“I Was Down $3,000 And Felt A Fart Coming On.” YOUR SUPER BOWL POOPOROO!

Back in the mid-aughts I was living in NYC. In order to (barely) make rent, I got a job at a ritzy wine store in lower Manhattan. It was actually a pretty good gig: as far as retail goes it’s nice to be able to be a snobbish dick to customers. This enhances the experience for bougie New Yorkers who expect a certain level of mistreatment in a wine store, even from a twenty-something dipshit like myself.

So one day I make the decision to join my colleagues in the shipping department for some good ‘ole fashioned NY street meat for lunch. Like all the men in my family, I have a constant, Jedi-like awareness of my bowels (rumblings, gurgling, moments of inexplicable calm, general barometric pressure, etc.). I know something is not quite right. I am about to head downstairs to detonate Alderaan when a well dressed, icy heiress from the Upper East Side appears.

“Do you have Veuve Cliquot?”

Something you must understand, reader, is that every wine store in New York has cases of this champagne. It’s the ubiquitous orange-yellow box of bourgeois privilege passed around at every insufferable gathering of the upper-middle class since time immemorial. This woman probably passed a display of it three times already. In my natural state, I would have luxuriated in needling this person on their choice of sparkling wine for minutes. Nay, hours. But I was about to shit my pants.

So instead, I placed two trembling fingers to my pallid lips and mouthed the words “Veuve Cliquot,” as if in silent prayer. “I’m afraid I will have to search downstairs, madam, to see if we have any left.” I bowed (I actually fucking bowed), to complete my excuse for disappearing below to the bathrooms but also primarily because the effort of keeping my asshole closed exerted enough tension on my abdomen to pull me down there.

So about 20 years ago, I attended meetings in another city with a colleague who I knew well-enough, but we weren’t close friends or anything. After a long day, near the end of the flight home, I started to feel like there’s a dump some time in my future, but nothing imminent. My colleague and I decided to share a cab to save our perfidious employer a few bucks. Soon after it pulls out of the airport I realize the situation is rather more urgent than originally thought, so I start implementing (admittedly contradictory) mitigation strategies: trying to think about anything else, clenching my butt-cheeks as tight as possible, calculating whether I can hold out for another 15 minutes.As it turns out, I could not hold out for another 15 minutes. “What the fuck am I going to do?” I asked myself with equal measures of panic and terror. While I think we can all agree that on balance this is not a story about good luck, I have to acknowledge three moments of good luck that happened in quick succession and prevented this from being so very much worse.1. There was a red light and we stopped beside a doughnut shop. This is Canada, so there’s a doughnut shop every ten feet, but it was the break I needed. I seized the moment and announced to cabbie and colleague that I needed to get out to make a pit stop. They agreed to wait for me, I got out and waddled into the dining establishment, desperately clenching to prevent untold embarrassment. This didn’t entirely succeed - as I walked by the “order here” section, incognito, the first runny expulsions started and I could feel it sliding down my right leg (I should probably mention here that I was wearing a reasonably expensive suit).2. The washroom door was unlocked - inability to get into the water closest had been my biggest worry, for if the door were locked, I would have had to ask for a key while shit was plopping onto my shoe. That would have been...really bad. But I entered smoothly, with the grace of a jungle cat that is about to defecate all over everything.3. It was a one-person washroom. I hadn’t thought about this possibility, but thanks to Jesus it meant I wouldn’t have to go through this in a stall with other people hearing/seeing/calling management and/or the police. So again, this wasn’t good. But it could have been so much worse. I locked the door and turned to the matter at hand.Unfortunately, that matter was fecal and it would wait no longer. As I walked from the door to the toilet (maybe eight feet) while trying to unbuckle my belt and lower my pants, the floodgates opened. There was shit everywhere before I made it to the head - clothes, floor, me. Then the toilet was full and had to be flushed repeatedly to accommodate the astonishing volume.I have no idea how long I was in there - maybe ten minutes - but it felt like a lifetime. The washroom looked like it had been hit by a poop tornado. To this day I feel bad about my next decision, but at the same time still don’t see what else I could have done. Reporting the incident to management and throwing myself upon the mercy of the bearclaw court didn’t feel viable. So I pulled up my pants, wiped my shoes, washed my hands, and walked out of there, leaving this hellscape for the next innocent patron to see and some poor minimum wage staffer to clean. Were I too meet that employee today I would give them $500. I never heard a word about it so I guess they didn’t have CCTV.

