First, let me start off by saying that I am Chinese. Therefore, I have eaten things that most of you wouldn't even consider to be food. I learned long ago not to even ask what it was I am eating. With all that experience, I have never really had a problem eating foreign food. It doesn't affect me quite as bad as others I know.
Until, that is, I had Korean food. My girlfriend is Korean, and it was she who introduced me to that culinary delight.
My girlfriend took me to a Korean restaurant in Dallas. The meal itself was pretty good, and everything went down OK. But within five minutes of leaving the place, it hit me. I am in trouble. It's another twenty-minutes of driving to get back to the house. I am by no means a Shameful pooper -- on the contrary, I am quite proud of them -- but I have learned from past relationships that some things are best not shared, especially if you are sleeping with this person.
I begin to sweat. My butt cheeks are clamped together with enough force to bend steel. Not really being a religious person, I pray to God: please don't let anything slip. And at this point, I think, my girlfriend becomes suspicious. She asks me if I am OK. Having to concentrate on driving and not leaving a load in my pants, I ignore her.
We finally make it home. I bolt out of the car and make a mad dash for the house. If Carl Lewis were racing me, he would be my bitch. The finish line is in sight. By the time my pants come down, the turtle is coming out of its shell. Thank God for high-flow toilets. If I had one of those mamby pamby 1.6 gallon/flush toilets, it would have been a disaster. It took all of five seconds for the Korean food to evacuate my system.
Now the story begins.
My girlfriend was forced to leave the country because her visa expired. After a short time, I decided to fly over to Seoul to visit her. Knowing that the Americanized version of Korean food is bland compared to the real thing, I loaded up on Imodium. A couple of days before I left, I started taking it. I wanted NO surprises.
Upon arriving to Seoul, I was greeted by a smell I could only surmise to be kimchee: a popular Korean dish of cabbage and fish paste that's combined in a pot and left to sit for six months. Sounds yummy. Mmmmmm. Judging by the smell, there are more kimchee pots buried in Seoul than landmines across the 38th parallel.
At this point, I have gone one day without taking a dump. Thanks, Imodium! I ate real Korean food that night with no problems.
I was there a couple of days and still nothing. I normally take a crap at least once a day. So after three days of popping the Imodium pills like Pez and not taking a dump, I begin to worry. And then my woman took me to what can only be described as the ass of hell.
It was a fish market. A GIANT FISH MARKET. I had entered a place of not only sight and sound, but smell. I have been to fish markets before, but none of them ever smelled like this. The only way I can describe it: fill up a dirty sock with dog shit, eat it, and then puke it up; and that would be close to the smell of this place.
I ate things at this fish market that no man should ever eat. Things like live squid and crabs. I don't have a problem with eating raw things, but I do have a problem with eating things that are moving. For God's sake, make sure they are dead!
After the fish market incident, I begin to feel cocky -- and, at the same time, worried. There hadn't been so much as a rumble coming from my intestines in three whole days. I had an almost invincible feeling. And then my girlfriend took me to eat at an Outback Steakhouse, I guess to make up for my bravery eating her country's food. And then it hit me. Like a scud missile hitting my lower intestines, it hit me. Now I know how the Iraqis felt.
We got back to the hotel that night and I am talking WRATH OF GOD shit. For three days, I had been stacking it deep and selling it cheap. I was straining so hard I thought I would pass out. It was at that moment I knew what women went through giving birth.
Then I look down to see my masterpiece; and lo and behold, it was just a nugget. WHAT THE HELL?? All that work for just a nugget.
I felt cheated, but God had other plans. He was only toying with me. The second wave came. Beethoven himself couldn't have written a better movement. I was grabbing on to the rails for support.
For thirty minutes I punished the shitter. The skidmarks I left behind would make a 'Vette owner jealous. My legs had become numb. I was spent. That dump left me feeling empty inside.
For the next ten days, I continued to eat Korean food. Little did I know the damage it would inflict upon me. I found out when I returned to the States. For the next three months, I would crap three to four times a day. Not ordinary dumps, either -- they were powah dumps. My chocolate starfish was sore from the constant wipes.
I have since recovered from my ordeal physically, but the mental scars remain. To all the soldiers stationed in Seoul, I salute you.
-- Lai