You all call it Shameful Shitting. I call it performance anxiety. I cannot poop in a public toilet, nor can I drop a log in a Port-a-Potty. It's my own commode or no commode. I can crap in hotels, but only as long as no one is around. I have no problem pissing in public -- I could piss on the lady behind the counter at Wendy's without so much as a second thought. But dropping my skivvies to back out a deuce -- if it's not my own can, I can't get even a grain of salt out my dumper.
Maybe it goes back to when I was a child. Maybe my mother scolded me when I was on the crapper, or maybe I overflowed the toilet in the public bathroom and was harangued by a janitor. Damned if I know. All I am sure of is that I have a problem and I see no end in sight. I've mastered the art of clench and breath. It's almost a game to me, to see how long I can go without crapping my pants. I've lost total bowel control only a handful of times, so I think I've done pretty damn well.
My story takes place in high school, way back in the nineties. It used to be my ritual to drink a cup of coffee in the morning before heading out to school. It would wake me up as well as fill the belly, killing two birds with one stone. The problem, as I learned at the tender age of fifteen: coffee makes me shit. That fact made for many scary rides home, clenched and cramped over the steering wheel during my short lunch break.
One winter day I rose at 4:30 and headed out to an early morning wrestling tournament. I grabbed a nice big cup of coffee at the local convenience store for the long ride ahead. Mistake number one. I sat down on the bus and slipped into java euphoria. Thirty minutes later, I finished my coffee and decided to chase it with a nice big mouthful of cherry Skoal. Mistake number two. As I sat back with my big mouthful of dip, spitting into my empty coffee cup, the bus hit what I can only imagine was a crater. The bus caught air, and so did my dip; and upon impact, down into my belly it went. Mistake number three.
After about twenty minutes, the nausea set in. I curled myself up into a ball, trying to avoid impending doom. About thirty minutes later, we arrived at the school where the tourney was being held. After weighing in, I sat my crippled self down in the corner of the gym. And then my belly started gurgling as the coffee and Skoal began making sweet love in my stomach.
Like two salsa dancers, the coffee and the Skoal were gyrating and shaking their way through my intestine. I felt them kick every inch of my lower intestine, until they made it down to the colon. And then they rested. Being the young dumbass that I was, I figured I could walk it off. I got up and walked around a bit, and I did feel a little better. Perhaps the demons within had retreated to their cave in my colon. An ill-conceived smile crept to my face -- I thought I had beaten the mighty grogan.
About ten minutes later, my colon began to convulse and contract like a baby bird waiting for its mother to drop a tasty worm in its mouth. The pain was intense, like someone shot me in the guts with a shotgun. I needed a toilet and I needed one NOW.
I scurried my crippled ass to the locker room. I found an empty stall and sat down to let the demons out. I yanked off my sweats as fast I could and threw my ass down on the pot. And then... nothing. A few ripe farts, but no turd. Nothing. I sat for a minute or two, debating whether to wait or to leave. This mighty grogan was playing a stinky game of cat and mouse.
I rose up, defeated, and then it hit me. A wave of molten lava spewed forth from my ass with the strength of Old Faithful. I blasted shit everywhere -- on the seat, the floor, on the tank, even some on the stall walls. It was horrific. It looked like someone slaughtered a cow. A total of five tsunami blasts came forth from my dirt hole that day, each one more horrendous then the last. After each, a thunderous fart would follow, shaking the stall and echoing throughout the locker room. Other athletes began to shout, "Goddam! How 'bout a courtesy flush?" But I paid them no mind. I was expelling liquefied organs through my shit hole as they sat and laughed.
After the fifth wave, my poor bung began to dry heave, expelling whatever gaseous matter was left within. I sat for a few minutes, sweating, straining, thinking. Was it over? Was there another wave to come? Were there reinforcements hiding behind enemy lines, ready to make their entrance (or exit, if you will) once I pulled up my drawers?
I rose from the debauched throne and surveyed the damage. Mud everywhere -- like someone had dropped an M80 in a bag of mulch. It was a murder scene. Thank God there was one of those industrial-size toilet paper rolls in there. My poor fart box, though, convulsed every time I brought a piece of toilet paper near, as if it was going to try and consume it.
The good thing about school toilets is their strength -- those things could swallow a turkey. I used about half the roll trying to cleanse my swollen sphincter. I hit the button with my shoe (since it was covered with my release), and made my hasty exist. What I left behind will probably cost me five hundred years in purgatory. I'm sorry, Mr. Janitor, or whoever had to clean up that mess!
I went out to the gym and laid down in a ball, totally exhausted. Still, I ended up taking third overall in the tourney. That was the first time I have ever used a public shitter -- and with God's grace, will be the last.