Now this doesn’t mean I was out of the woods. Once more I steeled myself, and got back into the cab, which was miraculously still there. I quietly apologized for the delay, my colleague said “we’ve all been there” (very generous, but also almost certainly untrue) and we drove off. I was petrified, because you will recall there was still stool all over me and my clothes, and I assumed one could, you know, smell it. But nobody said anything.Now I should mention I was headed to my then-girlfriend’s apartment. She wasn’t there, but I had a key, so I went in, took off the offending clothes, and had the most badly needed shower of my life. She came home with the guano-infested suit on the floor and a lot of questions. As I write this, I realize it is nothing short of a miracle she is now my wife.

I cannot tell you whether I was shitting more or farting more. 

My friend honeymooned in Mexico in the early 90's. While staying at an all-inclusive resort he acted around food and drink in a way that would make Caligula blush. He ate and drank everything he could lay his hands on. And although being explicitly warned not to drink tap water he did. 

Flash forward to midway through his trip. He is spending more and more time shitting his brains out. At first he thinks it's the decadent lifestyle he has purchased himself, but he soon comes to realize it's a steady stream of brown acid that is not only constantly flowing, but also turning his asshole into raw flesh. Perhaps the drinking out of the tap of his bathroom faucet is catching up to him. He begs off the pool one morning while his wife heads down for some sun. He drags himself into the shower but only after two more trips to the throne. He's starting to feel better and he honestly thinks he's empty. Feeling what he thinks is the first dry fart he's had in days coming on and not yet dressed from his shower he does what any male Labrador retriever with a hot piss bursting his bladder would do. He lifts his leg.

What follows was a hot lava flow with enough eruption force to lay a racing stripe on a nearby wall as well as coat his entire undercarriage in magma. He drags himself back into the shower. To his horror the ass spit will not easily come up from his hotel room carpeting (yes, he lifted his leg outside the bathroom area). He quickly asks the maid in the hallway for extra towels and does his best to clean up. He ditches the towels in a dumpster at the base of the stairs outside his room. The stench remains in his room but, in the first bit of luck he's had this trip, he convinces his wife he's just farting a lot from the food/drink and he lets her walk barefoot through the zone of destruction without a second thought. He was afraid to eat, drink, and especially fart the rest of the week. To this day, he can't drink tap water in America much less anywhere else.

Before I can stand up, I recognize a warm feeling on my hands and lap, and a dripping sound. The baby has shit out of all three openings of her diaper.

I was diagnosed with Ulcerative Colitis (UC) in 2014 and beyond some multi-day trips to the hospital during the first year and change, I had things relatively under control. That is until this April, when I dropped 30 pounds in three weeks due to excessive pooping. You think you know raw? Try having to wipe every 30-45 minutes for a few weeks. At my worst, it was less than every 30 minutes. Even here in Florida we do not deem that a good time, and we revel in poor choices. 

The cure for this was to remove my colon, create a stoma for poop to come out, and have me wear a changeable ileostomy bag. Having a bag has not been a burden for the most part. Yes it's weird to push your poop out with your hands but you get the hang of it rather quickly. One thing you have to be careful of is leakage though. Recently I woke up around 3 a.m. to find I had liquid poop on me. I groggily removed my bag and ambled into the shower. 

One thing to know about having a stoma - You don't control when something comes out. It just does, as there are no muscles to contract. This was no more apparent than when I finished washing and poop immediately ran down my leg. After washing that area off, I started toweling off, when it happened again. This time after washing, I patted myself slower and softer. Of course, poop still dribbled out. It was at this time I yelled "Relax asshole!" at my stoma. I ended up waking my wife up from laughing so hard at this; I can only imagine I looked like the Joker but with a much dumber origin story.

This story has a relatively happy ending: I had my stoma reversed the day before Thanksgiving. I even brought some instant mash potatoes with me to make sure I got to enjoy this gluttonous, American holiday on my terms. Any other suggestions for foods to run through my system after surgery are of course welcomed.

