A Shitty Situation

Every toddler and ex-alcoholic has a great story about shitting their pants, and I would like to consider mine the latter, though my girlfriend would probably argue it’s more of the former…

I was but a 21 year-old “fresh off the boat” pseudo-alcoholic party monster, with no sense of limitations or concepts of boundaries, ready for another wild night-about-town! And another wild night it turned out to be.

I was in a nasty dive-bar downtown, on “the strip” (your town may have one, most of them do), the kind of place that everyone pretends to love because the drinks are poured heavy-handed and the bartender knows your name, unless your name is like, Francis, or some shit. It’s a place I’ve been to many times, but never a place I would expect the unexpected to happen (though I’ve heard that’s usually when they tend to happen). I ran into a friendly face, one I hadn’t seen in many drunken moons, a face from my yesteryears that required some catching up with. In-between cigarette smoke dancing its way out of the open bar doors, which was then, commonplace, to have smoke filling the bar air, making it stale but somehow comforting to the renegade party-goer, we were having nice conversations. The “how have you been’s” and the “what have you been up to’s”, slightly shouted over contemporary garbage playing over the outdated bar speakers, we were well on our way to friendship rediscovery. But then it happened…

That moment, that any “red or black” gambler would tell you is a 50/50 gamble, where you should probably assess your assets and see if it’s worth the extra spin, took place. The renegade gamblers in my subconscious screamed “LET IT RIDE!”, then span the wheel, and added “VEGAS, BABY!” –until tragedy struck.

Now, to be clear, I thought this was going to a bar fart. A bar fart is a fart that’s okay to release in a crowded room, whether it smells or not, because of all the dank cigarette smoke and sweating bodies in the room, no one can really tell where it came from –if they even noticed the scent at all. However, this is not what happened. It was not a bar fart. It was in fact, an inconvenient ‘shit yourself’ moment. The main difference between a ‘shit yourself’ moment and a bar fart is the introduction of shit into the equation.

Now, I want to be clear here as well, when I say “I had shit my pants”, I don’t mean I sharted a little bit, but I also don’t want you to think I was a saggy-diapered-baby, with a giant lump’d turd in my trousers, but moreso a Goldie Locks amount, that is to say: the perfect amount. This shit was JUUUUST RIGHT… The perfect amount that cannot be dismissed as “I’ll take care of this little shart when I get home” amount of poo, nor the “HOLY FUCK, I need to run out of the room and abandon all this progress with an old pal” amount… So, I did what any “normal” person in this situation would do: I continued to have casual conversation with this stranger (albeit familiar one from my youth) as if nothing had ever happened.

If this were a comedian friend of mine, or a super-close one, I would have probably done the more appropriate thing and humorously tell them I gambled and lost and shat in my pants, and we both would have had a good laugh, followed by me immediately taking care of the “situation” at hand… and, more realistically (at this point) ass and legs… Instead I stood there, awkwardly taking in suspiciously large olfactory inhales and exhales of oxygen to ensure it has not yet been tainted by what awaits below, nodding every now and then, to put on the façade that I am still listening attentively to his, now meaningless story.

The next chance I get, the first lull in conversation, which took at least 5 minutes, but no longer than what felt like 2 hours, I say “I have to take a piss, be right back” (I did not have to piss, and I did not come back).

It’s safe to say that at this point (and many points before it) I am extremely intoxicated. I make my way to the men’s room, quickly, but ever-so-carefully, as to not force any unwanted spills to occur, and finally arrive at, what I hoped was, my final destination.

I get to the men’s room of this heinous bar’s even more heinous bathroom, where there is a short line to use the ‘facilities’. This is where the story gets weird.

I immediately notice that this particular men’s room, has only two options:

1. A urinal, riddled with stickers of bands and advertisements

2. A toilet, riddled with the same stickers –AND NO STALL to separate you from the rest of the awkward gawkers and general public of peepee’rs and poopoo’rs…

So instead of immediately leaving and finding another restroom at a nearby bar, of which there are plenty, old booze-brain comes into play: “Bryan, if you leave now, they will ALL know that you shit your pants, you’ve gotta keep up the guise, as a normal guy, who has to take a piss at a bar”. SO… I patiently wait in line, and walk up to the urinal (not because it was my first choice, but because it was the first available outlet for human waste). I unzip my pants, upon which time the smell of shit SLAPS me in the mouth (yes, I could basically taste it) and force myself to squeeze out a few drops so that no one knows that I did in fact poop my pants.

After this horrible experience, I walk straight to the front exit of the bar and go to the bar next door (literally connected to the bar I just gave a commanding performance in) and head straight to the mens room. A STALL! There is a God! …and he does not think very highly of me at this particular moment. I ditch my underoo’s immediately, using them as a wiping agent, as toilet paper simply won’t cut it on this one, and attempt to bury said underoo’s underneath a mountain of toilet paper, because for some reason, at this point, I still care. Someone will find these, and someone will know what I did.

I am now going commando, back into the previous bar, where my former friend has left, and I am sitting there, alone, sad, and defeated… The ride home was one with the windows down.