The year was 1991 and I had been dating my girlfriend -- let's call her Poopann -- for just a few months. Regularly seeing this girl involved something of a commute, as we lived about forty miles apart; she had an apartment in Queens, while I owned a home on Long Island. I didn't mind the trip at all. She was definitely worth the effort.

Poopann was unusually pretty, with dark Sicilian features and a beautiful, slender body. Best of all, we really got along well. In the short time I knew her I had yet to find a flaw of any sort. Naturally, that would all change in time -- specifically, from our honeymoon forward -- but we won't go into that.

So back in 1991, it was the happiest time of my life. I was falling in love, and there was no way I was going to mess up this chance. That meant no body odors. No drunken behavior. No demonstration of my neurotic tendencies (within reason). And, of course, no poo. Ever.

During this same time I worked in midtown Manhattan and commuted everyday by train. As one might expect, there is a large variety of restaurants and eating establishments in midtown. Virtually every type of cuisine is available within a short walking distance. I hated being cooped up in an office building all day, so my co-workers and I usually went out for lunch.

A few of my associates had already tried out a new Tex-Mex place that opened nearby. It was a Thursday and one of them asked me to join them. It turned out to be one of those basement level restaurant/bars, similar to the set from Cheers. There were about twenty-five people seated in the restaurant, which had a clean, new feel to it. We were shown to our table and given menus. The fare was typical Tex-Mex and the prices were reasonable.

I don't recall much about what we discussed that day, but I do remember I was the only one who ordered chicken. The other guys ordered meals with beef. I specifically recall that I ordered the chimichangas, which consist of shredded chicken with vegetables and spices, fried in a tortilla and covered with cheese, sour cream and salsa, because I had always liked them in the past.

"Come on, Poopster39. Try the beef. It's great."

"Nahhh. I think I'll have the chicken. Beef's really no good for you. Haven't you been reading what they've been saying about it? Chicken's much better for you."

And so my journey began.

Today I'm a firm believer that the guy who invented Tex-Mex -- I think his name was Phil -- had one thought in mind: concealment. His thinking must have gone something like this: "Okay, I have some questionable meat here. I need to sell it to my customers somehow. How do I serve it and yet still make the meal enjoyable?" The answer was Tex-Mex. Add enough chili powder, guacamole, and cheese, and you can mask the flavor of just about anything.

I dug into my meal and quickly noticed that something about it was off. I couldn't quite put my finger on it. It just didn't seem right. But my companions seemed to really be enjoying their food. So, against my better judgment, I wolfed down the rest of the chimichangas, along with a few seltzers.

Funny thing about ptomaine poisoning. It doesn't always strike as soon as you might expect. Oh, I've gotten sick many times after a bad meal, and it usually always hit within two or three hours. But not this time.

I finished up my workday without any complaints and caught a train back to my house on Long Island. It was sometime during this commute I realized something was seriously wrong. I was getting terrible gas pains and had started to sweat profusely. Oddly enough, though, I had no need to poop. In fact, it felt as if my entire lunch was still sitting in my stomach, as if my intestines were expecting criminal activity and had set up a roadblock.

By the time I got home, my entire body felt like it was poisoned. My head, my arms, my legs, every part of me ached. I walked up my staircase like an old man with edema and fell into my bed. A short while later, the phone rang. It was Poopann calling to say hi. I told her I had food poisoning and she became very concerned for me.

"My God. I had food poisoning once," she said. "I almost died from it."

"Great."

"You have to go to the doctor."

"I'm not going to the doctor."

"Then try some charcoal tablets," she suggested.

"What does that do?"

"It's supposed to absorb the toxins."

"I can't swallow anything right now. What I need to do is throw up first." For some reason, talking about puke wasn't as shameful to me as poop. I'll have to investigate that one some day.

"Do you have any Ipecac?"

As a matter of fact, I actually did have some �Syrup of Ipecac" in my medicine cabinet. For anyone who's never used it, it's made from an ancient Brazilian poison and is used to induce vomiting. A single teaspoon will cause violent stomach contractions, forcing its contents out. A bottleful would probably cause you to puke out all your internal organs and skeletal bones -- it's that strong, believe me.

I figured since I was a big guy, I'd take two teaspoons instead of the recommended one.

A half hour later I felt as if I'd been beaten up by Mike Tyson. I had thrown up eight times. The final four times there was no food left in my stomach. I was literally puking up air. My face looked like Arnold Schwarzenegger and his girlfriend in Total Recall when tumbling over the surface of Mars without space helmets and their tongues and eyeballs were bugging out of their heads. That was me, ten minutes after taking the Ipecac.

I hugged the bowl for fifteen minutes afterwards, until my knees worked again. I struggled to my feet and looked in the mirror. All the blood vessels in my eyes had burst. I looked like a demon. The whites of my eyes were blood red. No exaggeration. I had been through this once before, and knew that in about a week they would return to normal. Meanwhile, I would be forced to walk the earth as one of the undead.

Poopann called again. "How do you feel now?"

"Oh, pretty good. Except my eyes are--"

"Good. Now you have to get to the pharmacy and buy charcoal tablets."

"But I just threw up everything."

"Doesn't matter. You still need to soak up any toxins that are still in your intestines."

Poopann has always been, shall we say, a "health enthusiast." The real word I want to use has thirteen letters, starts with an "h" and ends with a "c." She knows more about disease and health problems than most medical professionals. Plus she's imagined she had almost every one of them. So I put on my sunglasses and drove to the pharmacy, where I bought a bottle of charcoal tablets. I took the recommended dose and tried to go to bed around 9:00. The pain from the toxins in my system was still too much, though, and I didn't sleep a wink. Every part of me ached. But, oddly enough, I still didn't have to go to the bathroom.

