his recent report [2], but there was definitely some variety of treatment going on. To my layman's nose, it smelled rather foul on a hot summer's day. Walking past the plant always added a sense foreboding, because you knew no matter what you ate it'd soon be making its way through said plant in one way or another.
I have this funny thing about me. I guess it's a personality flaw. Said flaw is that if you offer me a sandwich, I will always order tuna. I don't care where or when or who's making it or how long it may have had to go bad. I have eaten tuna at Wolfgang Puck restaurants as well as other top-end eateries. But I have also eaten prepackaged tuna sandwiches from 7/11's, and once I ate one at La Guardia that seemed to be from the airport's opening day. Surprisingly, I have never had an issue -- ever. The problem that occurred this day was actually caused by turkey. Evil, evil turkey.
The food at the cafeteria was always terrible, but really, that's to be expected. Nevertheless, my roommate and I went to dinner around ten, which was pretty usual for us. We got in line and he ordered turkey. I was going to order my usual tuna, but I didn't. I don't remember why -- I think I might have been talking to a girl that was in one of my classes or something; anyway, I guess I just waved at the worker that I wanted what Mike (name changed) wanted. So we sat down, and the girl sat down with some guy I presumed to be her boyfriend. I cursed my stupidity and turned to the task at hand: scarfing the seemingly innocent turkey.
It didn't taste odd. The mayo seemed okay. The cheese tasted a little funny, but that was normal -- there were always rumors floating around the school that they put laxatives in the cheese. The reasoning behind this, I heard, was two-fold. First, this school had something like an 80:20 male-to-female ratio (which is terrible!) and when men are left alone (especially young men) there are certain things that we loathe (like vegetables) and other things that we are drawn to (like cheese). So the idea was that because none of us ever ate anything to move our bowels along, they decided they'd just slip laxatives in the cheese to make us go and keep us all happy and un-constipated. The problem is that whatever was going on the food produced volcanic colonic eruptions from almost everyone. The bathrooms in the cafeteria themselves were always full.
The second proposed rumor was that they put laxatives in their food to make sure it had an exit strategy -- a set timetable to make sure that none of us would get food poisoning. With the speed at which the food moved, that explanation seemed more likely. I could eat at eleven and miss notes in a 12:30 class because I had to shit.
Anyways, back to the story. Mike and I both ingested a turkey sandwich on wheat with mayo, lettuce, tomatoes, and provolone cheese at ten o'clock at night. The problems did not begin until the next morning.
Mike was up before me, as always, because I'm one lazy bastard. He came back into the room fully dressed and grinned -- I presume because he knew he was going to fart. He popped out a squeaker. We farted as sport in that suite and we always shared it, because farts are funny. But this time it was different -- it was a tiny little fart, but it filled the room with a strange, rancid, rotting meat smell. His grin morphed into a frown as he clutched his stomach and took the three giant steps to our bathroom, where he immediately began to annihilate the toilet. I laughed and made fun of him as he popped Imodium. He was looking more than a little grey as he began making phone calls to inform his teachers that he most definitely could not leave the room that day.
Right around that time I finally got out of bed and proceeded into the shower. Once in the shower, I myself popped a short, rank fart. It just smelled wrong. Not like ass... more like roadkill. The urge to shit was so strong I had to dump naked and soaking wet with the shower still running. I felt the immediate slap of karma as I realized Mike and I had shared the same entrée at dinner and were now both experiencing one of Dante's lower circles of hell. Once dressed, I, too, popped Imodium and made my round of phone calls from my cell phone because I couldn't leave the bathroom. Thankfully, our suite had two separate shower/shitter combos.
I think we would have found it funny that we were playing dueling asses if it hadn't felt so bad. The smell was actually bad enough to shock the remaining roommates out of showering -- which, in my opinion, was impressive. Once Drunk Pat, another roommate, had done shots of gravy; anything that's too rank for Pat is too rank for humans.
Once the initial waves had passed and I could lie in bed and watch ER, I continually cursed Mike out for the turkey. During the second wave, I called the administration and talked to someone, explaining that their cost-cutting or what have you had really fucked my schooling for the day. The call was punctuated by a few long, hard farts. The administrator inquired as to what the ripping noise was. I informed her, and at that point she hung up and refused to answer my calls for the rest of the day.
The shits were noxious squirters -- not the mellow, let-it-all-flow-out type. They came in bursts mixed with gas that made a Jackson Pollack out of the toilet. This experience taught me one thing: I can handle any form of tuna, no matter how questionable; but something seemingly as safe as turkey can ruin me.
