Wake Up and Smell the Shit

by Kirsten Koza

  My boyfriend Jorge and I cruised into Córdoba, Argentina, to stay with a friend for a few days. We were planning on doing the tourist thing before swinging north and then crossing into Bolivia. We skipped arm in arm through the parks with the doves and the children, gawked at cathedrals, meandered along sidewalks, and fingered expensive clothing we would never buy. We drank gallons of Malbec and ate megatons of bread.

  Then one particular morning in the miniscule apartment of Jorge’s friend, I felt a rumbling in my belly. Miguel, the friend, had gone to work, leaving my boyfriend and me in the two-room apartment. We were sharing a twin bed that doubled as a couch in the main area that was also the kitchen, living room, and dining room. Bodily function planning was necessary here too because peeing in the middle of the night meant awkward moments, as the only way to the bathroom was through the bedroom of our sleeping host.

  The rumble promised to be interesting, as my schedule had been thrown off by the high bread/meat-to-fiber ratio (also known as the Argentinian Diet), something a bit outside my regular eating lifestyle. In fact, it was less of a rumble and more of a surprise punch in my lower abdomen, followed by several seconds of intense, possibly perforating intestinal pain and then a distinct need to let the monster out right then. I hightailed it to the bathroom (approximately five feet away) and had a relieving, if somewhat strenuous and painful evacuation experience.

  Per standard bathroom protocol, I turned to behold my triumph. The accomplishment that greeted me was obscenely large. My intestines tend to do that while traveling—produce Guinness Book of World Record-style shits that both baffle and amaze. I congratulated myself as I flushed Jabba-the-Turd down the drain. And then I flushed it again because it had stubbornly reappeared in the hole. And then, again. This poop protégé seemed really curious about the outside world. One more flush. Still there, eyeing me. Knowing.

  Somewhere in the tomes of time there is written the Five Flush Maximum. No one knows if that’s when suspicions of nearby people are finally raised, or if that’s when the toilet water level stops replenishing itself out of defiance, but that’s when I gave up. The log refused to disappear.

  There was a swirl of panic within me—leaving a very obvious and obscenely large loaf of dung in a host’s bathroom is one of the things you aren’t supposed to do as an appreciative guest. Luckily there was no line of people waiting outside or group of people within hearing of every fart and sigh, two situations I’d been in before. Only Jorge, my boyfriend, waited outside, and he was more than accustomed to what came out of my ass.

  Nonetheless, I couldn’t leave this thing here. We had to get rid of it. “Honey?” I called my extremely hesitant boyfriend into the bathroom. He nearly gagged when he saw the issue at hand. “Can you help me?”

  He looked like he wanted to say no, but instead moved toward the toilet. I left him to work on the problem. He emerged from the bathroom a while later, looking frazzled.

  “It won’t go down,” he said, “and there’s no plunger.”

  “Well, we can’t leave it there.” I checked my watch. “We have three hours until Miguel is back. Let’s go buy a plunger. Why doesn’t he have a plunger?”

  “Most people don’t poop like you,” he pointed out.

  “Yeah, well, it’s just one of those things. Every house should have a plunger.” I’d come up against this frustrating aspect of life many times. The fear of the mega-shit lurked when I was away from my own bathroom. Not everybody has industrial strength toilets. Miguel didn’t. Although everyone knows it happens to all of us, there is something embarrassing about bodily functions. It’s an avoid-their-phone-calls-and-never-see-them-again type of embarrassment, especially when the bodily function leaves such a large and smelly footprint.

  Furthermore, this was a friend of my boyfriend, a man I’d met two days ago. I was supposed to impress him but not with the size of my shit. This wasn’t the parting gift I’d intended to leave.

  So we began the plunger search. Jorge and I hit the pavement, both of us agitated in our own ways—me, because of the discarded fragment of an ass tree trunk, and Jorge (probably) because he’d had to both smell it and look at it.

  Two blocks turned into five, which turned into eight, which turned into ten. We walked 15 blocks to find one supermarket that sold things that could quite possibly include a plunger. We burst through the shop’s doors, reinvigorated with hope. Miguel was due home in just over an hour. Time was running out.

