General Tso's Revenge

I always wanted to be good at a particular type of writing. When I was in college I had this fantasy of being the next young, edgy, insightful, sensitive, and humorous author who could break hearts with a few soul cleaving paragraphs and touch human truths with an artistically wry wit that seemed to playfully ambush my fantasized about troves of loyal readers (mostly swooning females).

Turns out I'm good at telling stories in which people shit their pants.

I know this because every time I post something that lays my soul bare my dad calls and says something like, "Hey, I read your blog the other day. I thought it was well written." When I post a poo story, I hear similar comments, but said comments need to be deciphered among periodic peals of laughter and child-like giggling. Typically, these stories also receive the most Facebook comments, often from people I've not heard from in years, and also get the most hits on the blog. I guess as a writer it's good to have a wheelhouse, I just never thought mine would involve human excrement.

Oh well. Know thyself, right?

In college my sister dated a miserable asshole we'll call Zack, mostly because Zack is his real name and I have absolutely no love loss for the guy. Zack was an odious hipster at a time when Austin was just becoming overwhelmed with odious hipsters. He had that heroin chic look, multiple awful tattoos, and and an artist's affect that was less genuinely artistic and more exhaustingly practiced. He was sort of like Bug from Uncle Buck but minus some weight and plus some disapproval from my family. The disapproval I speak of came not from Zack's appearance, my parents have always been very accepting, sometimes to a fault, of the people my sister and I have chosen to date, but from his complete disregard for my sister's needs and the sense of entitlement he felt he had to date her. Aside: I love my sister dearly and although I am anti death penalty, I know that were anyone to ever do anything terrible to her I would want to murder the bejesus out of him. Clear enough?

Anyhow, Zack and my sister were on the rocks and Zack, thinking he would show some vulnerability and the ability to communicate intimately, decided to share a particularly awful story involving his unfortunately exploding bowels in an effort to win her back. It didn't work, but he unknowingly created a magnificent parable for their relationship.

Being college students and particularly strained in the pocketbook (Sound familiar?), Zack and his buddy decided to do work at an all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet before attending a cookout at another friend's house. Apparently, the General Tso's Chicken was of particularly tasty quality that day and Zack consumed literally all he could eat. He and his friend were politely asked to leave by the restaurant's proprietors who afterwards undoubtedly rethought their business model so close to a university campus.

Stuffed to the gills on General Tso's delicious chicken, Zack and company made their way to the aforementioned cookout and immediately began to chase their affordable and delicious feast with multiple bottles of Shiner Bock. I was shocked later to learn that a rousing game of volleyball was also played at the party (who knew hipsters played volleyball?!), and about an hour or so in, General Tso, Shiner Bock, bumping, setting, and spiking collectively served as the impetus for some low grade intestinal cramping.

As I've said before, as with any good I Shit My Pants story, or Greek tragedy for that matter, impending doom could always have been avoided were it not for the hero's hubris. Zack could have left the party at the onset of his intestinal distress and violently evacuated his bowels in the privacy of his own home and Odysseus could have elected not to tell Polyphemus his real name and avoided being cursed by Poseidon, but arrogance is a powerful intoxicant and shit happens. Literally.

Zack instead elected to down another few beers thinking, foolishly so, that his discomfort would pass and a party marked by his early exit wasn't a party at all. Another hour or so passed and Zack finally felt the steel fisted squeezing of his lower abdomen that marks the beginning of an uncontrollable and immediate expulsion of the contents of one's bowels. It was go time.

Zack sprinted to the only bathroom in the house and found it occupied by another partygoer. Affecting his coolest I'm-just-waiting-calmly-for-my-turn-in-the-restroom-nothing-to-see-here stance, he tried to flex just the right muscles to avoid unleashing hell in the middle of the living room and managed to do just that long enough for the bathroom to become vacant.

Once inside, he hurriedly locked the door, sprang to the toilet, and began to struggle with his belt. At that time in Austin, proper hipster aesthetic necessitated the wearing of a scout belt with a completely unnecessary amount of slack in it. This required the wearer to cinch the belt tightly and prevented the smooth release of the sliding bar in the buckle. In normal situations involving waste elimination this is a minor inconvenience. In waste elimination situations involving General Tso, Shiner Bock, and volleyball, this is what we refer to as a "perfect storm".

