Last summer, The Metatherapist and I took a vacation to Negril, Jamaica. Unfortunately Hurricane Ivan decided to come to Jamaica too. We were evacuated. But Sandals, the resort where we stayed, has a Blue Chip Hurricane Guarantee that entitled us to a free replacement vacation any time within one year. So last week we were in sunny Jamaica for free!

Well, actually, not-so-sunny Jamaica. Just our luck -- the first tropical storm of the season, Arlene, was over Cuba, which was only ninety miles away. No evacuation this time (well, not the kind that involves fleeing from a storm). But Arlene's clouds, rain, wind, and waves made for a less than idyllic island interlude.

We made the best of it, trying to do some fun activities, weather permitting. We signed up to go on a booze cruise on a big catamaran called The Wild Thing. The cruise included an open bar, Jamaican food, a water slide from the boat into the sea, and an opportunity to jump off Negril's cliffs or just watch the local Jamaican guys execute triple somersault jumps into the vodka-clear Caribbean.

Okay, okay -- enough of the travelogue. We received a travel log upon boarding. A stunning young Jamaican girl crewmember pointed out where to find the bathroom on the boat (way below deck). And she instructed us all about how we needed to pump and pump the handle next to the toilet until the "bilge" was flushed down.

The Wild Thing set sail. I had a Jamaican Red Stripe beer, a rum punch, and some spicy jerk chicken. Delicious and fun -- until a little while later, when a wild thing in my rump started to jump to the reggae rhythm. The beat from my bowels intensified, threatening to bust a big brown Blob Marley spliff through the back of my bikini!

I staggered down the steps to the "head." I peeled (the bikini bottom) and plopped (the poop). Ahhhhhh...

Arlene! All of a sudden, the boat started bucking big-time. I held tight to the handrails aside the toilet and continued my evacuation. The pontoons of the catamaran started to smack the water hard, at times tossing my butt off the bowl. Through the porthole, I could see that it was raining and blowing hard. Just like my poor pooping porthole. With the last big wave, I wiped out, using the thin marine toilet paper provided.

The paper slid fast through my crack, and my palm and the back of my hand were smeared with hot, stinking, molten poop. Ewwww. I turned around to see how the heck this happened and was confronted with the Jamaica Mistaica that Arlene had wrought. The entire back half of the tiny marine toilet seat was splattered with my spicy brown jerk sauce. My cheeks were slimed, too. Even worse, the back of the bowl, including the seat hardware, was completely covered. Arlene's wrath, tossing me up and down, round and round, had created a toxic waste dump in the bowels of The Wild Thing, in the middle of the clear blue Caribbean.

I used yards of toilet paper to clean myself and the head. The most disgusting part was cleaning the poop from the screws on the toilet seat. There was no sink, and of course no soap and water. The mound of toilet paper that I used rose almost above seat level.

When the mop-up job was done, I recalled the travel log instructions about how to pump my troubles away. I did as I was told: pump pump pump to drown the dump dump dump. But nothing happened.

Grrrrr! Pump pump pump. Pump pump pump. Pump. Pump. Pump. Go down, dammit!

Nothing doing. After tons more tries, I slunk up the stairs and found my darling Meta drinking rum and dancing on the deck. I whispered my embarrassing predicament to him. He laughed and confidently descended the steps to pump my dump. Way too quickly he emerged, telling me that he couldn't get it to go down, and that he had observed that I had missed lots of spots on the underside and back of the toilet seat, leaving brown evidence behind.

Now what? I jumped overboard, hoping the sea would cleanse my defiled hands and hiney. I clambered back aboard, took the stunning Jamaican girl crewmember aside, and told her that the toilet pump was not working. Of course, I didn't tell her that my Jamaica Mistaica had fudged up the works. Then I cringed as I watched her go down to the head and return with a horrified expression on her beautiful face. She approached a crewmate, who went down and came up looking stunned, not stunning. Finally, the captain himself investigated.

I'm not sure if the captain was able to pump my poop down. Maybe so. I'm pretty sure that other revelers used the head after me. But who knows what they found in there!

When we docked, there were t-shirts for sale, printed with "Ask me how to do the Wild Thing." I bought one. For Arlene.

-- Crapola