Not long ago, I pushed out a turd the size of a brick. Actually, it was bigger than a brick. It was more like a concrete block. It felt like I was trying to park the car in the mailbox instead of the garage. Needless to say, by bung was literally bleeding -- after all, bungholes are only made of skin.
It was painful, sure, but I soon found that this was only the beginning of the nightmare.
The following day, as I went for my three o'clock constitutional, the brick I passed the day before was a distant memory, a bad dream all but forgotten. As I dropped my shorts and began to push, the magazine I had brought with me became harder and harder to read. This one wasn't huge or anything, but it was painful as hell.
When I looked at my afterwipe (on the corporate-issue construction paper they put in the dispensers) it was composed of nearly equal parts poo and blood. I managed to clean things up a bit, but it still hurt. Upon performing a quick exam, I noted that the blood was, in fact, coming from the sphincter itself -- not anything internal (whew). A bit unsettled, I went back to my desk, but by the time I was ready to leave work, I had already forgotten about it.
On my walk across town, however, I began to notice an itching sensation from the outback steakhouse. It worsened the more I walked. Before long, it felt like I had forgotten to wipe. By the time I reached my destination, I could barely move my legs. I ran into the bathroom and wiped, only to find my bung bleeding like a gunshot wound.
The following week was a never-ending cycle of anal torment. Dump. Bleed. Wipe. Walk. Bleed. Wipe. Repeat. I now dreaded my daily dump as much as I used to enjoy it. I tried Preparation H, which stung unimaginably. I switched to A+D Ointment, which helped -- but A+D needed to be applied on a freshly-showered bum, which was not an option in the middle of the workday.
Finally, nearly a week after the mayhem began, I was sitting on the crapper, and it dawned on me. Dumping wasn't the cause of my plight, wiping was. Each time I wiped with that horrible cheap toilet paper, I reopened the lacerations.
Toilet paper, my old friend for so many years, had turned on me. It had become the enemy. A new strategy was called for.
The following day, right before I normally do the deed, I marched over to the local drugstore. I felt like soldier preparing to wage a one-man war. I chose my arsenal carefully. I went straight to the baby care isle and located a tube of A+D and my new secret weapon, the travel-size Wet Ones Thick Moist Towelettes.
I went back upstairs, shat my brains out and wiped, not with TP but with WOs. The sensation was cool and soothing. The wipe was the cleanest ever. No mess, no abrasions -- it was magical. I capped it off with a bit of A+D (applicable now, as everything was clean and wonderful) and marched back to my desk, triumphant. My walk across town that day filled me with a joy I couldn't tell passers-by about, even though I wanted to.
From that day forth, I became one of the Wet Ones. The toilet paper stays where it belongs -- in the dispenser where it can't hurt anyone.
-- Jaybowel [1]