This is listed under People, Biography because this is, apparently, the state of my existence.
My first experience with a neti pot was absolutely fantastic, and by that I mean unbelievably horrible on the most profound levels of personal degradation. I had been battling a cold that turned into a sinus infection, and it got to the point that I had had so little sleep that the crumbling ruin I had become was starting to detach from the pedestal of reality.
I know this because at 3AM one morning I couldn’t take it anymore and looked up some Youtube videos on how to use a neti pot. Keep in mind I was only vaguely aware of what a neti pot was, but all I needed to know to sell it was that I dump a bunch of water in one side of my nose and watch with glee as fifteen different kinds of diseased mucus sluice out the other, and I magically become well again. Besides—it seemed like the kind of thing that might help in one of two ways: it would clean out my sinuses to some degree or I would drown. I was perfectly happy with either.
If you have never searched Youtube for advice on how to use a neti pot, then you have been carrying around a vastly inflated estimation of the value of the human animal. I’m not kidding. Take the most religious person on the planet, stick them on Youtube and leave them there looking at the shit people record themselves doing with pride, and ten minutes later it’s “Fuck all religion, humans are monkeys, there’s no meaning to any this, and I really wish I hadn’t missed out on half the football games on Sunday my whole life.”
Even Jesus would have ended up living well into his fifties.
Of course, I would expect there to be some informational videos, and even some that show people using the thing. It’s not that complicated: you take a little teapot full of water, tilt your head to one side, and when you pour it in the top nostril if comes out the other one. Apparently it takes out toxins and shit, and at the very least you’re going to get a satisfying blast out of your nose into a tissue when it’s all over. This is all fine, and if I can watch a video of a robot cutting a guy’s prostate out of his asshole when my dad was getting ready for his cancer surgery, I can deal with someone pouring a gallon of liquid into their head.
There are, like, two purely informational, benign neti pot videos online. The rest? Holy shit.
I would never in my wildest, most cynical, post-serial killer attack loss of faith in humanity-fueled imagination have dreamed that so many people love to video tape themselves—often with their significant others watching—dump a bunch of water in their nose and then get off on how much snot and grime comes out. It’s unbelievable. It’s like getting excited about how big a piece of scab you peeled off of yourself and posting a picture on Instagram. And what’s even worse is how many commenters get off watching it and celebrate the close-up of the mess in the sink. It’s almost competitive to see who can get the most filth out, apparently. What's most amazing of all, is that every single one of them looks like they are in absolute agony from the act of intentionally taking in an unending snort of sea water. Really; it's that bad.
But people are even grosser than that, if it’s believable. There are positively herds of human cud-chewers doing the same thing with enemas. No, I’m terribly sorry to have to inform you, that is not an autocorrect of an attempt to write “animals”. As criminal as it would be to neti pot a llama, this is far, far more psychopathic. That sentence is exactly correct, and if indeed my computer had even an electron of affection for me from bringing it home from the Apple Store Humane Society, it would simply disallow me from typing it and keep deleting it over and over. And yes, these people do all the same fucked up competitive nonsense the neti pot people do. It’s horrific.
But back to the neti pot. There are two thoughts that should be going through your head right now. First, why the fuck did you then go do it to yourself, and second, why the fuck did you watch those videos?
I was delirious. I told you that. I couldn’t think straight.
So forty minutes later, I’m searching the kitchen cabinets for something with enough of a spout to do the job, and it takes about a minute to realize that there is no piece of crockery so made as to fit in your nostril and sauce your sinuses. Really, it does make a lot of sense there’s no overlap there, as most mucus consumption happens at a very young age and kids have eight perfectly serviceable tools attached to their hands along with two thumbs if they are really dedicated to the sport.
There is, however, a substitute that is found less and less frequently in the home kitchen: the turkey baster. As soon as I saw it, firing water into my addled, exhausted brain was a foregone conclusion, the fact that it probably had rotting chicken juice residue inside notwithstanding. I went to the sink, got a cup of water, and went into the bathroom. After filling up the baster with water, I tilted my head to the side, shoved it in, and then glanced in the mirror to make sure I was doing it right. Or whatever that means when you substitute a poultry bulb for a neti pot.
That’s when I saw it.
Staring back at me in the mirror was an individual who bore a dilapidated, broken resemblance to an acquaintance of mine. His hair was completely fucked up and greasy from tossing back and forth on the couch unable to pass out for a week. Clad in nothing but a jauntily arranged pair of boxers, he had the tool de jure clasped entirely too purposefully in a hand that had shoved its point at least an inch into his nose. Worse of all, and by far and away, was the expression on his face.
As if talking myself into this predicament was not enough of an indicator of my lowly mammalian origin—not to speak of the body of unimpeachable evidence provided by the existence of certain internet communities— the completely unnecessary and absurd appendix of a facial expression we adopt when something is inserted into our nose is the dead giveaway. I have thought about this many, many times, and I still have no idea why we do it. We squint out eyes, open our mouths wide…and stick our fucking tongues out like we just finished performing the Haka before an All Blacks rugby match. Combine that with the thinly veiled look of fear on my face that could best be summed up by watching the scene in Cast Away when Tom Hanks is preparing to chip out an abscessed molar by putting an ice skate in his mouth and smacking it with a rock, and, well, you get the idea
All I could think of was “If this kills me, I don’t want to be found dead nearly naked next to a toilet with a baster stuck in my nose like a face full of dildo.” Sadly, and quoting boxing announcer Jim Lampley when he discussed Andrew Golota’s impending disqualification for hitting Riddick Bowe with several amazingly accurate combinations to the testicles—three of which were uppercuts, by the way— “You had to face the reality that this was probably going to happen.”
Sure enough.
For anyone who decides to give this a go, I feel I can offer a few thoughts that might be of use:
1. Don’t.
2. If you do, don’t squeeze the living fuck out of the bulb like you’re crushing a beer can on your forehead while already three sheets to the wind and flying the fucking spinnaker of unadulterated idiocy.
3. You have to—and this is VITAL—heat up the fucking goddamned water first.
The blast of freezing cold tap water splattering into the back of my 98.6 degree cranial innards was so painful that my eyesight literally went completely black. This was followed by the simultaneous ricocheting of the baster off the sink and hitting me in the right testicle—presumably resulting in an immediate disqualification and likely disciplinary action from the Nevada State Athletic Commission—and me screaming the entire contents of my head all down my bare chest, soaking my underwear with freezing cold water and a not insignificant amount of snot ranging in color from dark green to blood red. I tried to sit down on the toilet to catch my bearings, but this proved impossible given my current state of blindness. One butt cheek missed entirely, and as I tumbled onto the floor the other cheek drug the lid and seat off onto me.
Worst of all, rather than the divine ruler of the universe taking his last opportunity to prove his existence by granting me a final courtesy of groping my way out of the bathroom first, my eyesight returned so I could take in the full glory of the bruised, fluid encrusted, dirty toilet seat-covered state of my existence that I occasionally have to address when it gurgles up from the oubliette in which my worst memories are imprisoned in my subconscious.
That’s when the dog started licking me. In retrospect, I think I would rather have left the world as a short, back-page obituary pondering how such a strange death had occurred than continue living knowing I am that thing.