I waited a few minutes for the train to come to the next stop before heading into the restroom and initiating the launch sequence. I slid the door shut with a solid thud, casually flicked the lock, and got down to the business at hand. It was standard Saturday morning bathroom fare: a greasy mosaic of marbled asstrami, hot ring baloney, smoked squatwurst, and other assorted launch meats. The only problem: while my corn rocket thrusters were firmly engaged, the lock mechanism on the restroom's sliding door was not. When the train started moving again, the door slid halfway open just as I was putting the squeeze on a spicy slab of processed sphincter loaf.
"Whoa!" I screeched, my voice about six octaves higher than normal as my butterbean reflexively dilated.
The train accelerated with a sudden jerk, slamming the door wide open and offering a devastating glimpse of my exploits to the three segments of the population I despise most: men, women, and children. It was the stuff of which sheet-soaking nightmares are borne.
"WHOOAA!" I bawled louder, drawing even more attention to my ridiculous plight. Arms flailing, I sprung from the bowl in mid-loaf, covering the three or four stutter-step distance to the open portal in a matter of just two or three eternities -- plenty of time for the middle-aged woman with the turd's eye view of the whole dick-and-ball-flopping affair to recoil in mortal horror. A half-amused, half-frenzied shriek of "OH MY GOD!" from some unseen female passenger was the last thing I heard before I slammed the door shut.
My descent into the abyss had begun.
With my shorts still at my ankles, I began backpedaling to the toilet -- unaware that a small darkhole briquette had liberated itself from its anal tethers during my mad dash for the door. In a scene that fell on the scale of enchantment somewhere between an ice-cold shower and naked Twister with the Harlem Globetrotters, I felt my knee buckle as the accursed smudglet (and what little trace of dignity I had left) squished underfoot.
My blood started boiling with rage and scat splat fever. Four days shy of my thirty-eighth birthday, I was faced with the absurd task of removing micronuggets of my own putrescence from my sneaker treads.
After I composed myself, I finished my dump (now reduced to a fractured, jellied shell of what it had been), wiped my intricately-patterned New Balance crap circle off the floor, and set about extracting the soft, firmly-entrenched crud from my shoe with toilet paper. Once I realized the futility of this preposterous endeavor, I ran my sneaker under warm water in the sink.
My once-proud shoulders slumped in disgust as a runny brown emulsion reminiscent of the discharge from a seventeen-year-old beagle"s eyes trickled down the drain. When I was satisfied that my foot would reek of only watered-down raw sewage for the rest of the trip, I moved on to my next concern: re-entering civilized society. Because I refused to cower in the crapper for the next three hours, I needed an exit strategy. But what the hell was the social protocol once I opened that door? Did I:
- Apologize to the middle-aged woman and/or everyone in the vicinity? ("Sorry if my complete and utter humiliation put a damper on your ride, folks. Here's where your attorneys can serve me papers.")
- Prepare a witty rejoinder? ("That's just a little something I like to call 'The Stool Monty'!" )
- Jump off the train and begin life anew as Drunken Hayes, The Aggressive Panhandler?
or - Embrace insanity in its purest, most beautiful form? I mean the kind of undiluted madness that spits in the face of psychiatry and its pharmacopeia. The kind of madness that knows no social conventions, boundaries, or consequences. The kind of madness that screams, "I COLLECT THE TESTICLES OF UNBAPTIZED WOODCHUCKS TO MAKE BRACELETS FOR JACK KLUGMAN!"
My blood-alcohol level dangerously low, I decided the answer to of all these questions was no. This was a situation that demanded poise, grace, and decorum -- three qualities I possess in very short supply. So I did the only thing I could do: I opened the door and quickly returned to my seat as if nothing happened, avoiding any and all eye contact along the way.
When I recounted this story to my buddies at the bachelor party a few hours later, I had my fist up a blowup doll's ass and enough scotch in my bloodstream to ensure I'd be shitting plaid for the next week. The long hard road to recovery had begun.