Two Gross Stories

A couple of customers, a man and a woman, strangers to each other if not to me, stood by the desk, the three of us talking. In the course of the story two extremely gross stories emerged.

For some reason we’d gotten onto the subject of how extremely infectious cat bites and scratches are. The woman said that a year or so ago, she’d been plagued by frequent and painful mouth sores of a mysterious origin. One day at work they were so bad and so frankly offensive to her coworkers that she decided to just go home early. There she discovered her cat sitting on the bathroom counter chewing on her toothbrush.

The man, a lawyer, related in his turn that recently he’d been sitting at his secretary’s desk, using her phone, absentmindedly chewing, as is his wont, on a pencil that she’d left lying there. As he talked he gradually became aware of an unpleasant taste. Looking down at the pencil eraser he noticed it was covered with ear wax.