Since we were already downtown, someone suggested a stroll through the fabric district to see all the little shops that sell knock-off goods. Most of these places are just storefronts, with no real sales floor and, more importantly, NO RESTROOMS.
About halfway through our tour, I started to feel a rumble in the Bronx. Unlike normal gas, this was accompanied by a twisting sensation and the feeling that the bottom of my stomach had completely dropped away from the remains of my tasty sandwich. If my duodenum was a trap door, the hinges were broken.
I tried to conceal my discomfort while covertly looking for a bathroom. My sphincter was clenching so tight that sweat broke out on my upper lip. After about five minutes, I realized I was going to need help, so I confessed my situation to my classmates, downplaying the agonizing cramps I was feeling. I was hoping one of them knew of a restroom somewhere in the area. The only one they knew of was in a fabric store a block away -- a crowded, vendor-filled block.
I had been taking care not to walk too fast, much less get jostled and shoved in a crowd of strangers, but I knew it was my only chance; so I squeezed my ass cheeks together and speed-walked to the fabric store. It was running through my mind that I might actually have to take a crap an alley if I didn't feel I could make it. I figured people might think it was performance art...
When I got there, imagine my dismay when I found 1) there was a line; and 2) it was a pay toilet, and I didn't have any change. Well, call me Blanche, because the woman in front of me took one look at my face and told me to go ahead of her, AND she gave me a quarter. I felt bad, knowing I was about to go in there and make the place unlivable, but the stabbing pain in my lower abdomen forced me not to care.
As I exited some minutes later, one of my classmates was waiting for me -- her husband had gone to get the car and would meet us to take me home. She told me that the sandwich had been known to cause a bit of an upset, but never with such immediacy. I nodded weakly; I had very little fluid left in my body at the time.
We got a third of the way home when I felt the second wave. This time I knew there would be no ten-minute interlude -- it was my first and only warning. The driver noticed my face in the rearview mirror and began scanning the area for a restroom, but I was quicker -- as he slowed for a red light, I wordlessly bolted out of the car and across two lanes of traffic into a restaurant.
I guess they circled the block, because they were waiting when I came out. They said they had never seen anyone run so fast...
-- Artemis