The Worst Bowel Movement of My Life

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Photo by Aakash Dhage on Unsplash

I had, not long ago, a bit of an adventure. I was at the AMC Lincoln Square 13, a sizable movie theater on Manhattan’s Upper West Side which is frequently the site of press screenings. I had just watched The Woman in the Yard, a mostly-enjoyable B-picture in which someone’s feelings of grief and guilt manifest into a malevolent creature. At some point between taking the escalator down to the lobby and walking into the street, the contents of my innards had manifested, quite quickly, it seemed, into solid waste yearning to get out.

There was nothing I wanted to do less than spin around and go back into the theater to use their latrine. While the AMC Lincoln Square 13 is maintains a greater level of cleanliness compared to the AMC Empire 25 off Times Square—a place one could only describe as “a shithole”—I still felt like I had this.

More so than any other route, I find myself regularly traveling via the downtown 1 train to Times Square to the Queensbound N or W train home. So long as it isn’t past 11pm, it’s super fast. Naturally, this was a time it wasn’t.

Here’s something younger readers should know. As you age, you will discover that certain aspects of your body chemistry will modify. The most common phenomenon being the “gee, why does my back ache first thing in the morning, all I was doing was sleeping?” For me, I’ve found, that if I need to move my bowels but do not go and do it swiftly, I will begin to feel nauseous. Indeed, I once pushed this too hard, when I was at the Cooper-Hewitt Design Museum and did not want to drop anchor there, then got horribly sick and ended up ralphing into a backpack in the back of a Lyft while crossing the Queensboro Bridge. (Maybe some of you who know me IRL have been wondering what happened to that fun, turquoise-colored backpack I used to carry around with the Keel-billed toucan on it. Now you know.)

The first leg of my subway journey was fine, but there was an out-of-the-ordinary delay at Times Square. I really needed to relieve myself, plus I felt quite ill. There was also—and I say this with no maliciousness toward the unfortunate fellow, merely reporting the facts—a gentleman on the rather crowded platform who had not bathed in what appeared to be a month. People tried to create a clearance ring around him, but this was difficult to achieve given the backup of travelers. I tell you I never smelled anything so horrible, and I actually began to gag involuntarily. My stomach felt ten times worse.

So I did what I had to do. I took out my phone and kvetched to my wife.

She did her best to encourage me to hang in there. Eventually the subway arrived. I chose a car only after the stinking man chose his. I texted her at each stop. “Pulling into 5th Ave now!” “Approaching Lexington!”

She said she would make sure the three doors between the street and our home would be unlocked, clearing the runway as it were. Everyone was doing their part.

I waddled home like an emperor penguin, barnstormed through the apartment and entered our rest room with my jacket still on. I removed my trousers and—as I was in the process of sitting—could wait no longer. I deployed my armaments and, like Luke Skywalker shooting photon torpedoes into the Death Star’s thermal exhaust port, ended this adventure with an on-target win.

The incident reminded me of another time, another place. The worst bowel movement of my life.

It was 30 years ago. I was riding the N.J. Transit bus, en route to visit my parents. This was a time before I had a mobile phone. What I would do was get off the bus at the stop closest to my ancestral homeland, and walk to a nearby diner, which, at the time, was called the Golden Bell Diner. The place is still there, though I forget what it is now called. Years ago they had a salad bar with tremendous potato salad. It was here, also, where I discovered my love of sliced red onions in a salad, particularly if augmented with French or Thousand Island dressing. Nothing better than that—though my wife doesn’t like it, so if a pre-made salad comes with sliced red onion I always get hers.

Photo by Wilhelm Gunkel on Unsplash

The deal was that I’d get off the bus, go to the foyer of the diner, put a coin into a pay telephone, and then, a few minutes later, my father would come and pick me up. An absolutely barbaric way to live, I know, but this is how it was done back then.

Well, one time there was an incident.

Everything I described above essentially happened again, but instead of white-knuckling it through stops on the N train, I was on their 139 bus headed down Route 9. Old Bridge Park and Ride. Union Hill. Throckmorton. When when, oh, when will we get to the Golden Bell Diner? I had to excrete and I had to excrete as soon as possible.

Eventually I came to my stop. I once again made like a water foul down the block and through the parking lot. I barged up the steps and into the foyer, then blazed into the diner itself, not making eye contact with the old Greek man out front in the black vest. I raced past diners—perhaps some of them enjoying the fabulous potato salad—and entered the men’s room. Again, I kept my coat on—I remember it being a winter coat with some kind of felt-like material. (I am sure it wasn't felt, but I do not know enough about fabric to tell you what it was.)

Anyway, I loosened my blue jeans and had NO TIME to do what I always do when I need to take a seated position in a public toilet. I did not put down a paper covering, something I was taught to do early in my life and have done 99.9% of the time since. (When there are no official waxy coverings, some toilet paper will suffice.)

Then, if I can describe this to you in slow motion, I began to sit. My exposed buttocks were closing in on the seat. I could wait no longer—physically could not wait anymore. (I’ve read that the brain kinda knows when it is free to unleash, which is why you may sometimes find yourself having to do some business the minute you arrive somewhere after a long car trip, but were fine just a little while ago.)

But there was a problem. I was unfamiliar with the layout of this particular toilet seat. I had never used it before. It was smaller than most. As such, when I finally made contact, and with the materiel entering the battle zone, I had essentially overshot my target.

I don’t know how to put this gently, but in essence the hatch was not over a clearing, it was making contact with the back of the seat.

In geometry, they teach you that the angle of incidence is equal to the angle of reflection. Anyone who has played pool knows this. Well, I can tell you that it isn’t just true in pool. The chocolate storm that fired out of my butthole went up and back.

By some miracle nothing got on my coat. But it did splatter against the wall. It was a nightmare.

I remained calm, finished my business and cleaned myself as best I could. But if anyone were to walk in, it would appear as if somehow someone shat on the wall. Honestly, the physics of it all were impressive.

I did my best to clean it. It took time. I do not recall if anyone knocked on the door, and if I had to say “just a moment!” But using toilet paper and water—especially cheapo diner toilet paper—isn’t perfect, and I am sure the next person who came in thought “what the hell happened in here?” God only knows what the smell was like. No more potato salad was eaten that night.

Anyway, I had tucked that memory away for years, but it all came rushing back last week. Now I’m telling it to you. I also got a shingles vaccine and a pneumonia vaccine yesterday and have a raging fever right now. I take no responsibility for anything I write.