This particular day started as innocently as most others in my post-liberal-arts-degree existence: I rolled out of bed in my parents' house around eleven and hopped online. Not the most inspirational life to lead, but as any terrible therapist will tell you, we all accomplish things in our own time.

Time, as it turned out, was against me that day, as my apparent leisure was very short-lived.

You may already be thinking to yourself, "A man alone in his house ten feet from a toilet? How could this lead to disaster? Where is the humiliation, the downfall?" To you I say: read on.

I awoke on this fine morning with a vague urge to evacuate, which was nothing unusual. I am, by most standards, dependable in my irregularity. The need may come at any time of the day or night, at rapidly shifting intervals. This unreliability aside, I have had very few problems with my bowels. I do not eat meat and I eat dairy fairly rarely; and I think that, ethical reasons aside, carnivores will agree that these two components, mixed in varying quantities, produce the majority of the gutbusters out there. Thus I had adjusted to a life of irregular -- but very manageable -- dumps.

As I slouched in my seat, clicking away and killing time (not to mention wasting the money that I ought to have been earning with my degree), the need gradually became stronger, perhaps as a result of that particular slumped position which characterizes a lack of direction. Eventually I decided that it was time for me to undertake the most labor-intensive and perhaps most satisfying duty of the unemployed, and headed for the downstairs bathroom. Expecting a swift and easy trip, I brought no reading material, and approached my task with an enthusiasm that only the bored can muster.

"So normal," you say. "What could possibly go wrong?" I enjoyed a similar confidence. I thought everything was under control.

I'm sure that in the course of the many combined years that you, the collective readers, have been shitting, there has been many a time when the prow of the first emerging schooner feels as if it has a doublewide figurehead. You get the feeling that something is not right, that a part of you is stretching further than it ought to. You may gasp, you may grit your teeth; but in every case this turns out to be the iceberg itself, and not just the tip. The plug eventually gives way, and you let loose a normal chain of links. This, at least, was something I have experienced. So when I felt an unusual pulling at the walls of my rectum as I began, I decided it was only a temporary inconvenience. As I gently strained, urging my anus to grow up and act like a man, I felt the sensation of something-not-right become a feeling of something-is-definitely-wrong and then a feeling of everything-is-fucked. My sphincter had strained to its previous limits and beyond, with no end in sight. By this point I was less gritting my teeth than grinding them, and I was pounding on the linen cabinet before me as a way to ignore the unbelievable stretching sensation in my tender parts.

I soon decided that I was going to have to take what I thought would be the only shot at my pride and help things out a little back there. I reached up and grabbed myself one of the rather handy wet-naps made for asses that my parents buy -- with the additional durability and lubrication, it was just what I needed to poke away at my reluctant turds. With mild trepidation, I tilted up onto one cheek and swiped at the knob of poo that still protruded from my ass. The stuff was surprisingly firm, even for lower-tier butt-brownie, and I poked at it as best I could through the wet-nap. As it turned out, the lubricated material worked against me, as time and time again my probes slid away ineffectively. Eventually I gave up and checked the wet-nap for evidence of progress. Finding only a few unimpressive skidmarks, I tossed it into the bowl and considered my next move as my last illusion of safety faded away.

I want to make it very clear here that this was not simply a matter of constipation. Had my stools simply wanted to take up residence within me, I would have welcomed them as honored guests and waited for their eventual departure. But sitting there, it was becoming extremely clear that this poop was more stubborn than stationery, as the pressure mounted and mounted and mounted behind the petrified lump wedged into the exit. I was struck with wild images of birth, of yielding forth something terrible from my loins, and yes -- even of what a great story this would make for PoopReport. Then something even more terrifying entered my mind. What if this wouldn't come out? What if this became a medical issue? I envisioned my colon flayed open for the surgeons to remove the beast's black, disgusting heart. Or, perhaps even more painful, describing to a cluster of jaded nurses that I was in need of an emergency enema, stat! I resolved that I would take matters into my own hands. I was not going to burden the medical community with my shit. I was going to handle it myself.

I got another wet-nap and prepared to relieve some of the pressure on my poop-chute. Seeing as how this crap had the resilience of ceramic, I didn't see how I could squeeze off what had made its way outside. But the comfort level for my anus had diminished long ago. I had to stave off the onrush and buy myself more time. So, keeping my upper lip only slightly more stiff than my new internal enemy, I lifted up, reached around, and turned back the hands of time. Or at least, that's what it felt like.

If there is one universal truth in the universe, it is that poop, of all things, comes down and out of you -- it does not go back in.

The strangeness was dizzying. Here I had only been awake for an hour and already I was challenging the laws of nature.

With my cargo re-stowed for the moment, I embarked on the second part of my plan.