Zack managed to get his pants (he was wearing no underwear, another hipster habit) to half mast or, for the more graphically inclined, half moon, before General Tso exacted his revenge. Without getting into too much detail, Zack's pants, legs, shoes, the toilet, and a generous percentage of the floor were covered in a fetid fecal eruption.

After a good few minutes collecting himself, surveying the damage, and trying, as calmly as possible, to convince the multiple partygoers impatiently waiting at the restroom door that he would be out momentarily, Zack hopped in the shower pantsless and washed himself from the waist down. He also had to wash his shoes. Seriously.

Aside: My Brother-in-law, the man lucky enough to eventually marry my sister and one of the best guys I've ever known (he's been a great buddy since 6th grade), is a naval fighter pilot. Pilots have a phrase for people who manage to stay cool and collected in awful situations that made perfect sense to me the first time I heard it because of this story. *Ahem* He's really got his shit in one sock. Zack had it in both shoes, his pants, and all over the floor.

After toweling off, he used the same towel to clean the toilet and the bathroom floor. He then disposed of the irretrievably soiled towel and his socks in the waste basket under the sink. At this point, those waiting for the bathroom had given up and returned to the party. Zack cracked the door and waited for his buddy to pass by and then, in a panicked voice, demanded that his buddy find him pants and quickly. Not knowing why Zack needed pants, his buddy leaned closer to the door and started to ask for clarification but was then assaulted by the caustic stench escaping from the cracked bathroom door. Without further question, he wheeled around and went searching the host's bedroom for some trousers.

Unfortunately for Zack, who stood well over six feet tall and weighed all of 140 pounds soaking wet, the party's host was a short, portly fellow. Any normal person would have cut his losses at this point, cinched the ridiculously fitting pants, and beat a path home. Zack decided to return to the party. Questions like Why did you change pants? Where have you been? Why are you barefoot? and Why are you carrying your shoes? were not enough for Zack to deprive the party of his company. What finally shamed him enough to leave was a question that was asked only after the central air kicked on in the house. I remember when I was a kid hanging out in my room and my mother was cooking chocolate chip cookies in the kitchen. I would have no knowledge of her cookie baking until the air conditioning would turn on and the vents in my room would gently emit the aroma of freshly baked deliciousness. This was the opposite of that. The question in question? What the fuck is that God awful stench?

Zack grabbed his buddy and told him it was time to leave. Now.

Like I said, a perfect parable. Take advantage of a good thing. Create a stinking mess. White wash your fuck up. Pretend nothing happened. Leave. Zack never got his shit in one sock.

When Abstinence Goes Horribly Awry

I'm not a big believer in abstinence. And by "not a big believer," I mean I think it's pretty silly in the grand scheme of things. I'm not saying I advocate copious amounts of promiscuous sex, but not having sex until marriage is a little like allowing someone to teach you skydiving because they stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night. Bad business.

I could go on and on, but I'd probably just end up coming off as a typical guy who wants to sleep with women (I am, but that's beside the point), so I'll just retell a story that encapsulates my distrust of all things abstinence.

*Ahem*

Bob and Julie were like a lot of the people I went to college with. If you've ever read this blog, you know that I went to a conservative Baptist university in The Great State of Texas. The student body ran the gamut from heartless, pagan wild children to first century throwbacks intent on ruining the fun for everyone else. Bob and Julie were neither of these things, but fell more to the first century side than the pagan wood nymph side.

Bob and Julie were, in most ways, a delightful couple really, truly in love with one another. They were on the path to marriage weeks into their relationship and had that glow of young romance and the security that they had found The One in one another. As a newly minted couple wanting a Christ centered relationship, they decided to wait until they were married to have sex. Although Bob had done the deed in a previous relationship (Julie had not), he gladly accepted the no sex stipulation as he was confident Julie was the end all be all of his romantic life.

Fast forward one year.

