Many of you have heard over the years of some of Mark's "quirky lists." The most popular usually include the "Top 10 most vile things on the face of the earth" and "The intimacy scale."
Yesterday, the latter was put to the test.
Previously, the list was a simple 1 to 5, consisting of items intended to measure just how close you can get to a person. They may not make perfect sense at first, but think about it. Things happen in ways that make you feel closer to them, and there are certainly things you would do in front of some people that you would never let others witness. Here's some sample items from the list (in a somewhat more-safe-for-work version):
#1: Kissing, cuddling during a movie, sharing music
#2: Cooking together, attending a work/friend party as a couple
#3: Meeting the family, spending the night
#4: Peeing in the same room, watching the routine (brushing teeth, etc.)
#5: Pooping with the other person in the room
As I said above, this all changed yesterday morning. Any visit to Delhi comes with its certain share of "illness," as I've also said before, and yesterday morning was no different. It started with me hunched over the toilet at 4 in the morning retching and losing the rice and dahl from paneer night in the mess. Thank god Physics was there to hold back my hair and supply me with water (which promptly came back up).
You would think this could constitute a number six, but no. I mean, people puke at parties with their friends all the time. A #6 has to constitute something completely out there. Well, the vomitting was followed by a few hours of river-out-the-ass diarreah, which brought Physics and I to level five much more quickly than I usually like to get there.
Number six came the following morning when Physics, dressed in his underwear, decided that it would be a good idea to finally scrub the walls of his bathroom. It was obviously something that hadn't been done since the end of British rule. Well, I was still getting hit by the bug (convinced at this point that I had contracted cholera and I was going to collapse at any moment), and he was busy scrubbing away at the walls. So here it is, the official addition of number six to the intimacy scale:
#6: Pooping and vomitting at the same time while someone is in the same room scrubbing 10 years of shit off the walls directly in front of you, and talking about your plans for the day.
It's one of those moments that you can't laugh about at the time because it's a little too fucked up, but you know it will stick with you for the rest of your life and be a story you tell your kids.
And coming soon, the final "10 most vile!"
Flown by mariposa at 05:52 PM on April 14, 2005