On the shelf of the linen cabinet, my father semi-discreetly keeps a twin-pack of enemas, apparently because he's due for an endoscopy. I blessed his middle-aged intestines and grabbed the box, quickly going over the instructions for a concept that had previously seemed so foreign to me. I yanked off my pants and boxers as I read, hardly believing what I was doing. The box had tiny diagrams of the various positions available. Grabbing a towel from the cabinet to shield myself from the cold tile floor, I assumed the most humiliating one: elbows on the floor, legs spread, ass in the air -- like aiming a surface-to-air missile, I thought. I read the rest of the label and was pleased to see that the bottle had a "soft pre-lubricated Comfortip;" but I was dismayed to read that after applying the liquid I was supposed to wait "until urge to evacuate is strong."

This would not do. The last thing I needed was for there to be more force behind this monster in my gut -- it would no doubt shred me on the way out. I decided I would give myself a little shot of liquid, which, coupled with the thoughtful lubrication, might loosen up the material and ease the passing. Entering foreign territory for the second time that day, I removed the construction-orange cap, steeled myself, and quickly became very intimate with the applicator end of the bottle.

It was less uncomfortable than I had expected, which probably owed to the fact that the tip was thinner than my pinky, or possibly to the fact that I had just barely avoided enlarging my asshole to the diameter of my forearm. With my innocence fully defiled, I closed my eyes, breathed in the scent of the bathroom floor, and gave my potential savior a cautious squeeze. What followed was a light sensation that I can only describe as trickling. That was followed by a terribly intimate stinging that told me the inner skin of my rectum had already begun to tear. I pulled out my only friend in this matter and waited, pondering whether I had the cojones to give myself a full squeeze and accept the consequences. At last, my bowels made a fateful decision in the shape of a powerful downward press, despite my inverted angle. Even gravity could not force them to relent.

I think it was here that it finally dawned on me that this was one baby that was going to have to be delivered by hand.

Resigned, too pained and too weary to even be very disgusted with myself, I climbed back onto the bowl and arrayed some toilet paper on the floor before me in preparation for the task. Still struggling with the intense leaden weight that had taken up residence in my intestinal tract, I selected a finger that I didn't much care for and reached back to begin the horrifying task of digging the shit out of my own ass. It didn't take much effort to bring myself to the previous sphincter-splitting state, and I went to work on the protruding bulk with my fingertip. It soon became clear why I had had so much trouble: the shit I had somehow produced had the consistency of clay, presenting a challenge even to my desperate ministrations -- which was funny, considering that I hadn't had any cement milkshakes the previous day. What was more, it was also sticky as hell, meaning that every chunk I lovingly extracted had to be wiped on the paper before me rather than simply dropped into the bowl.

After vanquishing the scout, I half-hoped that the nightmare would tumble out of me and all would be done. But nothing about this petrified mass was about to give in. And as I pushed up and searched deeper inside myself in the dirtiest way, I discovered why. There was more pure volume of shit in there than I had thought possible. My despair faded briefly into wonder as I discovered enormous nodules that branched out to each side of the formidable base -- a massive construct within me that I instantly deemed too wide to fit through my pelvis, much less my anus. It seemed larger than life, big enough for a new zip code. In my head I imagined that I was feeling the topography of a tiny new world. Summoning all my pluck and determination, I attacked the enemy, diligently chipping away at the landscape.

I will spare you the full recounting of the process of eliminating this monstrosity. It involved a seemingly endless repetition of clawing at my gutsm followed by smearing what I'd hooked on the toilet paper, punctuated with breaks on the towel in the surface-to-air position in a desperate effort to gain some relief from the relentless gravity I was experiencing. There were times, my face pressed into the towel, my wrist aching from the odd angle, my general resolve flagging, that I wanted to give up -- to take longer and longer breaks, to not take the crushing responsibility of digging fecal matter out of my cornchute. But the truth was always that failure was not an option in this situation. If I didn't do it, who would? And what I learned is that an extremely close second to a man's concern for his balls is his concern for his ass, and not having it reamed from the inside out by a fossilized chunk of shitstone.

In the end, I had accumulated about a turd's worth on the evil T.P. mural before me, the rest having fallen, chunk by chunk, into the pot. As soon as I had whittled it down to something shittable, I let it fly with an overpowering wave of relief. It was followed by an avalanche of softer material, no doubt what had been so persuasive the whole time. I have no doubt that I shat a record volume that day... and at nearly too high a price. It was disgusting, it was grueling, it was sometimes painful as fuck. But the end brought with it a sense of tried and true survival through hard work, as if I were a caveman who had survived a long winter by scrounging for berries.

Judging by the distinctive color of the stuff with which I unfortunately became so familiar, it was the offspring of a batch of vegetarian "Buffalo Chik'n" wings I had eaten the day before -- a food that seemed to think it could simulate meat by forming a colon-clogging clinker in my lower intestines. Thanks, guys. I suppose it serves me right to receive a year's worth of constipation in one shot -- I should accept that if you don't eat meat, you don't get to eat things like buffalo wings, without consequences. I always thought, as a vegetarian, I'd be able to eat most of the things I wanted to. But in the future, just to be safe, I think I'm gonna stick with the celery.

-- Impoopsible