Monday, June 13, 2011

Shit. Shat. Shut.

I have mentioned before that I have shat into a brown paper bag, and not just for entertainment purposes. More than once.

I've a fairly cavalier attitude towards shit, which is to say realistic. As I've mentioned before, we live in a world of shit. This is the shit world. Take a ride in a convertible sometime, holding a petri dish against the wind. Incubate. Behold all the little shit-eating inhabitants floating around for you to smack into while joyriding in that car. Why, there's aerosol particles of shit everywhere.

Oh, it used to be a much, much shittier world. Go back a mere two billion years, back before any multicellular (as typically defined) life existed, back before there was much in the way of oxygen content in our atmosphere, and it was quite a shitty world. Without the bleaching action of oxygen, the air smelled like a big giant fart. The water of the oceans, without oxygen to precipitate the iron out, was a shitty brown color. Shit brown sky too, what with all the CO2 and methane. In fact, everything looked shit brown. The term fecal coliform bacteria didn't apply to the little guys back then, as there was nothing that could be defined as feces, let alone anything like a colon for the feces to pass through. But there they were, ready and waiting to colonize the colon, once such a thing was invented.

And they had some major shit storms back then.

The really hard thing about riding out a Force 12 shit storm is the aftermath. Oh, you think the worst is when you are in the middle of it, but believe me, that wind driven shit gets into everything. Every nook, every cranny, every orifice you got is liberally coated in liquid shit. It don't matter how tightly you clench your eyes or your mouth, it gets in there. Why it can take weeks for the pores of your skin to be completely free of the shit. Surprisingly, the one organ you'd think wouldn't mind being inhabited by shit comes through shit-free. Your rectum comes through the ordeal with no non-native inhabitants invading its space.

All hail the anal aperture. I guess. Seems to be in charge at least. In the strictest business sense.

So about that brown paper bag... well, this is a cautionary tale, mind you, for the edification of those unborn generations yet to be.

We (my eldest brother and I) had after a very late start of the beginning of the college year, had rented a house that no one else in town would rent.

We ended up calling it "The Depresso House".

It was to be condemned the following year, and that was a year too late. It was a rickety house, worn down to the stubs. The roof leaked. The floor was canted. Snow would drift under the doors and windows in the winter. We ended up stuffing newspapers in every crack we found. For heat, there was a single space heater in the kitchen. The plumbing worked well enough, except for the toilet.

Ah, the toilet.  The toilet would back up if you looked at it wrong. The toilet was a random element thrown into our lives, but, basically, after several overflow mishaps, we gave up using the toilet. For most of the fall semester and into winter, we were able to use the restroom of the Taco Tico next door to us. But eventually the manager caught wise, and forbad us from the establishment.

Long story short, we sought alternate depositories throughout campus and town, but circumstances would catch you with an urgent request at the domicile, and the preferred heuristic was to shit into a paper bag. Said bag would then be heaved into the dumpster of the landlord, conveniently next door.

Well, coming home one particularly brutally cold evening, I was struck with an inconvenience. Faced with the prospect of a sub zero squat in that squalid and useless bathroom, I decided to avail myself in front of the space heater. Yes, I took a shit in the kitchen. I shat where I ate. Ah, the shame. But it was the only warm place to shit.

Just as I had completed my ritual evacuation, my eldest brother arrived home with his date for the evening...

They witnessed the spectacle of me,  crying "Don't come in! Wait! Wait!" as I frantically frog-walked myself out of the room, bag tucked up against my bum.

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