In 1994 or thereabouts, my pal Lee and I took a boys’ holiday in Turkey; and unfortunately, a rather nasty stomach infection was going around the resort at the time. To cut a long story short, I came down with it on the 3rd day and suffered some of the most appalling diarrhoea I’ve ever had in my life. I couldn’t eat, and I certainly couldn’t sleep, because I’d get a slight gripe in my guts which would reach a crescendo; and then my bowels would explode, squirting thin tan-coloured broth the texture and consistency of clear noodle soup in whatever direction it chose. I could not possibly fart without shitting myself, and these griping liquid farts were coming every few minutes for a while. I couldn’t possibly venture out of the apartment because I needed to squirt at a moment’s notice and suffered like this for two whole days and nights. I went without sleep, without food, gradually becoming more dehydrated with each bowel movement, backwards and forwards to the toilet and hosing myself down with the shower. The diarrhoea by this time had almost no solid particles whatsoever and was squirting from my anus virtually clear, like river water, and I daren’t sleep as I’d just shit the bed. Not that I could have slept much with the griping pain in my guts which would grow to excruciating levels before my bowels released the pressure.
The resort, as I mentioned, virtually had a plague of it. People were suffering everywhere. The pharmacies were completely out of diarrhoea medication; and we were told that until supplies came in again we had to bear it. The local doctors were busy dealing with the very young or very old; so unless it was a medical emergency, tough luck. I was weak as a kitten and extremely ill, but my main concern was not being able to sleep. We managed to obtain a black plastic bin liner (Hefty Bag to you yanks) which we opened out flat to put on the bed. Sadly though, when I tried to sleep, my spasms of pain would ruffle it up and the shit-water flowed off the sheet and on to the floor.
Clearly, something had to be done.
Luckily, one of the other guests in the apartment block had thrown a great big giant-sized carrier bag in the bin, which Lee then appropriated and cut the bottom corners off. I could stick a leg through each corner, pull it up like a big plastic pair of underpants, create a seal around the leg holes with sticky tape, and secure it around the waist with my belt. It was brilliant – an improvised incontinence bag! I can honestly say that that bag enabled me to get enough rest to allow my body to recover. I could pass out with exhaustion, shit and squirt to my heart’s content, then empty it by peeling it off in the shower when I woke up, washing myself and the bag accordingly. It’s a wonder I survived.
By day twelve of the holiday I was about 15 - 20 pounds lighter but was finally eating without incident. I was sufficiently recovered to go on an excursion and see a bit of the country before we left (for well over a week I barely left the bathroom), so Lee and I hired a car. I still had diarrhoea but not so frequent, and if I carried enough TP with me I could always stop by the roadside if I was caught short. We stopped for lunch at a little village called Kale, and before our food came, I needed the toilet badly. Unfortunately, the toilet of this particular rural taverna was one of those horrible ones with no seat, just footrests at either side of a trough looking like an old fashioned urinal lying on its back, and a hole in the ground.
But it was either that or my shorts.
I took off my lower garments, stood on the footrests, leaned forward, and let fly a hot thick spurt of soupy shit. It fell behind me with a hollow-sounding splat, my poor anus spasming and twitching as it coughed out the final residue onto the trough. I could see a few spatters of shite below me, behind my feet, and upon turning my head, I could see a small trail of watery, malty poo leading to the hole.
“Fucking hell! Result!” I thought, smiling to myself contentedly at my superb aim, considering that I’d done it without being able to see. “Straight down the hole!” Needless to say, I was still congratulating myself as I cleaned my arse with the paper (no TP there – glad I brought my own) and pulled on my shorts. Straight in front of me was the Turkish approximation of a basin. It consisted of a metal bucket and a corroded dripping tap, with which, I supposed, one was meant to cleanse one’s hands and also flush away any mess from the porcelain trough. With some disgust, I washed as best I could; and being a decent fellow decided to fill the bucket up a bit and wash away the small dribbles of shit near the hole. As I poured the bucket into the trough, I looked up and saw for the first time, with some horror, that I had not gone straight down the hole. I had, in fact, missed it altogether with my initial squirt, and the entire back wall was running and dripping with shit, coating it so copiously it looked like a Jackson Pollock painting (in his brown period, no doubt). I was astonished not only at how much I had produced but how widely it had spread, with brown speckles reaching a good eighteen inches to two feet on either side of the central splodge. It had in itself begun to run down the wall into a puddle, one was that was gradually spreading from the base of the wall over the floor.
There was absolutely no way I could clean this up by chucking water at it; because if I did, it would run over the floor and out under the door into the dining area. So feeling rather awkward, I closed the door behind me and shuffled over to our table, where plates of food had been put in front of us. I whispered to Lee, “We’re leaving!”
He initially protested because he’d hardly started eating, but seeing my concerned pleading expression, he got up. I quickly shoved a handful of Turkish Lira on the table and rushed out to the car with Lee following behind me, wondering what the fuck was wrong. Close behind us was a Turkish waiter - hollering to us in half-English, half-Turkish - because we’d left our tables so suddenly. Possibly, he thought we’d gone without paying.
My urgency prevailed, and we sped off as fast as Lee could make the car go, watching the waiter in the distance as he gratifyingly picking up the money from the table, no doubt bewildered at the crazy Englishmen. I can only hope that whatever tip he appropriated from our virtually untouched meal was enough to compensate him for having to clean up his toilet, but I doubt it, I really do.