One Friday night when I was 17 or so, I was driving through the burbs on my way to do god knows what, when the entire Indian buffet I'd eaten a few hours earlier dropped into the chamber like a ton of bricks. It was immediately a desperate situation. It was late-ish at night (maybe 10:30pm?) and I knew the nearest gas station was closed. The next-closest was a few miles away, and while I probablycould have made it there without shitting myself, I wasn't positive it was still open, and I would have been in major trouble if I made it there and it wasn't.

So I decided to improvise. My buddy "Drew" (NOTE: Not me!) lived two minutes away just off the road I was on, so I quickly detoured down there. This was in 1999 or 2000 and I didn't have a cell phone, so I couldn't warn him. I knocked on the door and his mom answered, confused about why I was there and why I was so sweaty. I greeted her very briefly and told her point-blank I had to use their bathroom like right now, and bolted into their house and down to the basement. The unsuspecting Drew was down there watching TV, and I barely acknowledged him on my way to the bathroom, which I proceeded to destroy with a violent diarrhea that I am certain he could hear from where he sat. Afterward I apologized and thanked him for his toilet, told him I had to go and I'd call him tomorrow. He barely even spoke, just stared at me with a look of shock, anger, and confusion all at once. I was probably in the house for less than five minutes.

The next morning Drew called me, and as soon as I picked up he barked "come over you asshole". He lived kind of on the other side of the city from me, like a 20 minute drive, so I said I could come by maybe in a couple hours or something, but he was like "no, fuck you, come over right now and see what you've done".

So I went over there to face the music. Drew scolded me like a bad dog, marched me directly to the bathroom, lifted the toilet seat and pointed: "That is what you've done". What I saw there was something I'd never seen before, and have never seen since: I had somehow landed a huge glob of poop under the seat in the tiny gap between the seat and the rim, on the flat part of the porcelain underneath/parallel to the seat, without getting so much as a drop on the underside of the seat itself.

We remained good friends for years (and are still friends now, although not really close) but he never let me live this incident down. You will be happy to know that Drew did in fact get his revenge, which I completely deserved.

I head back down to the vending area, thinking there’s no way someone shit by the ice machine. I was wrong. Horrifically wrong! This pile of shit could’ve filled up a beach ball. 

This story is approximately 20 years old. I have only told it to one person before and unless the janitor in the story is still alive, I am the only living person that knows it.

When I was college, I was frequently tasked with running errands for my grandparents, as they were in the late 80s and no longer driving. They were also incontinent and on multiple occasions, I had to bring one of them to their caretakers to change during the middle of a family event. In addition, my grandfather, who was a great man, was suffering from Alzheimer's-induced dementia. I'd usually have to explain to him that I was his grandson several times when I'd see him. 

One time, my grandparents were flying back from the Midwest after visiting some family and I was tasked with picking them up at the airport and bringing them back to their assisted care home. This was before 9/11, so I went and got them at the gate and we made our way to the baggage claim to get their luggage. We were standing quietly near the baggage carousel as we awaiting their planes bags to come through. All of the sudden, I started to get a whiff of that smell. I was hoping it was just a fart coming from them, but expecting one of them had soiled themselves and I was in for a pungent ride home with a subtly cracked window. The smell did not dissipate so I figured the fart option was not what happened.

My grandmother shuffled away towards the baggage claim but the smell remained. I looked down at where my grandmother stood between myself and my grandfather and unbelievably, there was a literal piece of shit on the ground. To this day, I have no idea how she managed to poop herself and have it roll down her legs and fall outside of her pants. I was deciding what to do when I noticed my grandfather look down at it. His eyes got wide and I have no doubt that he had the most clarity he had in the last years of his life as he recognized what it was and beelined away from it. Still not knowing what to do, I also then moved a bit away. I still felt shame when an airport janitor came upon it and can remember the look of disgust in his eyes as his swept it away.

The ride home still smelled like shit.

So I’m working security in the casino. It’s a Wednesday, around 8:00pm, so it’s slow and I’m just making the rounds. We have two pits, and there’s a big walkway in between them. As I’m making my way through the pits, I notice a lady on blackjack 6, our high limit table, with about $15000 in purple $500 chips. I give her a friendly hello and as I walk by my nose is assaulted by a horrible smell. I guess I made a face because the pit boss goes, “Hey Steve, over here.”

