent. Cars whizzed by honking like drunken geese.

High, she herself to breathe. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale.

“Honey, is that you?” said her mother from the living room.
“Yes.” Pottie said as normally as possible. She looked down and saw congealed blood on her thighs which made her oddly hungry. She peeled some blood from her legs like a fruit roll-up and tasted one salty piece.
“You want to come watch this?” said her dad, also from the living room. “Its ice skating.”
“Down in a minute,” Pottie said, or thought it.

It took much concentration to climb the stairs to the bathroom. In Floor toilet, she was able to vomit some piss and shit that the men emptied into her. She sat on Floor toilet and relieved herself of mostly blood, then flushed with grateful thoughts of Floor Toilet. She ran the tub, but shut it twice because she thought she heard voices. The water was too hot, but she got in. She grabbed Comet and coated her bowl and scrubbed herself with Floor toilet’s brush. She dunked herself. Once for each rape, ten times. She smothered her skin with tar shampoo, the only soap which did not cause her to rash or pit. She stood beneath a cool shower and at moments was able to not think of the evening’s catastrophe.

She was too conscious from the drug. The bathroom tiles gossiped about her misfortune and rejoiced to be well fitted into the floor. The curtains shrugged that they could not do more. The toilet paper called, “…for your tears.” Floor toilet spoke.
“Use me.”
“What?” she said.
“Use me.”
Pottie quickly she lifted her lid and tried to puke up more of the evening. Heaves. Nothing. A sudden pain in scapula, trapezii, her would-be neck and chin. Owwww, she thought through her bowl, an ache that should have killed her. Am I exploding? Shouldn’t I be passing out? Welcome death.

“Use me” said Floor Toilet.
On her knees to heave, plumbing sense guided her to the inevitable. Crack! Went her bowl against Floor toilet’s. Crack…again… Crack! And again… The pain of each porcelain impact was soothing in comparison to the pressure in her head. Floor toilet’s bowl was stronger than hers. A final KRACKQUE!!! Pottie swung her bowl like an axe into Floor toilet’s.

A split, sternum to neck, to chin, to where lower teeth would be felt. A fissure from bowl to neck. Chunks of Pottie’s bowl parts fell to the floor in a powdery dust.

“Everything will be alright,” thought Pottie.

“Everything will be alright,” echoed Floor toilet. Sink nodded and Curtains struggled to hide everything in vain.

She did not know how long she had been passed out. Her fingers went to her neck space and she felt a small dome. She bore down, or up? She squeezed out a head. Her new mouth gasped and bit its tongue. She felt teeth, a nose with nostrils, eyes, eyelashes, an ear, another ear.

In the mirror, a crooked face, eyes on slant. Nose broken. Chin with a slight cleft but left of center. Two ears. One lobed. Eyes, of seaweed and unmatched milk-spots.

Pottie gathered the clay pieces and threw them into the hamper which was never used.

“I better tell Mom.” Pottie staggered to her room to put on jeans and a shirt. It was almost morning. Her parents were not downstairs. They had probably gone to sleep hours ago.

Kitty mewed.

“Hi Marmalade,” said Pottie. “Do you want a snack?”
Marmalade recognized Pottie right away. Same girl, different head.
Pottie gave Marmalade some chews and opened the refrigerator. Chunks of water melon and cheese. Pottie ate everything with her new teeth and was able to taste, really taste and not just imagine. She continued to blink at every item in the fridge, recognizing its shape, then shoving it quickly into her mouth.

The kitchen table, Pottie counted 30 teeth. Her mother walked in.

“Patricia, you’re up early.”
“Mom? Don’t you have anything to say?”
“I said, you’re up early. Did you have breakfast?”
“Yes. Do you not notice anything different?”
“What.”
“My head.”
“Oh, that’s poison ivy. Were you hugging Marmalade? Don’t do that! Covered with germs, those cats. Marmalade, get off the table! Not for pussycats!”
“My toilet head fell off.” said Pottie.
“You’re what?”
“My head. It’s not a toilet.”
“Honey, are you awake? Are you talking in your sleep? Let me make you a snack.”

Pottie teetered between truth and reality.

“Is Dad up?” she said.

”Hiya pumpkin” her father said as he entered the kitchen. “Stupid linoleum keeps ripping up by this stove.”
“Dad?” Pottie said.
“Yes, pumpkin?”
“Do I look different?”
“What’s that, poison ivy? You gotta remember to wash your hands. It’s these damn neighbors that just let that shit grow and don’t use weed killer. How hard is it to pick up a bottle of weed killer at the hardware store? I’ll have coffee. You know today, I found out whose cat has been peeing in our back yard.”
“Daddy? I’m not a toilet head.”
“I didn’t say you were, pumpkin, but I’m sensitive to it. Damn smell. You guys don’t notice that? I got this spray that’s supposed to keep rabbits from your garden. Hoping it keeps that little pisser out. Get him fixed for God’s sake.”

“Mom? Dad?” Pottie said. “Some men raped me on the way home last night. I think we should call the cops.”

Her mother’s coffee mug smashed to the floor. Her father wore an expression she had never seen before, his mouth a rectangular shape.

“Are you sure?” said her father as her mother dialed the phone.
“Yes,” her mother said, “Can you send some police over here immediately? My daughter has been raped.”
“I’m sure,” said Pottie, answering her father. There were five of them. They raped me in a van and threw me into poison ivy.”

