There are two pieces of information you must know to fully appreciate the beauty of the situation I was in regarding this story. First of all, I am a Shameful Shitter. I have always been and most likely always will be. My lack of shitting pride may stem from the fact that God cursed me with the ability to clog nearly every toilet I encounter. Heaven to me is walking into a perfectly clean and empty public restroom, one with a long row of stalls, each with its own porcelain throne eagerly waiting to accept my regal, albeit brown, gift.
I always pick the handicrapper, if available; I know this fact makes me a horrible person, but the extra space provided proves a powerful relaxant and greatly enhances the forthcoming shit.
But I digress.
The second thing you must know is that whenever I am in new surroundings, I am unable to shit for several days. Perhaps there is already a name for this condition, but I refer to it as Public Pooping Paranoia, or PPP.
Our story starts when I arrived in Seoul, South Korea, for a year to teach English. As one can imagine, my arrival in this foreign country produced a great deal of anxiety and stress. The new surroundings and new language, coupled with an intense week of training, left no time for my body to even consider releasing a load for several days.
I entered the bathroom of the hotel room once a day or so in an attempt to coax something from my nether region, but alas, to no avail. I would always flush, wash my hands, and walk out smiling so my roommate would think everything had gone as planned.
Finally, after nearly a week of waiting, it happened; I felt the familiar rumblings I had missed since stepping foot in this foreign land. I slowly put down my computer and casually strolled to the bathroom, passing my roommate stretched out on the bed engrossed in a novel along the way.
Upon entering the bathroom and sitting down I knew I was in for a battle. A week of constipation had left the beast a hard, desiccated rock wedged between my cheeks. But I was ready. I hungered for the release and relief I knew would be mine, if only I could pass this devilish log. Bearing down, I felt it start to emerge, and briefly a thought passed my mind of a tearing asshole - and that I had no health insurance. But nothing could stop me from the sweet taste of victory now, and before long it lay at the bottom of the toilet... and I was staring down in horror. The sheer mathematics of it still boggle my mind. How such a thing formed in me I will never know; but what I did know at that moment was that there was no way it was being flushed in its present state. Even so, I attempted a first flush, praying for a miracle. The water whirled, and the thing hardly moved, seemingly laughing back up at me.
A quick explanation on toilets in Korea. Since Koreans are in general of a smaller build than Americans, their toilets, by my observations, seem to be proportionally smaller also (this did not and still does not bode well for me, a known toilet clogger).
This toilet was no different.
I looked around frantically in search of something with with to break up the behemoth, but there was nothing to be seen. Even my toiletry bag, which contained my toothbrush, flashed through my head as a last resort, but it was outside the bathroom. Then a thought so horrendous - so insidious I shiver just to write about it - bubbled into my consciousness. I knew what had to be done.
As I walked back to the toilet and my hand slowly entered the cool water of the toilet bowl, a chill ran down my spine. With water slightly past my wrist, my fingers made contact with the slippery, oily - and surprisingly hard - stool, and I nearly wretched into the bowl. The shame of what I was doing washed over me in waves. And yet, what was I to do? I could not exit the bathroom where my roommate lay in wait; and even if I could, there was nothing to be done. I was in a foreign country where I could barely say hello, let alone tell the front desk to send up a plunger. I steeled myself for the next step and, as I wrapped my fingers around the ungodly sin, proceeded to tighten my grasp.
It broke in half, yet my work was not done. The small Asian hole was still no match for even half of my manly creation. Twice more I wrapped my hand around the chunks and broke them into manageable sizes. Finally, I pulled the toilet's trigger and watched the pieces swirl away to oblivion while trying to erase from my mind the events of the past five minutes. After scrubbing off the top layer of skin, I walked out of the bathroom and again passed my roommate, who was none the wiser as to what had just occurred a mere fifteen feet away.
