Shits & Giggles

WARNING: Overshare! Reader Discretion is Advised. This post is extremely graphic and gross and involves real human bodily function–MY real human bodily function–and you may die happy never having read it, especially if you live with me.

You’ve been warned.

For the record, I’m writing this on the day the event happened, but I am not going to post it for, oh at least 7 days. Just to, you know…distance myself from it. Not that it’s going to help any.

So, you know those times when you’re in bed and you have to go to the bathroom but you don’t want to get up because…you’re in bed! And presumably it’s comfy, right? (Yeah, you think you know where this is going already but I don’t think you do).

Cut to the episode where Homer skips Church and he’s in bed all rolled up in his covers and he says “I hope I never have to get up. Uh oh- gotta take a wizz. Think, man, think. Think! Think! Think! Ah, I better get up.”

Well I’m feeling the pressure of having to take a dump. That’s not unusual, I don’t give it too much thought because Chris has just gone into the bathroom so it, quite simply, will just have to wait. In the meantime, I’ll check my email, etc. While my computer is loading up, I eat a banana. The pressure starts to mount.

Pang, n. [Prob. for older prange. Cf. Prong.] A paroxysm of extreme pain or anguish; a sudden and transitory agony; a throe; as, the pangs of death.

I hear Chris start the shower. I’ve been able to hold in shits pretty much indefinitely. It’s starting to hurt but I am confident I can just endure the pain and wait. I go to check my email. When I sit down, it starts to get really uncomfortable, and I start to worry. Ok, Toren, get up and don’t sit down again. That was a bad idea. That’s the secret to weathering this – just don’t sit down again. In fact, I was doing fine before I got up, so I’ll just lie back down in bed. Chris’ showers aren’t usually that long, and when he’s done, he’s out of the bathroom really quickly – like five times as fast as I take.

Now I’m fidgeting about on the bed. Face down, face up, on my side – nope, none of those positions is making me not have to go to the bathroom really really bad. As the pangs become a single, steady pain, it’s finally starting to dawn on me that I might be in legitimate trouble. But what do I do? I’ve never had “it” go this badly before!

If you had told me last night that I would be running around the apartment in my bathrobe trying to find something to shit in this morning I would said – never. No way. Impossible. Well friends, there I was. My first thought was a bowl (actually my first thought was – how much time do I have to consider this?) – one of the many party-type bowls we have in the kitchen shelves. No, that won’t do – we’ll never be able to use it again, I can find something better. I move on. What do dogs shit on? Newspaper – we gotta have some newspaper around here. We do, but it’s covering the kitchen table and it would take way too long to get at it under all the paints etc. We have tons of plastic bags at our disposal – they’re constantly floating around the apartment. I begin to consider this. When I clean the cat litter, I put the nasty business inside about 5-6 layers of the plastic grocery bags we get at Sunshine Market. If I do this, Kodos & I will be part of a very exclusive club. My worry is that the bag will be too thin; that there may be hidden breaches in the thin plastic membrane, but at this point it has come to my attention in a most profound way that the decision has to be made now.

Even as I lay the plastic bag open on the floor, two thoughts come to me: how’s my aim; and what the hell do I wipe with? My mind flashes back to the time we ran out of toilet paper at the Welsh Hall for our gaming convention and I had to run out to a corner store to get some new rolls. We bought two packages – one of which came back home with me after the con. But, are they still in my bedroom with the rest of the gaming stuff, or did I put them in the bathroom? Wonder of wonders – there they are.

Let me tell you something: all the triumphs of poetry and philosophy, all the auspices of art and architectural wonders that elevate your spirit and let you transcend the mundane are fucking out the window when you’re squatting naked in your bedroom, shitting in a plastic bag.

Relief…of a sort.

I don’t think it was any bigger than a regular dump, but when it’s sitting in a bag on your bedroom floor everything seems magnified by the abject horror of it all, and that includes the smell. That dogs can and do eat their own shit is, I decide, a miracle. A horrible, horrible miracle. I am so used to being able to handily forget about my waste, complacent with the idea that I will never have to confront my non-metaphorical demons, that I am legitimately shocked. Take our precious plumbing away, and the world goes topsy turvy.

It seems to take aeons (in reality it’s a split second) for the colossal turd to burn its image in its wrongful place in my memory…. Ah yes, here’s a spot – right between the memory of chipping a tooth on my microphone at a Thickets gig and the memory of Char’s father’s dogs pestering a massive, belligerent june bug caught in a tumbleweed of their own fur. It’s a tight fit.

Once that’s done, I am able to turn to the unpleasant business of disposal. I go back to the kitchen for a platoon of plastic bags. I take it one step at a time. The first step is the hardest: Close the grocery bag and lift it off the floor. Worst fears allayed, I move to step two: lower it into another bag and close. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Each time I allow my fingers to close more tightly around the lip of the bag, ultimately providing the semblance of an airtight seal.

By this time, Chris has finished his shower and has left the bathroom. The garbage in the kitchen is due to be taken out, so I capitalize on that. The poobag’s warmth – the hot hot heat of my former insides now trapped in plastic – seeps through the layers of bag as I plunge the abomination deep into the garbage mothership. I pull the mother out of the can and find other garbage to shove in with – and more importantly on top of – the other refuse, providing layers of garbage strata to forever cloak my secret shame. Then all that was left was to secure the whole thing with some damn-tight knots.

While I was bagging the food baby, I hoped: once I’ve removed the shit from the room, will the smell have gone with it? Of course not. It’s like a fart to the power of ten. No, twenty. There was nothing for it but to open wide the window, strike a match, and wait it out.

The ordeal was over. The ruthless absurdity of it all could settle, and I laughed at it because…well what choice did I have? Time to get on with my day. I was confident enough that my little package was nestled deep in less blatantly offensive waste, insulated from the possibility of exposure, to allow Chris to take the garbage out when he so kindly offered. After all, what possible unsuspicious reason could I give to refuse his request?