When I went to put Juniper in her car seat this morning, I realized it was soaking wet. I ran my finger across the surface of the material and brought it up to my nose (a gesture I don't even think twice about since becoming a father) , and gave it a big sniff. Piss. It was definitely piss. But the thing was, there was piss everywhere, not just in the part where she would have peed herself, and besides, she hadn't been in the car seat since 3:00 p.m. the previous day and she certainly wasn't wet when when we took her out of the car yesterday.

Then it hit me: that 87-year old Chinese bagpipe player that Wood was hanging out with into the wee hours of last night took a piss in my daughter's carseat! Why did he do that? I questioned Wood: Did you see him whip it out? Did you hear any trickling water in the back seat? Wood doubted that he actually took a piss in the car seat, and I said, girl, you've been to China. You know those motherfuckers will piss in almost anything. Meanwhile I'm holding Junebug up by her armpits, not willing to lay her in the wet pissstinking seat.

Wait, Wood says, he did have something with all his weird boxes and instrument cases and bagpipes, he had something all wrapped up in a plastic bag, and he might have set that down in the carseat. I nodded, then swiped my finger through the wet fabric again and had another sniff. Maybe it wasn't piss. It did kind of smell like one of those Chinese herbal pharmacies you walk past on Stockton or Clement streets, the kind with the jars of dried abalones, mushrooms, deer antlers, pearls, dried lizards, dried sea horses, powdered dragon bones, shark fins, tigers' teeth etc. There is that smell you get when you walk past one of those places where you are like: CHINA, smells like CHINA. It also kind of smelled like that smell when you order Chinese food from the kind of restaurant that doesn't cater to a western crowd, the kind that always has 70 Chinese families eating at round tables and waiters in stained tuxedos, the smell when you have your take out boxes and they're sitting next to you in the car and you're kind of like, is that right? Or, it could have just smelled like spilled tea. The bottom line is I need to get my olfactory sensitivity to catch up to imagination.

That will probably happen when Juniper starts eating solid food. I hear there are smells down there that a human can barely imagine.

All in all, I was jealous that I didn't get to go to the bar last night and speak pidgin Chinese with the 87-year old bagpipe player who made everyone uncomfortable. I told Wood the next time she watches Juniper, I get to go to a bar where the devilettes have hired a Mormon lesbian riding a tapir to play the jew's harp all night long between sets, and I will get to drive her home and see what the tapir leaves in the car sear.