The next morning was Friday and I called in sick to work. I lounged around all morning watching TV, and I started to feel a little better -- though far from great. Poopann was home that day, so I decided I felt good enough to go see her. That was a mistake. Normally it took me forty-five minutes to get to her place. But the parkway traffic was busier than normal, though, and it took me over an hour. Poopann lived in Bayside, a very nice section of Queens. I was still about ten minutes from her place when the inevitable happened.

"Oh crap. Where were you yesterday when I was expecting you?"

I sped from the Grand Central to the Cross Island to Northern Boulevard. I did kegel exercises with my butt cheeks the whole way: squeeze -- release -- squeeze -- release. It soon became apparent I couldn't keep this up for much longer; my o-ring was about to be breached. Failure was imminent. I tore down Poopann's street at an excessive speed and was grateful to find a parking space near her building. Fortunately her apartment was a second-floor walk-up. I took three steps at a time.

"Please open up! Please open up!" I begged, pounding on the door.

"Poopster39, is that you?"

"Please help me! Please open up. Please open up." My knees started to buckle.

Then began the unlocking ritual. Two dead bolts, three safety locks, and a chain. Click... click... thunk...

"Please open up please open up please open up..." I crossed my legs and squatted.

"Hold on. This one's always stuck. Mmmmphhh. Mmmmmphhh."

"Pleeeeeease?" I sounded like a little boy begging for ice cream. Really pathetic.

"Okay, there. I got it. Oh my God! What's wro--"

I moved like The Flash. I don't remember if I knocked Poopann over to get to the bathroom or not. Somehow, though, I still had the presence of mind to lock myself inside. To my horror, Poopann ran up to the door just as I was dropping my pants.

"Oh my God. What's wrong with your eyes? Are you okay?"

"GET AWAY!!!" This was the first time I had ever screamed at her.

"Your eyes. What happened to them? Oh my God."

"GET AWAY!!!" I probably sounded like I was morphing into a werewolf or something.

"Oh, God. What happened? Oh my God."

Tears came to my red eyes. I trembled as I used the last of my energy reserves to tighten my sphincter... one... last... time...

"Please go," I whispered.

Mercifully, she sensed my anguish and moved out of hearing range. You can imagine the intense relief I felt as the first application of gunite exploded from my anus. I like to call this the scratch coat -- it had a chunky, soup-like texture and adhered to the porcelain like epoxy. No ordinary dump, this one was dark black in color, undoubtedly due to the charcoal. Normally I would expect poop to have the color and texture of turkey chili, or perhaps potato soup. That day it looked more like black bean soup. It didn't burn so much as it was explosive, splattering all over the interior of the bowl. This went on for about half a minute.

After the scratch coat came the render mix. It was smooth like plaster, but still pretty runny. Sort of like a thick chocolate milkshake, only warm. That lasted another half-minute. And then, finally, came the squirts. I now felt like a cow giving milk. Squirt. Squirt. Squirt. One of the squirts lasted for about ten to fifteen seconds.

One or two farts later, it was all over, and I felt tremendous relief. I cleaned myself thoroughly with half a roll of toilet paper, followed by about thirty baby wipes. (One of the life-enriching habits I learned from Poopann was to finish up with baby wipes. To this day we keep a box of baby wipes in every bathroom in our home.)

I looked in the bowl. It was a disaster. I flushed once, then a second time. Then a third. I had to use Mr. Clean and a toilet brush to scrub away the stubborn clingy pieces. Finally I sponged off some residual dookie splash from under the seat. Then I washed my hands in the sink, up to my elbows.

I suppose it would be more fun right now to say that I stunk up the place. But, to my great relief, there was really very little odor afterward. I'm not sure why. Maybe the charcoal did something to neutralize it. I don't know. I stepped out of the john and saw Poopann sitting at the kitchen table, reading a magazine. She walked up to me.

"Are you okay? Look at your eyes." She seemed genuinely concerned, sad even, and it really touched my heart. She was not the least bit put off by the fact that I just finished splattering her spotless bathroom with butt stew. (Five years later, as we were awaiting the arrival of our first child, she got me back in a big way. But that's another story.)

I went home that night and got sick all over again. I was feverish and miserable. If possible, the pain was twice as bad as before. At some point I must have simply passed out. I don't remember. I woke up the next morning, drenched in sweat. I mean DRENCHED. It was as if someone had poured a gallon of warm water on me as I slept. But I must have sweated out all the toxins, because I felt great. Hungry and exhausted, but great.

I took a shower and stepped on the bathroom scale. I had lost nine pounds in the two days I was sick. Normally it would take me two months of diet and exercise to lose that much.

I haven't been back to that Tex-Mex place, nor anything like it, in the past fourteen years. There's nothing like a good case of ptomaine poisoning to forever ruin your appetite for something. I did file a complaint with the Board of Health, though. I don't know if that accomplished anything, but a few months later the little basement restaurant was out of business and something new was moving in.

Within six months, Poopann and I were engaged. What the hey, I figured -- she's already seen me take a wicked dump and she stuck around anyway. Might as well take the big plunge. Besides, after something like that, the rest should be smooth sailing. Right?

Ah yes. The foolish musings of the blind and inexperienced mind.

-- Poopster39