I'll get back to the shit-hanger momentarily. Because beginning with this first mishap, I stumbled onto a number of nuggets of knowledge that I or others should have known long ago. I want to document these insights as they occurred to me.
Nugget One. When you check into a condo or are a first-time guest in someone's house, don't first thing go take a big ol' dump in the new facility. I know, traveling has probably backed up your traffic. But treat this precious piece of white porcelain like it was a newborn. Begin by feeding it just a little, starting it on liquids if possible. If you do need to dump right now, pinch off a small trial balloon, flush it, and carefully observe what happens. You've probably seen golfers pluck a little grass and toss it in the air to determine wind speed and direction before they swing away. Same principle here.Now, back to the shit marinating in the downstairs toilet. These condos were rented out furnished and thus, they claimed, fully equipped. Indeed, the kitchen was much better stocked than my own -- wine glasses of four varieties, knives for every occasion, a kick-ass cleaver. In a closest upstairs, a carpet sweeper, broom and dustpan, ironing board. On the private patio, a grill. I lifted up the lid and by golly if there wasn't a bag of briquettes and can of lighter fluid just begging me to get busy and wrassle up a steer. I found accouterments I've never dreamed of having -- like those silly little doohickeys to stick in the ends of your corncob.
But do you think there was a fucking plunger on the premises?
Nugget Two. Before you get comfy in your rented condo, quickly case the joint and locate the plunger. If there isn't one, then it's all the more important that you follow the protocol outlined in Nuggets One and Four.With ten minutes to party time, I couldn't pussyfoot around. I phoned the condo office.Nugget Three. If you own a condo, or have friends staying at your house, don't risk humiliating your guests before they're even unpacked. Equip their bathroom with a plunger. (And for God's sake, don't get cute about it. For example, here's a product that disguises a plunger as a plant [1]. Who, the site asks, who wouldn't want to turn an "ugly bathroom plunger into a decorative ... tree stand"? PoopReporters, will you all join me in raising a hand high in the air and wiggling your fingers? Plungers are not meant to be hidden. Ask yourself: who would you be hiding it from? Your guests. Who most need to know where it is? Your guests. The plunger should be plainly visible and within eight feet of the toilet. If you insist on storing it out of sight in a nearby closet or cabinet, post signage.)
Office: "Hello."
Me: "YesI'min#23andI'vegotasituati--"
Office. "You've reached the Three Kings Condos. Our summer office hours are from eight AM to eight PM..."
It was now nearly nine, and all the office staff had gone home. "So this isn't like a hotel," I calmly said to myself, always interested in learning new things. Then I tore off through the place again, desperately hoping that I'd simply missed it. When this turned up nothing, I dashed to the community laundry room to see if they keep one there. Nope.
Nugget Four. When checking into a condo, determine if and when the staff head for home. Well before that time, give all critical systems -- shower, TV, but most importantly, toilets -- a test run. Once they're gone and problems develop, you may as well be in the middle of Kansas, on I-70, in a canoe.There was some irony to my predicament: I have spent several months prior to this trip researching a poop report on plungers. It's an assignment I still owe Dave, but one for which I've never been able to get the poop prose flowing. Nevertheless, as of May of last year, I have become arguably the world's foremost expert on clogging and unclogging toilets. After reading everything I could find, I'd interviewed both a renowned professor about the physics of plunging and an experienced plumber (my brother) about his technique. I'd done an analysis of the results of a survey on the amount of toilet paper PoopReporters use in a sitting [2]. To get real data on how much shit is normally in a toilet when it's flushed, I'd cajoled Chris Rockwell of The Daily Download into fishing his turds out of the toilet for several days to weigh and measure them [3]. And after digesting all this information, I turned my upstairs bathroom into a research lab. I developed an offline method for clogging the toilet so I could test over and over the various plunging techniques I'd learned about. I discovered that even physicists and plumbers hold some misconceptions about what is happening as you set and then operate a plunger. If plunging ever becomes an Olympic event (and why wouldn't it?), I guarantee to bring home the bronze.
So here I was in a hi-tech condo built during the 2002 Winter Olympics, and the toilet was clogged. There was no one in the world more up to this challenge than I. I didn't have the standard-issue equipment, but so what? Surely such a triviality would not stop one worthy of Mt. Poop Olympos. I mean, if Ronald Reagan, armed only with a nice head of hair, could play a vital role in bringing down the most concrete manifestation of the Cold War, certainly I could tear this little wall down.
I was standing over the toilet squinting at the clog when I heard myself say aloud, "Get a grip, asswipe." I tend to talk to myself at moments like this. The listener is typically Logjam the Lunatic. The vocalizer is some version of my father -- sensible, calm, irritatingly practical. Daddy Logjam continued: "After they get here, we'll assemble them and announce that the nearest toilet is all bunged up. They're mature adults -- they'll understand."
Staring down at the toilet, I stood quiet for several seconds. Then I knelt down in front of it to do something I hadn't done in years. "Dear God," Logjam the Lunatic called out. Then I thrust my bare hand deep into the bowl, grabbed the clog by the neck, and yanked it up like a ripe carrot.
We were back in business. Two minutes later that same defiled hand, washed and dried, was welcoming colleagues and filling their glasses with ice. Incredibly versatile things, hands are.
Most people think that you are trying to force the clog down with a plunger. A few claim that you're trying to suck it up. In truth, you are trying to do both. With the plunger, you get and keep the clog moving -- and whether it is finally forced down or up doesn't really matter. It was this hard-earned knowledge that led me to believe that in this situation I might be able to tug out the clog.
I don't recommend that you ever try what I did. I've received years of training in this sort of hand-to-shit trench warfare [4]; and while the physical technique is easy enough to acquire, the mental fortitude is not. If you're determined to add bare-handed shit snagging to your resume, start with something considerably less demanding -- alligator wrestling, say.