Mike and I both went to the same high school and both lived in the same hometown in northern New Jersey, so every so often we'd make a trip home, either to see the family during vacation or for various other reasons. Boston to Jersey is a pretty fair clip, but after a few trips we had it down to a science of sorts. Depending on when we were leaving from either Jersey or Boston, we'd stop at one of two places to eat. We liked to hold out for the Roy Rogers on the Mass Pike because we enjoy Roy Rogers -- it's like Arby's, but not shitty. And if we were coming from Boston we'd usually hit a Mickey D's.
I don't remember which way we were going on this occasion, but we didn't stick to our usual food stops. Instead, we stopped at Friendly's.
Friendly's sucks. But I didn't bitch because Mike was driving and who really gives a shit anyway? It's just food, right? Any roadside choke and puke will do.
This, however, is where one of my major life rules comes into play. When you eat at a place like that, stick to what is safe. Simple, right? I ordered what I always order at an Americana place: some variety of hamburger. I always do that because it's always safe -- I've never been to a Denny's or a diner or any American place that has ever f'd up a burger. It's just like watching TV -- don't tune to CNN for dick jokes, and don't tune to Comedy Central for real news (take that, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert!).
I explained this to Mike and he chided me, telling me that I should take risks. To illustrate his point, he ordered the chicken fajitas. Monumentally stupid. And he'd pay for it.
We got back on the road and everything was fine. We were peeling back the miles, going deaf to exceptionally loud techno music, speeding, etc. About three hours later, though, there's definitely a problem. Mike isn't communicating. He's not laughing at my typically witty banter at all. What he's doing is staring at the road and going fast -- exceptionally fast, even for him. Usually we kept to a safe cruising speed of around eighty or ninety; with a radar detector, this is no big deal. At that current moment Mike had the speed needle slammed all the way over to one hundred and twenty.
So I nonchalantly express my concern. "Hey man, you doin' alright?"
"Do you remember if there's a bathroom anywhere along here?" he asks with a slight urgency in his voice. The fajitas have come back to haunt him, and the clock is ticking.
First I stifle laughter, and then I inform him that we're in the middle of nowhere, on this bastard stretch of some of the older highways and byways we take because they aren't really in use anymore... so they don't have any restaurants or anything on them. I apprise him of the situation and he looks grim. "You gotta take a shit, man?" He nods, and it looks like he's doing everything in his power to hold this bitch in. He is literally staring at the road and clutching the wheel with white knuckles. He's not particularly Shameful, but we have to do something -- we have to figure a way out of this dilemma.
I advise that he take an exit and look for anything with a restroom. The exit leads to industrial parks -- he's now doubly screwed. He curses me out, which wasn't completely unwarranted, but he's just having one hell of a bad day. We drive around for a while because I suppose he wanted some privacy -- in any case, I could feel the urgency in the way he was handling the car.
He skipped a few options that I would have gone for, including a dormant parking garage and a long-abandoned gas station where I was sure we could have busted down the door to the shitter. We got back on the highway and he once again slammed it all the way over to 120, I guess hoping to make it out of this restroom-free zone. But we're just not gonna make it. About ten minutes later, he's sweating and clenching his jaw. He asks me in clipped sentences to find him some napkins, anything. And then he abruptly pulls off the freeway, on to the first side street he finds, and into increasingly rural areas.
"You looking for woods to take a shit in man?" I ask. At this point I'm being serious. There's no stifled laughter. I don't want to die.
He doesn't respond. Instead, he just stares at me and repeats himself.
"Napkins."
It is nearer to a grunt then a word. His eyes are looking crazy. He's desperate. Life-and-death desperate. Way too desperate for this laughable situation we're in.
Finally we find a suitable location. Well, not really, but the road sorta ended, so I guess it was here or never. We had ended up in this rundown, ramshackle, redneckesque collection of building propped against each other way back in the woods. I'm not pleased with the location, fearing he might be shot while taking a shit and me, not being able to drive a manual, would be left to be sodomized by the swarming Adirondack types.
He snatches the napkins, fumbles with his seat belt while muttering obscenities, and darts out of the car, not even bothering to close the driver's side door. I decide this would be a good time to have a cigarette, seeing as I'd have to get out of the car to close the damn door anyway.
He bolts off behind the taillights somewhere and I hear a couple of loud, guttural noises, paired with some pretty impressive splashing and explosive gas. Two-and-a-half cigarettes and around twenty-five minutes pass before he finally strolls back. At that point I am clutching my trusty and illegal butterfly knife, ready to pop it open if the need should arise. He comes slowly back into the taillights, looking pale and washed out in their red glow, haunted by his experience.
I inquire if everything had come out alright. He promptly gives me the finger and gets back in the car. Apparently he had grabbed hold of a window ledge after dropping his pants, leaned back with his feet pressed against the wall, and rocketed out his guts. I felt it was a pretty good solution to the whole thing: we both survived the ordeal, and as far as I know we didn't defile anyone's property. Although I could be wrong -- some poor backwoods gentleman could have woken up the next morning to a revolting pile of half-processed fajita in his sideyard.
It's still an inside joke that I bring up from time to time -- one of those college memories that comes up in my mind, I guess. There was just something about the urgency to take a shit and the absolute lack of facilities in our so-called modern society that really gets to me. Though his relief was probably greater then mine, I was frankly quite happy that we were now once again driving on the edge of out-of-control, rather then out in the ether, out where men die because of animals and debris. Ten more minutes in the car and I may have been the one ruining his upholstery.
But it's all good. We both lived and he didn't shit himself. Sometimes it all works out in the end. And he did learn a valuable lesson about fajitas, and what to eat where.