Opiates clog up the pipes. I know this now, but when I was twenty-one I was young, stupid, and in a lot of pain from a broken collarbone. Note to the equine lovers out there: when your horse jumps a fence, it helps to go with him or her, and not to go flying off and into the fence, thereby snapping a bone that would really rather stay in one piece. If you don't, you get to go for a lovely ride in the ambulance down streets torn up by construction and into an ER with Shecky The Worst Fucking X-Rayer In The World (upon whom you distribute as much dirt as you can while you flail in agony because he's trying to pull your arm out of the socket). And then you get to go breezing out six hours later with a little orange bottle filled with The Little White Pills of Who Cares.
Now, perhaps taking a twenty-five hour bus trip with a broken bone isn't the world's smartest move, but what the hell. All my friends were going out to North Dakota and dammit I was going too. That was in the Church Days, when I nodded to all the Jesus This and Jesus That just so I could hang out with people my own age and feel normal. They were going out to help a church run a vacation Bible school for kids on the reservation, which we'd done before, and I wasn't going to miss out because of a stupid injury. My bone doc said it was okay, my parents left it up to me, so I said "Hell yeah!" and went, making sure that my nice little refill of Percocets went with me, and none of this give-the-pills-to-an-adult-and-they'll-make-sure-you-get-them-on-time shit -- I am the Mistress of Percocet now! They're mine! All mine!
Right, well. A bouncing bus is not the ideal place for a busted bone, but The Pills took care of that -- didn't get rid of the pain, but I sure as shit didn't care about it, either. It had been a week since the break and it was already slowly starting to heal; but I had to be in pain, right? I popped those babies like they were candy and spent the whole ride in a "Hey, man, groovy" haze. That was Friday night into Saturday.
Monday rolls around. I hadn't pinched a loaf since before I left, and now I'm getting a mite concerned. I usually drop once a day or every other day at least; but now it's been (I actually had to count on fingers for this) three or four days. No shit. I remain blithely unaware of what awaits me as the sun goes down.
At the camp we're basically camping out on the plains. But we do have the luxury of an actual structure for showering and shitting. Yeah: the two measly stalls were separated from each other by flimsy plywood and the "doors" were tarps that hung about two inches from your knees and would blow open at any stiff breeze that came through. But it was something. You'd think girls would throw up more of a fuss about stuff like that, but we all handled it well.
It's evening. Warm, mid-summer, with the constant breeze that always blows across the plains churning the air just enough to keep the bugs at bay. You can see every single star in the sky with no pollution or city glare to block them. The chapel's lights are warm and inviting, and everyone's heading there for evening service. Everyone except me. I am going in the opposite direction to the bathroom because Something Is Up, telling the nearest adult-type person that I'll be right in and listening to the mournful, "But it's service!" bleating that follows me. Why they always harassed me when I had to go, I'll never know. Within about two minutes of sitting down, I knew this wasn't any quick-pee-get-up-and-go situation. We were in it for The Long Haul.
One point of clarification: I, for whatever reason, am used to power squeezing. I routinely have moments of "grab the wall as every muscle in your lower body contracts until you can feel the exact shape and proportion of the turd." It doesn't bother me; in fact, in a manner so strange that I have no hope of understanding it, it sometimes feels rather pleasant. Sitting there on the pot with the tarp gently tapping my knees, that is the feeling I got. Okay, no big deal. Take your time, don't push too hard, and all will be well. I wait.
And wait. And wait. Something's moving, but it's not moving very fast. A couple mild test-pushes yield zero results. Maybe it's not ready. That's it. I try to stand up but... well, jam a fist up your ass and then see how well you can move. I sit back down. An adult voice wafts in from outside: "Come on, everyone's there! It's time for service!"
It's funny how the group simply cannot function without every single human being there. "Go on without me! I'm kinda in the MIDDLE of something!" I shout, hoping the person will take a hint. She does and leaves and I'm finally blessed with silence.
And cursed with a log the size of Rhode Island. Women tell me that because I'm not a mother, I have no idea what childbirth is like. Bullshit. I know what squeezing a grapefruit out a hole the size of a peach pit feels like. By now I'm in a panic. I've already reached back -- hand firmly swaddled in toilet paper -- and felt this damn thing. And it's HUGE. Not only am I panicking that it's not going to come out (because it's sure as hell not going back in), but I'm panicking that I might actually have to ask someone to help me. Despite there being several family members on this trip (but none of them parents), that is not an option. So I have to go it alone.
By now my ass is so distended that I feel like I'm crowning a head -- a shit-head. My legs have slid around the toilet bowl and my arms are locked against the sides of the stall like some demented Garfield suction-cup plush toy. Service ends and I hear voices swarming around, and someone asks me if I'm okay.
"I'm fine!" I manage to say. My last words. Right after I hear, "Oh, okay," my muscles take over and all of a sudden I'm squeezing my organs, my skeletal structure, and my entire BRAIN through my ass. I want to scream but my lungs are trying to escape through my ass and the pain is incredible. I can FEEL my ass distending and stretching and dear God tearing apart and I can't stop it because my body wants it OUT just get it out -- splash.
Relief so hot and heavy it's painful rushes over me and I collapse, panting and sobbing that I'm alive and I can even still feel my ass, so maybe I didn't rip it to hell. I wobble to my feet and do what we all do when faced with Turds of Unusual Size: I look.
It's grayish and shaped like a teardrop, with the larger end bigger than my fist. It's contoured and bumpy... kinda like a brain. Hey, maybe I DID shit my brains. It is also, to my sudden dismay, entirely too large to be flushed.
And here, friends, is where it got really sad. Not only did I have to go to one of the adult-types and tell them what happened, but I had to go BACK, armed only with two plastic bags (whose thickness would have to do in keeping my strange birth from actual contact with me), praying fervently with each moment that no one else had tried to go in there, and retrieve my creation from the toilet. So armed, I slinked my way through camp, trying to avoid the questions that followed, to the barbed wire fence separating camp from cattle-grazing land next to it. And -- as I'd been instructed -- I hoisted my special delivery up to neck level like a shotputter and hurled it over the fence. The sight of shit flying through the air, my shit, throwing my own shit over a fence like some demented monkey, made me laugh my sore ass off. Compared to this, squeezing blood out in the bathroom of a strip club and a gay club in Florida (both on the same night) doesn't even come close.