Felix Clay
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One of the most common criticisms lobbed at Cracked columns is the generality of the subject matter and/or why I never publish nude photos. I refuse to answer the latter again. Suffice it to say, the surgery went poorly. But as to the former, if I write an article about the 10 worst hookers you'll hump in Branson, someone will explain in the comments how they've never had a bad hooker experience in Branson, or conversely, how the hookers they hump have way fewer legs and teeth and antibodies than the ones I mentioned, and why am I writing articles about my own life and pretending that it applies to everyone?
First, every Cracked article applies to everyone except you when you think it doesn't, meaning you're the weirdo, not us. It's entirely possible you were born in an egg. It happens to platypuses, what makes you think you're any better? Before you answer, remember, you're the weirdo. Second, some things we just mean in a general sense. Like not everyone hates Donald Trump, just good people who add value to society. But we say that everyone hates him because it's easier.
The article you are about to read does not include generalities. This is all literal. I mean that. Literally. This is a definitive list of the four things neither you nor any other human wants another person to see. And if you feel inspired to say some or all don't apply to you, take heed! You'll be outing yourself, platyperson.
My mattress terrifies me. It is the most horrible thing on Earth. That sounds hyperbolic, and you might think, "Felix, has your mattress murdered innocents? Does it cause hunger and flooding? Did it write that horribly racist column you posted at the end of January?" No, of course not. It's a mattress.
My bare mattress looks like a Wild West crime scene, all sepia toned and dreadful. I've never murdered anyone on it, nor do I routinely douse it with herbal teas or the delicious sap of the tree we call maple. Now, I don't want to get into the myriad specifics of precisely what happened on my mattress -- I'm a gentleman, after all -- and what a man does with his own furnishings is his own business, but I will say that, as a swinging bachelor with almost a college education and a really keen haircut, I've entertained more than one lady friend in my day. Or at least entertained some thoughts whilst in a horizontal position, if you follow me.
I'm saying there's lovings on my mattress.
Now the thing is, my lonely perversions aside, I have helped about a dozen friends move in my day as well. Every time I did so, I had that awkward moment when it was time to clear out the bedroom and we came upon the mattress (so to speak) that still had the fitted sheet on it, of course, to hide the terrible shame that was immediately present on the opposite side once we took it out of the room, because every time you really badly mess up your mattress, you flip it over.
I suspect there are two kinds of people in the world who, right now, have very clean mattresses. There are ultra pervs who saw this coming, likely from a previous hellscape of a mattress, and now use a protective sheet to keep the mattress pristine, and the insane. Not all the insane, of course; some of them probably have very filthy mattresses, but others are like my aunt, who may not even sleep on her mattress for fear of it ever actually getting dirty. Did you know that she has three sets of silverware that are never used? And there's a chair in her living room that is encased in plastic, and even if it weren't, even if it were free, it's carved from such cruel, Edwardian-era wood and brass knobbly bits that if you were to ever dare sit on it you would immediately be stricken lame with scolipoliosis.
For the rest of us, through no real fault of our own, but rather the biological processes of being human and the poor choices made by mattress manufacturers when they choose the color and material for these things, our mattresses are abhorrent. They're like a large, floppy window into our dark souls. Gross.
It's a given that no one wants anyone to see their search history, and har har, if I die, make sure it's deleted before my parents come over, and whatever else has been written on T-shirts about it. But when's the last time you stopped to appreciate just how dreadful your search history is? And maybe not even as a result of direct searches for porn. Everyone looks at porn on the Internet; if you judge someone for looking at porn online, it just means you're probably a bad person and maybe no one likes your genitals.
You ever read something and not really understand one part so you Google it and find out that what you were just reading has something to do with ritualistic torture in the 17th century? And you think "Oh, weird" and close the window and move on, and then two days later maybe you're looking at Reddit and you click a link and it opens a pic of a dude who had to have his wang surgically removed from a steel pipe and then you think, "This isn't pleasant at all, I shall away from this terrible place!" Yeah, bang, right there. Someone gets on your computer and you're the guy who looks up ritual torture and pipe fuckers, just like that. Suddenly you're not invited to the family reunion because no one thinks you should be near kids.
