It was the summer of 1962, and it was the best of times. I had been stationed at Yokota Air Base Japan since the preceding December. I loved almost everything about it. The food, the women, the beer... paradise on earth. One of the few things I was not wild about was the lack of a crapper in my place of duty.
I was an apprentice air traffic controller. We worked out of an old Imperial Army tower that was in use when the field was still Tama Army Airfield. It looked like a box on stilts. We were located next to the Crash Rescue Station, and when nature called we were forced to journey downstairs and over to their facilities. There was a catwalk around our unit, so if we only had to do number one we could haul out our cannons and fire them over the railing. This was not entirely without risk, as a stiff breeze, along with a wind-shear, would on occasion bring a salt spray back into our faces.
No one had ever been brave enough to hang his ass over the railing for number two. It would have been too easy to topple fifty feet or so to your probable demise.
When I was not at work saving the world from communism, I was either down in the local town of Fussa or at the Airmen's Club (Club Zanzibar) pursuing my avocation (which was chugging beer). On this day, I finished my duties in the tower and headed to the club for a few beers. I had gotten up to late for breakfast that morning, probably because of the "few" beers I had swigged the night before. There was no place on the flight line to eat lunch, so I had an empty stomach. "All the better to get a good buzz," I thought to myself.
The beers were really going down smoothly when I decided I should probably have a little food along with them. Not wanting to lose my comfortable alcohol-induced glow, I opted for raw eggs in my beer, rather than a meal. I had multiple mugs of beer and perhaps six raw eggs before stumbling back to the barracks for some rest.
I arose too late for breakfast the following morning. I hacked the stubble from my face, brushed the foulness from my mouth, and rushed off to work. About ten AM the urge hit me and I excused myself to the crash station. I dropped my pants and hurriedly sat on one of the pots. I could hear someone taking a shower in the adjoining shower room.
The bowel movement started -- not with the usual series of plunks I was used to hearing, but with a steady hiss. I thought nothing of this until the smell assailed my nostrils.
Nothing in my twenty years of existence had ever smelled this foul. I was so proud. As a child I had smelled a skunk who had sprayed at very close range. "Poor bastard," I thought. "He did his best, but it was nothing compared to what I am doing now." The stream coming from my sphincter was so fine that I could have bent over and shit through the eye of a needle at fifty feet. Its foulness, I assured myself, was unequaled.
The person that had been taking a shower was a Japanese fireman. When he smelled my anal perfume, he shocked me by swearing in English. "Jesus Christ!" he exclaimed as he padded naked from the latrine. It must have been something of a religious experience for everyone; someone attempted to enter but immediately turned around and left with a hearty, "God damn!"
Finally, I was empty. I myself was starting to get a little lightheaded and woozy from exposure to the toxic fumes. I daubed my asshole dry, checked the stall walls for peeling paint, and walked out the door.
All the firemen were waiting for me. "You stinky bastard!" they screamed in unison. "You are banned from using our latrine ever again!" They got a giant fan that is normally used to clear the smoke from a burning building and used that to clear the fumes from the john.
I was shocked. These big burly firemen -- men who were trained to pull scorched corpses from planes and buildings -- were really sissies, afraid of a little bad smell.