Bob and Julie had just made it back to their hotel on the night of their wedding and were both anxiously anticipating consummating the marriage. This was the main event. Julie nervously went into the restroom to slip into something more comfortable and prepare herself for what she had built up in her mind as the most earth shattering, consequential moment of her entire adult life. Bob, as the cagey veteran in this equation, knew that his new wife was nervous and he anxiously fumbled around the wedding suite thinking of what he could do to take the anxiety out of the situation for them both. I can't say that I would have formulated the same plan of action that he did, but I give him high marks for thinking outside the box.

What was his plan of action? Bob stripped down to just his socks and laid stark naked on the bed with all the lights on. His big plan to break the tension was, as Julie exited the bathroom, to grab his ankles, roll onto his back, and fart. Like I said, not what I would have done, but who am I to judge? I imagine at this point in the story you're calling bullshit on any of this ever happening. All I can do is assure you that this is entirely true and that although you may think there are some embellishments, I heard this from Bob himself and when you read how this romantic mastermind's plan of action actually plays out you'll ask yourself, "Jesus Christ, why would he make that up?"

Back to the scene. Julie is finally ready. She's purchased classy lingerie for the evening (Think more La Perla and less Frederick's of Hollywood), redone her makeup, brushed her teeth, redone her hair, and whatever else women who have never ever had sex before do to get ready on their wedding night. She affects her most alluring and graceful posture as she sweeps into the wedding suite, rounds the corner, and sees her betrothed rolled onto his back, holding his ankles, and giving her the most unadulterated view of his asshole she's never wanted to see. There's a two beat pause and then a giggling Bob lets rip with a fart he's been holding in since they got to the wedding suite.

Except it wasn't just a fart.

As Bob was explaining later, the rich wedding food, wine, stress of the event, and anxiety surrounding having sex for the first must have all conspired to create what we call in Texas "a rumbly basement."

Bob shit all over the bed.

Julie screamed, burst into tears, ran directly back into the restroom, and locked the door.

Bob lay shocked on the bed wondering what exactly just happened. As he said to me years later when recounting that awful evening, "I saw things going differently in my head." Indeed.

After a hurried attempt at some sort of clean up, Bob donned a hotel bathrobe and spent the rest of the night talking to Julie through the restroom door. Part mortified, part concerned husband, part crisis negotiator, Bob was finally able to convince Julie that his actions had a sincere and caring intent and that he was not in fact a sexual deviant bent on doing God-knows-what to get himself off. Just before dawn, Julie finally left her restroom sanctum, hair down, make up off, lingerie put away for another time. They both went directly to bed and apparently didn't even try having sex with one another until nearly a month later.

Abstinence: Nice idea. Crisis of expectations. Can be messy.

When Almost Just Isn't Good Enough

Since my last poo post I have become even more secure in my assertion that a good poo story transcends all generational, social, and economic differences to bring a smile and belly laugh (sometimes guiltily had) to all who hear it. Everyone can relate because everyone's been there, whether they admit it freely or not.

This particular story involves three of my college buddies, Mike, Big Mike, and Jon. Big Mike was so dubbed to differentiate him from the other Mike and also because he was really, really big. If I had to guess, and resisting the urge to fall prey to Paul Bunyan legend effect, Big Mike was a conservative 6'7 and had to weigh at least 300 lbs. His moniker was well deserved.

One day, being college kids and perpetually underfunded, Mike, Big Mike, and Jon decided to take full advantage of a local Pizza Hut's all you can eat buffet. I initially found it surprising how many of these stories start with "So I was at this all you can eat buffet," but given the combination of over eating and food-exposed-to-the-elements-for-God-knows-how-long-under-a-heat-lamp I guess I shouldn't be surprised that so much intestinal distress can trace its origins back to a hearty buffet. It's like a perfect storm. Moist air from the Gulf meets arctic air from Canada and BOOM, you shit your pants.