Pottie’s father’s eyes teared up and he rose to stumble a few steps. He bumped into his wife who was hanging up the phone and yelled, “I’ll fix it later!” Then he picked up the phone and called the police again.


“Hello police?” said her father.
“I just called them,” said her mother.
“Yes,” her father continued, “My wife just called and how the hell long are they going to take? I mean we pay taxes for this and we can’t even get a cop on the streets or to look out for young girls in this neighborhood. Yes, this is Herman, Herman Seto. Yeah, well fuck you and your fucking time system which doesn’t work and all of us are victims out here while you guys have the guns and can keep you family safe. Fuck you sir. Oh, lady, whatever. You sound like a guy! Yeah. Yeah, you do.

There was a ring at the door.

“Hold on!” yelled her father as he hung up the phone. He went to the door and two very tall police men came it. Pottie was scared and wondered if she should have just kept the whole thing quiet.

“Are you Patricia?” said one cop. He had white skin and freckles, blue eyes and reddish hair.
“Yes,” said Pottie.
“Do you want to tell us what happened?” said the other cop who oddly also had white skin, freckles, blue eyes and reddish hair. The only difference as far as she could tell between them was that the second cop had a patch of stubble growing on his chin.

“Three men from outside the theatre and two more from the pub…” Pottie began.
“Can you tell us what you were wearing?”
“My school clothes. My green pants and my red shirt.”

Their questions were clever and Pottie wondered if she might want to be a cop some day. She didn’t cry and remembered many details, the sounds of their voices, their smell, their names, Rick, Richard, Roy… maybe Chad, maybe Chuck.

They asked Pottie to come downtown with them and go to a clinic where a doctor would examine her. Pottie dreaded further invasion but knew this was for the best.

In their Chevy, Pottie and her parents tried to follow the cops but soon lost track of them. Her father cursed about how quickly the lights change. They made it to the precinct where almost an hour passed before a woman came out wearing a white coat, carrying a clipboard.

“Patricia?” said the woman.
“Yes,” said Pottie. It occurred to her that she had never been Patricia before today. She had always been Pottie. Why was she suddenly Patricia?

Pottie had to undress and put her feet in stirrups as the doctor examined her.

“I don’t see any abrasions, any sign of forced entry. Let me check something.”

The doctor’s fingers reached far inside of Pottie and she felt an aching pinch.

“Ow! Ow!” said Pottie.

“Sorry” said the doctor. “Patricia, you can put your clothes on and wait for me outside.”

Pottie returned to the waiting room with her parents and after some moments the doctor called all three of them into her office.

“Mr. and Mrs. Seto,” said the doctor. Your daughter is still a virgin.”
“What?” said Pottie.

“She was not raped,” continued the doctor.

“Yes, I was!” protested Pottie.

“She has never had sex,” said the doctor. “I’ve made a call to a therapist who I recommend. I’m not sure why she might have created this episode, but she’s fine.”

“But I remember,” said Pottie. “It wasn’t a dream. It happened. I recalled their faces, their names, the van, the poison ivy. I had to walk home with no clothes and then my toilet head broke off.”

“I’m so very sorry for the trouble,” her mother said to the doctor.

Her father’s jaw protruded so far forward that his face resembled a half moon. He headed for the car without waiting for Pottie or her mother to catch up. The ride home was silent until they turned down the street to their house.

“I’ll call the therapist and set up an appointment,” said her mother.

Her father turned off the car and sat there while Pottie and her mother went into the house. Her mother poured herself a glass of wine and Pottie went upstairs to the bathroom where she had lost her toilet head. She looked into the hamper, nothing. No porcelain pieces. She asked Floor Toilet what happened.

“Floor toilet? I’ve had a toilet for a head for as long as I can remember. I remember being hurt by those men, but now I’m a virgin. Can you tell me what is going on?”

Floor toilet was silent. No word from Curtains, Sink or Tiles. Like soldiers, all seemed intently focused on their roles.

The next day Pottie was welcomed by a therapist into a group of young adults and older teens. Each participant expressed some problems they were having in general so that Pottie could get to know them.

“Well,” said the therapist. “Patricia, why don’t you tell us a little but about why you’re here.”

“I had a toilet for a head,” Pottie began. “And now, since yesterday, I have a head just like everyone else.”

The group nodded in understanding.

“I was raped two days ago.”

The group nodded again.

“I’m so sorry,” said a young girl in the group. The others shook their heads with compassionate empathy.

Pottie continued, “But the doctor said I made it up, or dreamt it.”

“Group?” said the therapist. “Would anyone care to reflect on what Patricia is sharing?”

“I had a radio for a stomach,” began a boy whose stomach did in fact look rather squarish. “Everywhere I went, people were trying to change my stations, turn me on or shut me off. Finally I had an appendix operation and when the doctors weren’t looking the radio just leapt out of me into another patient who was being operated on in the next bed. I have to watch my diet now. I can’t eat anything that has a nervous system.

“I wasn’t able to poop until last year,” said a young woman. Pottie felt immediate sympathy and almost offered her head to the girl, though this was no longer an option. When I was growing up, I had a dish for an ass. I couldn’t let anything go. Everything just stayed inside and I got really sick. I ran in front of a car and the dish broke. I recovered and I have two hips…”

Pottie noticed the girl’s hips were quite ostensibly muscular.

Each of the group members expressed similar oddities to Pottie’s. One woman insisted she was raised by plants. A young man said his tongue was a snake. Another woman said that her husband was half television.

The group session ended and all of the patients went their separate ways, promising to come back next Thursday.

~THE END ~