I'm 6-foot-1 and 200 pounds and when I take a shit I like to shit like a man. I'm also a gourmet chef and recently I've been experimenting in my kitchen at home with cacao nibs, the roasted seeds of the plant that makes chocolate.

In their raw form, the cacao nibs were prized by Inca kings and Mexican merchants as they were believed to give great romantic endurance, but in my home they seem to have the primary effect of binding my bung, preventing me from feeling like a king when I perch on the throne.

After a few days of poop-stopping trauma, I started to feel the horrible sensation of extra weight in my midsection. When I reached up to grab frying pans off the rack, my back felt tight; when I bent down to retrieve roast meats from the oven, it seemed like there was a solid belt constraining my midsection. All my constitutionals led to torment -- wimpy little bunny turds that did nothing to relieve the growing pressure.

When my gut gets grim, I resort to the two-pronged standby of caffeine and nicotine -- a new-age folk remedy that always has me grunting out a gnarly grumper. This morning I brewed a tall pot of dark-roast coffee in a French press (which gets all the fibrous grit in there, good flavor with fresh heavy cream and also a good way to clean the colon). I drank three cups black and then went out onto my deck to smoke a cigarette. As the smoke wafted up around me I watched the sun rise over Boston waiting... waiting... waiting... but no rich tremors from the iron girdle around my midsection. Nothing happened at all.

I perused the Wall Street Journal, watched Paula Zahn on CNN (definitely a naked shitter, if you ask me) and drank a little more coffee. My hands started to shake a bit, but nothing seemed to be breaking free from the tight-packed bituminous turning into diamonds deep inside me.

Anytime after I summon the Mastercrap, I know I'm taking a risk when I leave my house. I clung to the couch, afraid to walk to the corner store to buy more cigarettes ... but still, nothing happened. It was hours later, when my friend Tom asked me to go shopping for a grill with him and we were almost exactly between my home and Home Depot, that the earth moved inside me.

God, it hurt. It hurt so bad I thought I was going to scream, so I told Tom to pull over at a Mobil gas station in a gritty part of Medford, a Boston suburb. The Indian guy behind the counter told me that the men's room was out of order, but when I pleaded with him, he gave me the key to the ladies' room.

With the contractions happening faster in my colon, I half-shuffled, half-sprinted to the bathroom and turned the key. I would have perched on top of a minefield if I had to -- it hurt that bad.

It probably was the filthiest bathroom I've ever seen, but I just squatted down to let loose. I knew I had to spread my legs wide to let out the Master, so I stepped out of one leg of my khakis, even though the cuffs dragged in the filthy water on the grimy tiles. And then, with a grumble and a roar, the Master arrived.

The Mastercrap is like a classic American fruit pie: first the foundation of hard logs comes out -- the big tootsie rolls that break and bend when they hit the bowl (I think of this as the crust). Next comes the filling, those good squeegee turdlets about 2-3 inches long that spiral around and pack on some good height to the mound. Finally the liquid spurts of unformed stool tops off the man pie, a perverse rendering of chocolate creme.

The thing is, this process takes me some time. The logs come on strong, but then there's a pause while the turdlets get started, and I might need as many as eight to ten minutes before I can finish the job. I knew I was running a risk taking that kind of time in a busy public bathroom, but I didn't want to deny the Master. Who would?

First thing I noticed was that, on stage two, the turdlets hurt almost as bad as sesame poo -- I thought I was being scraped with a scalpel when they started coming out. This may be why the Incas were so easily conquered by the Spanish. And when the creamy topping came out, it brought a wave of noxious gas that would have stopped a mob of thousands of protesters in their tracks and reduced them to tears. In between the topping spurts, I let loose a fusillade of popfarts that echoed off the hard tile walls. The Mastercrap is a consuming process, I'll tell you.

It was only when I was lightheaded from the popfarts and bleeding from the ass from the cacao bits that I realized: there was no toilet paper. I looked for paper towels and saw: a hot-air blower. I looked for rolled-up newsprint or anything to dab the liquid film off my achy bung and saw: nothing. So I sacrificed not one, but both brand new Thor-Lo socks (we're talking $8.00 a pair!!!).

When I stumbled out into the sunlight with the wet cuffs of khakis brushing against my bare ankles, there was a woman at the door, a big-haired suburbanite in a tube top and dangling earrings. "That didn't sound like a woman in there,"she told me.

"Nope," I told her, trying not to smile. It was one of the proudest moments of my life.

-- Mastercrapper

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