So the three protagonists in this story have probably eaten five or six pizzas worth of soggy, lukewarm buffet offerings and are coming to the end of their gorgefest. Side note: why is it that we don't use "luke" as a term to describe other middle of the road states of being? No one says Jay Cutler is a lukegood quarterback or that IKEA offers lots of stylish, lukelycrafted furniture. Think about it. Anyhow, at about the time everyone is feeling really, really full, Big Mike feels the lower intestinal rumblings of something about to go terribly wrong.

In all great poo stories there is a point at which the unfortunately afflicted main character can make a choice to endure a lesser embarrassment in order to avoid what eventually becomes the tragic ending. In my experience, this point usually occurs when said main character elects to do something silly like try to make it home in an effort to avoid having the general public take notice of his own private hell instead of using a more conveniently placed restroom and potentially stinking up the joint. I guess when the shit is going to hit the fan people would much rather be in a familiar, controlled environment. Risk aversion. Such is the case with Big Mike's tale of woe.

The thing you need to know about Big Mike is that he was a generally low key, easy going kind of guy. He typically went with the flow and never really struck me as a type A, fast working, strategic thinker. This is probably why Mike and Jon were so shocked when he sprang into action and started barking orders and laying out the plan of attack.

Big Mike drove a notoriously finicky and difficult to handle jalopy of a car that it often seemed he was the only person capable of divining a way to make run. No doubt knowing another driver would only stall his escape, he gave the following orders. Jon and Mike were to pay for the meal. He was going to get the car and pull it around to the front door. Move fast.

Jon and Mike had just paid and were approaching the front door when Big Mike came tearing around the corner in his jalopy, Sabotage style. Heeding his blaring horn, they ran out of the Pizza Hut and jumped into the car. He didn't even come to a full stop. Not entirely sure what was going on, Mike asked Big Mike what was up. Big Mike replied quickly, and without ceremony, "I'm going to shit my pants. We have to get to my apartment."

The short drive back to Big Mike's place was made in silence as Jon and Mike watched sweat bead on Big Mike's forehead. Big Mike clenched his jaw and gripped the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white. I know Big Mike was on the verge of panic and trying to keep it together, but at this point in the story I actually feel much, much, much more for Jon and Mike. I mean, seriously? They must have been terrified that Big Mike wouldn't make it and they'd be trapped in a hot, old car with bench seats when the seal finally broke.

As they approached Big Mike's apartment, the barked orders began again. Jon, being in the passenger's seat, was responsible for getting the car to a complete stop and putting it in park. Mike was handed Big Mike's apartment key, told to bail out of the back seat, and run like hell up the stairs to get the apartment unlocked. As if the situation couldn't be more clearly dire, Big Mike added at the end, "Move fast, Mike. I'll be right behind you."

They screeched into Big Mike's apartment complex and it was go time. With the car still moving, Big Mike opened the driver's door and hit the ground running. Jon dove across the front seats and slammed the car's brake with his left hand and then threw it in park with his right hand. Simultaneously, Mike jumped out of the back seat and sprinted up the stairs to Big Mike's apartment for all he was worth. Now, in case I haven't made it clear enough already, Big Mike did nothing quickly. His demeanor and size had conspired to create what I can best describe as a gentle giant of a man. However, I like to think that were Mike able to turn around on his manic sprint up the stairs, he would have described Big Mike as John described Death of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse in the The Book of Revelation. "And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him." Indeed.

Somehow, under all of the pressure of knowing Big Mike was moments away from turning himself inside out, Mike was able to unlock the door and step out of the way just as Big Mike threw it open and disappeared into the interior of the apartment. Jon made it up the stairs moments later and the two of them listened awkwardly as Big Mike went through the throes of explosive diarrhea from within the apartment. What they didn't know is that Big Mike had just about made it. Just about. Apparently, the pressure was just too much to contain any longer and as Big Mike dropped his shorts and began to sit down, he exploded. It was described to me as being 50/50 on target v. off target. It was also described to me as "epic," "heinous," "unholy," "incredibly foul," "having happened at a clearly ridiculous velocity," and "liquid black gunga." I have no idea what gunga is, but even though it's an obviously made up word, it may be the best example of onomatopoeia I have ever had the displeasure of hearing.

Here's to you Big Mike! You almost made it.