The Internet is constantly out to sabotage you, totally by accident. It's not alive, it has no intention or motivation, it's just organized in such a way that wherever you turn, you're going to run face first into something awful. It's a carnival fun house of depravity with stuff jumping out from every corner, and it's not your fault if you get hit by a bus and have to be laid up in the hospital with no way to stop your mom, who's trying to be helpful, from turning on your computer and seeing that your friends from school have emailed you at least 30 separate movie clips of lady boys peeing off of balconies. It's not you! But no one cares. Because that combined with the obviously disgusting state of your mattress indicates that you're a deviant of the highest order.
In 1999, the movie Office Space came out, and since then, everyone has been pretty familiar with the term "O-face." Certainly your mattress is familiar. But while the O-face is the expression you make during an intimate moment of vulnerability/when you have a few minutes free in a 7-Eleven bathroom, I would opine that there is another intimate, oft-unseen face we all have, and unlike the O-face, we want to share this with no other humans at all. Yes, the toilet face.
I am no statistician. I'm not a researcher, I have no lab, I don't conduct studies for a major university. I am basing this entry on nothing more than a strong hunch. My hunch is that, maybe often, maybe only once in your entire life, you had a difficult time going to the bathroom. And as you attempted to exorcise that uncooperative turd with the power of will, the power of Christ, the power of deep breathing and panic, your face contorted into a mask of deeply contemplative terror and anguish. Like those unflattering images of Beyonce's performance at the Super Bowl, so too did you screw up your facial muscles and bear down to give it your all. And rather than a quick Destiny's Child reunion, you gave unto your tiny room a few muttered curse words and maybe a groan like a great bear settling in for the night. And the expression on your face can best be described as "what you look like while trying to shit."
A lot of people take pride in how well they retain their composure. Actors and models are paid to look beautiful in unusual circumstances because we like the idea of a James Bond, who looks cool and handsome even while fighting for his life. But of all the things you'll ever do that can put you out of your element, that can remove you from a situation where you control how others perceive you, you're not likely to find one less glamorous than dropping a deuce. Jennifer Lawrence on the throne is still Jennifer Lawrence on the throne -- the threshold has been crossed, and the toilet face is just there with no mystique or allure to protect it any longer. Your toilet face is your soul's mattress. It is what it is, there's no more layers.
Your lazy place is a metaphysical thing. It's not a real place so much as a state of being, a place in which you can be found sometimes, and you never, ever want to let someone fully into your lazy place. If you're in a loving, trusting relationship, you'll happily open the window to your lazy place and let your partner look in. Also if you're a sociopath you'll let your roommate right on in through the front door, but normal people never want to fully immerse another in this zone, because you can never go back. Pandora couldn't shove all that shit back in the box, and neither can you.
What happens in your lazy place? It's where you lift your cheek up and off the couch because you want to fart and you know that if you don't give it some room, it will probably sting. It's where you breathe in sharply and notice that you have something in your nose, but rather than grab a Kleenex, which is all the way across the room, you just dig in to get the invader out. It's where you drop scrambled eggs on your bare chest and just pick them up and eat them with your fingers. That's right, ladies: I'm including you in this and picturing it as well. Mmm, egg cleavage.
Your lazy place is where you walk around in your underwear that has frayed elastic, and maybe sometimes you scratch an itch somewhere south of the border, and because no one else is around, you smell your finger afterward.
Basically your lazy place is the physical manifestation of your apathy. How far do you not care? If you drop some salami on the floor, will you just brush it off and eat it? If there's no toilet paper, will you hop into the shower instead, or maybe just use your underwear and then change?
I'm not suggesting that we all do all of these things; that would be preposterous. For instance, as a highly paid Internet comedy writer, I hired a guy to scratch and sniff for me. His name is Gill and he talks a lot about his ex-wife. You may not engage in all of these lazy-place activities, but I stake my complete lack of reputation on the belief that there's absolutely something, some weird gross thing you've done in private, that you never wanted another person to know about.
