The story begins: Mrs. BG had decreed that today was a shopping day for several things she wanted to pick up and bring with us back to the States. Like all other men, the mere thought of shopping made me cringe. Mrs. BG is a no-nonsense kind of person; she said we were going shopping, so were going shopping.
I've known since my late teens that I need to pay attention when I get a rumblin' in the bumblin'. I am a man who craps at LEAST four times a day -- and, on one memorable day, thirteen times.
But I digress. In Japan, most people walk and take the train EVERYWHERE. Many Japanese not only don't have a driver's license, they have NO CLUE how to drive. And so I found myself walking alongside my beautiful bride the half-mile or so to the local Daiei (think K-Mart in a five-story building). As we walked over the train tracks I felt a faint burble, but I ignored it, as I'd had my morning push already and it was only ten o'clock or so. We arrived at the store and walked in. Mrs. BG immediately headed to do her thing and I wandered in search of English. Any English. Eureka, they had a copy of I'm Getting a New Puppy, written in both English and Japanese. Even if it was written for a seven-year-old, it was English and should be good for two or three minutes of diversion.
Suddenly a sharp pain struck; I actually looked at my stomach for what might be stabbing me. And just as suddenly, there was a very urgent pressure at the backdoor, spurring me into action. I've felt this way before and it requires immediate attention, lest THINGS GET UGLY. Quickly, I glanced around for my wife.
I was still calm at this point. Immediate action needed to be taken, true; but I had time. As I was looking around, I spotted her going up the stairs to the second floor. Okie dokie, off I go -- moving with a sense of urgency, but still fairly calm. I softly called her name and she looked down at me and saw the beginnings of a sweat popping out on my forehead. We've been married for several years. She has come to recognize the look.
She glanced around, located the signs, and told me there was a family toilet on the second floor, as well as regular toilets in the same alcove that the stairs were in. I pushed past her and began climbing the stairs with some urgency, as the pressure was mounting.
You know how you get excited when you are almost home after being gone for a while? Or when you're about to eat something that you haven't had in a long time? You can almost taste it. As I reach the second floor landing my sphincter had begun to anticipate the sweet impending release. Oh, shit.
The Japanese can be quite odd in how they do things sometimes, and this was one of those times. In the landing I was standing in were the female restroom and the family restroom for which I'd been heading, as they double as handicap restrooms and have Western toilets. Occupied. What the hell? Clamping my sphincter back down, I grimaced. As I looked around, I spotted the blue universal bathroom sign -- ALL THE WAY ACROSS THE FREAKING STORE.
No way could I walk that far now -- this was getting a bit dangerous. At this point, perhaps two minutes had passed since first burble, and I was beginning to feel a bit desperate. My calm was rapidly disintegrating along with my ability to hold my sphincter closed. I decided the best course of action would be to wait for the person/s in the family restroom to come out. Surely it wouldn't be long.
The door had a narrow, wire-reinforced smoked glass window in it, and I couldn't detect any movement. However the occupied light was on, and tapping the green "open door" button produced no result. I let about twenty seconds go by as I stood there clenching my ass cheeks together. Shit. Okay, plan B.
To this day, I don't know why I made the decision I did, but I decided that my best bet was to head upstairs.
I read once about "wet walls" in construction. It's a simple concept, and one that I've used before to find a working bathroom. To save on costs, buildings are often built with inter-connected plumbing on common walls. This usually applies up and down floors as well as across walls. Got a bathroom on the second floor? Chances are there is another above or below it or on the other side of the wall. Makes sense, right? I think it was that logic that guided my decision to head up the stairs. Surely there was another restroom above; and if the female restroom was in this stairwell on THIS floor, wouldn't fairness dictate that the men's restroom be in the stairwell on the next floor up?
I was horribly wrong. There was no bathroom on the third floor. "Mother of God and all that is holy, what now?" my mind screamed. By this time I had a full-on sweat going -- forehead, armpits, and asscrack all were as slick as the first time I'd found the miracle of Astroglide.
It was at this point that I made the fateful decision that completed the day. I decided to BELIEVE in my "wet wall" theory and head on up to the fourth floor. I'd kept an ear cocked for the whoosh of the door in the family restroom and had heard nothing. I moved up the stairs as quickly as I could while clutching my stomach, praying and clenching my ass cheeks together as tight as possible.
Never gamble on the Belizean Crapper -- I suck. No bathroom on this floor either. Not only was there no bathroom, there wasn't even a broom closet with a sink like the one I'd seen and briefly considered while still on the second floor.
(A quick side note: the very fact that I was willing to crap in a non-"family" restroom is significant here and indicates how desperate I had become. The Japanese in general don't use Western-style toilets, preferring instead to squat over porcelain laid flush with the floor and featuring a little half-dome that I think you are supposed to pee towards. I am not a small man. More importantly, I'm not flexible. I DO NOT squat well, and I'm physically unable to get into a position sufficient to crap with any restrictions on my legs such as dropped trousers or underwear. If I'm taking the leap of crapping in a Japanese-style toilet, this typically involves removing one shoe and balancing on one foot while I pull one leg of my pants and underwear off. I then put my shoe back on and wrap the now loose leg of pants and underwear tightly around my other thigh or knee to keep it out of the piss on the floor. I then squat as best I can and hang on to something, typically the toilet pipe which is usually directly in front of me. I've broken that once -- but I will tell that story some other time. Imagine the intricacies of the maneuver described above -- the classic "twist and shit" maneuver has nothing on me!)
So I'm now standing on the fourth floor landing in a stairwell. Nobody is in my immediate vicinity. In hindsight, I probably should have taken advantage of this right then and there. I didn't. Have you ever KNOWN that you are gonna shit yourself but refuse to accept it? This was one of those times.
So I made a decision that shamed me. I was going to shit in the women's bathroom on the second floor. Gender training be damned. The only problem: I'd come to the realization that ANY movement was going to result in BAD THINGS.
But there was no help for it. As I began to pray under my breath -- I think it consisted mainly of the word "please" over and over -- I began running/hopping down the steps to the second floor. I had no choice but to run. Unfortunately, as I ran in the hopping gait you use when running on stairs, the impact on every other step was causing me to do the Hershey squirts in my pants. With each step I was re-clenching my asshole, but having very little effect. I could feel my underwear slowly getting warmer as I bounced.
Finally I reached the second floor and dashed into the women's bathroom. Soft pink pastels and the electronic version of a babbling brook to mask the sounds of nature played softly. I received a very startled glance from a woman crouched in one of the two stalls. Her child was squatting and it seemed that she was coaching him.
I slammed into the other stall and kicked one shoe off, heedless of the fact that I was stepping on bare tile. I whipped one leg of my jeans off and physically tore my underwear out of the way, smearing shit on my ass cheeks in the process. I shat so hard I swear a part of my liver went with it. I heard the mother in the stall next door murmuring to her little boy in Japanese. "Good boy, hurry up, please…" He was about two years old, and I heard him ask his mother, in a clear high voice, "Where's HIS mommy?" I wondered the same thing. I HEARD her stifle a laugh as she cleaned him up and they left.
I then began my own process of cleaning up, taking my underwear off and using it to wipe the splatters on my ass and thighs. As I was cleaning, one or two other women came into the bathroom and used the stall next to me. I waited for a break in the traffic, tossed my dirty Underoos in the trash, and walked out of the bathroom and stairwell as nonchalantly as I could. I went and found my wife and pretended as if all was well. Luckily I didn't see the lady and her son during the rest of the shopping trip. We walked home.
I've told only one other person of this, until now.