“What’s up?”

“I know you smelled that lady at BJ 6 as you walked by, I saw your face. Look, she’s spending money and I hate to do it, but I gotta kick her off, I’m pretty sure she shit her pants.”

“Really? Her? She’s playing $500 hands. So what you want me to take care of it?”

“Yeah. It’s been about a half an hour, so please. The dealers are dying.”

I walk on over to her and get out an “Excuse me ma’am” when she yells out “I’M GONNA GO CASH OUT MY CHIPS!” I tell her okay, but the pit boss asked me to escort you back to your room. We head over to the cage, she cashes out $18,000, and we start for the hotel. I’m walking behind her and notice she has a brown spot forming. She made the mistake of wearing light gray leggings so it’s pretty obvious. We get to the elevators, get in and head to the 6^th floor, the suite floor. This whole time “Bonnie” seems like she’s in a trance or on something, but as we start up the elevator she comes to her senses, her demeanor changes and we have this exchange.

“Look, we both know I shit my pants right?”

“As long as you know that you shit your pants, then yeah, we both know.”

“Jesus Christ, this is embarrassing, I’m going to want to change but I left my bag in the car. Can I go get it?”

“Would you like a robe? I hate to inform you but you have a brown spot forming.”

“Oh God! Yes please!”

We briefly get off on the 6^th floor, I go down to the housekeeping closet and grab a robe and we head down to her car, a brand new Porsche Cayenne, chatting about the Super Bowl (it was during this dead zone week) and the Utah Jazz.

As we’re heading back in, I say, “Bonnie, you don’t seem weird or crazy, so I gotta ask, what the fuck happened?”

She tells me, “Well, I started with $8000 and I was down $3000 and I felt a fart coming on. Except it wasn’t a fart it was shit, I knew immediately. I panicked is what happened and froze in place but what also happened is that I started getting hot. So, yeah I rode that hot streak until you came over to get me I mean, I’ve never been on a streak like that and I play a lot of blackjack. The thought in my head was, get to $20000 and go.”

I tell her “almost made it” and we get to her room. She asks me about tipping and I inform her that I just can’t be in view of surveillance to accept tips, but that I’d be happy to escort her into her room. I put her suitcase on the luggage rack and she hands me $500! She tells me, “Well, I’m gonna get cleaned up and probably go play at another casino. You’ve been absolutely fantastic to a person who shit their pants. I’m gonna call the GM and tell him what a great guy you are. Hopefully you get something.”

I did. The casino was nice enough to give me $100 in restaurant gift certificates, the steakhouse is great so cool. And Bonnie still comes in, which is also cool.

My classmate and I were two of the top-ranked debaters in our state my senior year of high school, which is nowhere near as cool as your school’s college basketball team getting a superscript number beside its name on TV. It meant that a cafeteria full of plucky adolescents were scared to argue with us about nuclear policy on Friday and Saturday nights. It also meant that our classmates called us “master debaters” incessantly. I digress.

On my way to the last debate tournament of the Fall semester, I was in a car accident. My dad picked me up and took me to the tournament anyway. NEVER QUIT. By the last round of the night, my back was in such excruciating pain that my dad took me to the ER after. Turns out I had torn a few muscles.

The doctor prescribed me muscle relaxers. I popped two when I woke up for the next day of competition. Drew, did you know that your sphincter is a muscle? I didn’t.

I was leaning on a podium, trying and failing to stand normally, giving a speech about labor rights, when my gut started gurgling the sound a baby’s belly makes right before it expels a runny shit milkshake. It was the last speech of the round—I just needed to make it two more minutes.

I did not. No control whatsoever of my butt muscles. My intestines released all the poop in my body, and all through my suit pants, like a teller sending money back to your car at a drive-thru bank. I kept speaking. NEVER QUIT.

When I finished my speech and went to sit down, I left a trail of brown drizzle oozing from my slacks all the way across the room. The whole classroom smelled like kitten diarrhea. A forester wouldn’t have any problem tracking me.

It’s customary in high school debate to shake the opponents’ and judges’ hands after the round. I offered. Everyone in the room, disgusted, said no.

I won the round and the tournament.