It all took place on a hot Saturday in August, 2000. Karen, my girlfriend at the time, had made plans to go down to the Greater Cincinnati Annual Seafood Fest, which was being held on the banks of the Ohio River over in Newport, Kentucky. I personally have a love for seafood; add the combination of live music, beer, and a nice view of Cincinnati, and I thought it would make for a good outing. Karen knew the area better than I, so I let her drive. We parked about four blocks away from the Newport Landing, which was close considering how packed the place was.

The smell of grilled salmon and barbequed shrimp wafted through the air, making my mouth water. I was getting hungry, but I suggested we walk around first before buying anything. At food festivals like these, you usually pay a hell of a lot for a little food. To pay five dollars for a kabob of five shrimp is not unheard of. So, being the conservative guy I am, I waited to find the right deal to drop my money on.

I found it at the last booth. Shark steaks -- a kind of seafood I hadn't before indulged. For $4, I could get a shark steak on a patty of rice. It sounded good. I ordered one up with a Coke. Karen opted for the salmon.

The chef manning the grill was a jolly, heavyset, middle-aged guy who spoke loudly even though he hadn't quite mastered the English language -- maybe because the school system had failed him, or maybe because of the large gaps between the five jagged teeth that remained in his head. As he manned the grill, another seafood enthusiast asked our chef where he learned to cook. "The Ohio State Prison," he joyfully responded.

Oh, shit. I've seen An Innocent Man with Tom Selleck. Hell, that Sylvester Stallone movie Lockup was filmed just five minutes from the festival grounds. I know what goes on in these prisons. What if he was tainting our food with glass shavings? Was I being judgmental? Was I being paranoid? He seemed a bit too happy about having learned how to cook in prison.

I thought for a moment. What would Jesus do? Jesus would not judge a man by the sins he's committed in the past, but by his character in which he presents himself today. The guy did seem happy. And he was feeding people. I put my faith in my faith that my food would be sanitary, and took my shark steak when it was handed to me.

My religious beliefs would soon be called into question.

Karen and I took our food and sat down on a grassy hill overlooking the festival. A local band was playing some cover songs, and since Karen was always into the local music scene, we sat and watched them as we ate our fishy delicacies. Before digging in, I said a prayer that my food would meet the FDA standards. "God's neat. Let's eat!" I dug in.

I was once told that shark steak tastes a lot like beef steak. It didn't. It tasted more like catfish with a lot of seasoning. It was all right. I guess I was more interested in eating a fish that is notorious for attacking fishermen and devouring various body parts of surfers; I ate with delightful revenge. Before long, I was done. I sipped my Coke while Karen finished up her salmon and listened to the band.

And that's when Jaws sought his revenge.

It started off innocently enough, with little gurgles down in the pits of my stomach. "No problem, it's just the Coke," I thought. So naive was I.

In an attempt to relax my gurgling stomach, I laid down upon the grass next to Karen. The gurgling turned into farts. "Just need to relieve some pressure," I thought. I quietly let a few go.

Wrong move.

The release in pressure gave full permission to the terror waiting behind it to move towards the exit. You know how when you first turn on a water hose, there's a small blast of air before the full flow begins? That's exactly what almost happened in my ass. I immediately closed the brown faucet with every muscle in my lower region. This was going to be bad.

I sat up. While I didn't want to alarm Karen with the drama in my nether regions, I knew time was of the essence. I looked around for a bathroom. Nothing but Port-A-Lets. I hate Port-A-Lets. I threw pride to the wind and innocently asked Karen, "I wonder if there's a bathroom nearby?"

Karen suggested the obvious. "Why don't you just use one of the Port-A-Lets?"

I wouldn't do it. Its not about Shamefulness, it was about sanitation. I had put shark steak prepared by a former prison inmate into my mouth; I wasn't about to subject my ass to the germ-ridden Port-A-Let.

"Nah, I'd rather just find a restaurant and use theirs," was my stupid reply. There were no restaurants nearby. Just an aquarium, some shady bars, and a strip club. Sadly, the strip club would've probably been the most sanitary place to shit.

I asked Karen if we could leave. We hadn't been there long, but truthfully, we had already seen all there was to be seen, we had eaten food served by a former convict, and now I needed a clean toilet to shit in. And I wasn't going to find it in Newport, Kentucky. I talked her into leaving.

We got up and started walking the four blocks towards the car. This only stirred my bowels worse. In my mind, I could hear that deep cello playing the Jaws theme.

Deh duh. Deh duh. Deh duh deh duh deh duh...

It was getting worse with every minute. I began to question the likelihood of getting back home before my khaki shorts went brown. As we walked through a construction site, I contemplated shitting behind a gravel hill; but with nothing to wipe my ass with, I decided to march on, convincing myself I was going to make it. Suddenly, through the heat waves coming up from the ground, an oasis of sorts appeared: a liquor store. Of course! Newport is full of liquor stores.

We walked in to the comforts of the air-conditioned liquor store. I found the bathroom, only to get slapped in the face with the most Naziesque sign: "For Paying Customers Only." I walked back to the front to tell Karen that I couldn't use the john unless I bought something. Pride overtook brains once again, and I decided that I'd hold it until I got home. The brief comforts of the air conditioning had calmed my bowels down, and that gave me the confidence I needed to believe I'd make it. We were only a block from Karen's car, and I would be coaching myself the whole way. I envisioned the bathroom back at Karen's apartment. I imagined the comforts of shitting in a sanitary environment. It gave me the strength to move on.

We made it to Karen's car. She insisted she drive. On the way back through the city, I suggested stopping at my workplace, but that was shot down. Karen was convinced I could hold it. I wasn't so sure. As we got closer, the cramping came back with a vengeance. I could picture Jabber Jaw pounding his tail fin against my colon, saying, "Hey, who turned out the lights? Let me outta here! Nyuk nyuk."

The cramps turned into sharp pains, the likes of which I had never felt before. Pain shot from my ass down to my feet, then up my spine. It was hurting so bad that I was lifting my ass off the seat in hopes of settling things down.

In a quiet, unsettled voice, I can recall saying, "I don't know if I'm going to make it." Karen looked over, scoping out the severity of the situation. I had never told a woman that I was about to shit my pants before; this was a first. She floored it.

Her little Chrysler hauled through a thirty-five mph zone at about fifty for the last five-mile stretch. I sat my ass down on the seat, and like a coach, mentally began yelling at my ass, "You're gonna make it! You can do it!"

Minutes later, Karen pulled into the driveway of her apartment complex and let me out before she even bothered to find a parking spot. Making a mad dash rivaling the great Carl Lewis, I bolted from her car, unlocked the apartment door and stormed into the bathroom with authority. I don't think I even closed the front door behind me. I had a brown shark to release into the wild and he wasn't going to wait any longer.

In the four steps it took me to get to the bathroom, I had my shorts unbuttoned and my hands in the proper "hook and drop" position. The moment my foot touched porcelain tile, I dropped my shorts and did a cannonball onto the toilet. Just as my ass made contact with the seat, the shark began swimming towards freedom. Hot steamy farts jetted from my ass, followed by an eruption of boiling crapé mocha.

If my ass were a dick, it would've had syphilis bad enough to kill Al Capone nine times over.

It was scorching my asshole with every eruption. I took the opportunity to find God once again, begging him to make the pain stop.

And shortly thereafter, the pain was over; my prayers were answered. Before sending the shark back into the wild, I took one glance at his remains. It looked like a slaughterhouse of soggy, brown beef jerky. I was spent. And with that, I flushed Jaws home.

Jesus is just all right with me.

-- Three Ply