When I was fourteen, our soccer team pulled a Bad News Bears. We had been projected to possibly come in last place in our competitive little upscale San Francisco suburban league, but before the season started one prepubescent little stud whom I will call Chad moved from New York and joined our team. The kid had a brother who played soccer at a big-time college program and he was just WAY better than any of us and, quite frankly, should never have been allowed to play with the likes of us. In fact, he came out for our first practice, scored exactly FIVE effortless goals against our hapless defense, left the field laughing, and tried never to return, but was forced by his father to either come back or take care of his farting grandmother after school every day. He came back.
A month later, a Mexican kid whom I'll call Juco moved to our area and showed up for practice. It was pretty much the same story as Chad -- the kid was light-years more talented than the rest of us. It was fascinating for the rest that Juco and Chad despised each other instantly, on sight, and were placed on opposite scrimmage teams that first day and fought a battle to the death which ended in Juco's team winning by a single goal that first day. Chad was incensed, vowing revenge as he left the field; and Juco, who spoke three words of English, never said anything.
Juco looked to be a shrunken thirty-five-year-old casket salesman. He had a droopy mustache, the sad mournful eyes of a latrine attendant at a Meatloaf concert, and the body odor of Gloria Allred after a thirty-day raft ride down the Rio Grande. Nobody doubted for a second the kid was really nineteen, but since he was shorter than most of us, he slid through the cracks and suddenly we were a seriously good team on the rise.
I myself was awful. I was really a pretty good football player for my age, but my mother and father had read some article about how some snotnose wretch was sucking goat milk through a tube for the rest of his life after some freak pee-wee league football accident, and I was toast. I was ordered to play soccer from then on out; and since I had no talent, I was basically the "enforcer" on the defense. My job was to harass, pester, and, if necessary, injure the most talented forward on the other team and distract him from scoring; and to everyone's surprise I was damn good at it. My role model was Bobby Bouche of Waterboy. I watched that film just about every day and learned to talk to myself and my imaginary friends during games, which freaked out the little Adidas-decked-out trolls. By the end of the games, they wanted their mommies. My favorite expression was, "Don't make Mama have to wash the poop outta my sheets."
The residual of all this, combined with a pretty decent goalkeeper, is that we were suddenly not just a good team but a VERY good team. We lost only a game through the season, despite Juco and Chad continuing to despise one another. But with those two starting together on our front line, we kicked the Spock out of other teams, often winning by six or more goals. The parents of our opponents kids were often incensed and made a big stink about Juco being some unemployed Tijuana carpet salesman who had been paid off by our admittedly rich parents, but nothing came of it.
So we found ourselves winning the equivalent of our state final and then on to a regional game against a Southern Cal team, which we had heard was full of illegal aliens from all over South America -- players as good as Juco but bigger, stronger, and faster. In other words, we were going down. Which brings me to the meat of my poop story, if you will forgive the expression.
When we arrived at the hotel near Riverside, California, one of our coaches got an urgent call to come back home due to an illness, so we were in the hotel for a day before the game with a minimum amount of supervision until two parents were dispatched from San Francisco to head south and play chaperone. We weren't supposed to leave the hotel, but we did venture out into a distinctly ethnic neighborhood that afternoon. Me and Chad thought it was a great adventure walking down the streets alone. We stumbled upon one of those mobile taco wagons that smelled like Amy Winehouse's catbox. We were supposed to eat lunch on our own, we reasoned, so we both ordered a giant burrito called something like El smalto smeltio and some orange soda in a bottle.
Chad and I exchanged glances as we noticed a bloody and tattered bandage festering on the tip of one of the vendor's fingers. The vendor, who could have passed for a Somalian pirate, also had a tattoo of what looked like Dennis Rodman's Pptbull on his bicep, but we didn't ask -- not that he spoke any English, anyway.
We bogarted an outside table from a nearby McDonalds and opened the burritos up. They smelled like the sweat gland of an ovulating she-moose, but we ate them regardless. At that age, you don't ask questions. We returned to the hotel, took a short nap, and got ready for our game, which was schedule for five PM on that Friday night.
As soon as I awoke, I knew that something was seriously wrong. It felt like I'd drank a thimble of buttermilk recovered from Paris Hilton's glass eye. I ventured a fart and when it smelted out it sounded like a golf cart running over a woodchuck. The smell reminded me of sardines roasted over the decaying corpse of an embalmed, heroin-addicted baboon.
I ran into the bathroom and threw up and when I looked at it, I threw up again. The consistency was like a jar of Cheez Whiz, with swirling bacon bits and Egyptian olives. Chad awoke shortly thereafter and, to my amazement, felt fine. He did fart a few times, which smelled like burning pubic hair, but he said he felt fine. When I told him about my problems, he said that while I wasn't watching the Band-Aid had fallen into my burrito, and that must be the cause of my problem. This made me run to the bathroom to throw up again. Then I had to poop.
Just then the coach walked in. I could hear Chad and him discussing my problems.
"YOU DID WHAT? YOU ATE WHERE? I TOLD YOU NOT TO LEAVE THE HOTEL FOR ANY REASON!" I couldn't believe Chad had ratted us out, but coach was cool. Suddenly I heard him tap on the door.
"It smells like Cleveland in there. You okay?"
I could barely respond, because just when he said that, the dam burst, and I projectile pooped a scattering of burned taco grease out of my cornholio, and I could hear the coach jump away from the door.
"Whoa," was all he could manage. "That sounds sick." I couldn't respond, as eighty inches of Mexican horsemeat popgunned out of my backside. It sounded like someone accidentally severing their toe with a Garden Weasel.
The smell this time was much worse. The plastic shower curtain looked like it was trying to shrivel up like a Twinkie package caught in a toaster. Luckily I was done pooping, but I had to throw up again, so I flushed the toilet, hopped off, and stuck my head into the bowl, only to find it overflowing onto my nose, which caused me to retch on the linoleum.
At this time I was past caring. I starting pooping and throwing up while laying in a fetal position on the floor. The coach tried to come in, but I'd locked the door. No way anybody was going to walk in on this. The door rattled on its hinges, sounding like a sick woodpecker pecking away at a hubcap on a Hummer.
"Yo, let me in there," begged the coach.
I moaned. "I'll be okay in a minute."
Thirty minutes later I crawled out of there, and by then the whole team was gathered in my room making wisecracks through the door. One of them described the smell as Mickey Rourke's fermented gallbladder. I bear-crawled through the door and into bed. I pulled the covers over my head and told everybody to clear out, and thankfully the coach ordered everybody to do just that.
I missed the game, but it didn't matter, as we got slaughtered 10 to 2. I was so sick and smelly that they made me ride in the back of the bus the next day so that I could hurl myself into the bathroom if needed. Everybody called me "Cornholio" from then on.