  We found a very tiny and long-neglected home goods section. Brooms, dustpans, latex gloves, cleaning implements—score! The section was badly organized and looked like workers had stocked its shelves by throwing the items toward the area from the storage room. I had to search the area a few times. It didn’t include a plunger. Just as we resigned ourselves to the fact that plungers don’t exist in Córdoba—we spotted a suction cup. Upon closer inspection, it turned out to be the suction cup that is usually part of a plunger, except without the stick part. And there was only one.

  I snatched it up, positive that my farmhand boyfriend could figure out a way to utilize this thing. We strolled to the register confident, knowing that my very large and very stubborn embarrassment was soon to be a memory for just the two of us.

  At the register, I added a candy bar. The woman scanned the candy, set it aside, and then spent a lot of time examining the suction cup. Finally, she looked at us and said, “I can’t sell this to you.”

  The words barely made sense to me. “You…you can’t?”

  She shook her head. “There’s no bar code.”

  I looked at Jorge, at the suction cup, back toward where we’d found it, and then at the lady. “But we found it over there…I mean, it’s for sale. Can’t you just…?”

  The cashier shook her head and placed the would-be plunger to the side.

  “But what are you going to do with it? You can’t sell it. Why can’t we just have it? What are you going to do, throw it away?”

  By this time, Jorge was clearing his throat in a way that signaled I should shut up and was jabbing me impatiently in my lower back. The cashier offered one last unhelpful smile, took my money for the candy, and we left the store in a grim cloud.

  Back at Miguel’s house, we improvised a plan in a rapidly shriveling window of time. We’d scour the house one last time. We’d find a plastic bottle, and make a siphon of some sort. Yeah, that should work. And maybe he had some sacrifice-able silverware somewhere to use as surgical tools.

  Somehow this shit was going down.

  The bathroom was undeniably smelly, like something dead that had been out in the sun too long. After several thorough searches through the apartment, we found nothing useful to help with the mission. Jorge and I stared—grimaced, really—into the toilet, wondering what to do.

  “We need to break it somehow,” I suggested, feeling a little lightheaded from the smell.

  Jorge was silent as he mulled more options. I knew his problem-solving wheels were turning, and I was confident he’d come up with an ingenious solution.

  Finally, he left the bathroom without a word, rummaged in the kitchen, and reappeared with a plastic shopping bag.

  He handed it to me. “Tie it onto my hand.” He offered his hand like a resigned patient offering over the limb to be amputated.

  “Are you serious?”

  He nodded solemnly, eyeing the toilet. “It’s the only way.”

  I tied the plastic bag to his hand, not just a little bit amazed. He looked queasy.

  “Jorge,” I said, “You don’t have to do this…”

  He shook his head. “It’s O.K. I’ll just try to break it up.”

  I watched as he neared the toilet, the dour look on his face mutating into something I’d never seen before and have never seen since—a combination of dread and resignation, like this were a paper shredder he was about to stick his hand into, and not just a clogged toilet.

  I stepped out of the bathroom before his ha
nd touched the water. Really, it was more for his sake than mine. My boyfriend had pulled the hero card, and I was biting back disbelieving giggles and terrified shrieks. Besides, the moment deserved some sanctity, or at least respectful silence, not ear-piercing howls in his eardrum.

  I paced Miguel’s tiny bedroom anxiously, waiting for something, anything. What would come of a grown man sticking his barely-protected hand into a toilet bowel full of intestinal debris? I didn’t know.

  “Did it work?” Several interminable moments had passed and I tried to sound extra cheerful, as though this were totally commonplace.

  He didn’t answer. Then there was a cough, and Jorge emerged from the bathroom as though he were leaping from the window of a burning house.

  “I almost puked,” he said, burying his head into the crook of his elbow.

  His plastic bagged hand held a suspicious lack of something, though I didn’t know what I had been expecting—the sacred tree trunk itself?

  After he’d recovered enough, he bolted for the kitchen, shedding the plastic bag delicately yet quickly. He threw it into another plastic bag, tied the clean one tight, and then threw it into the trash like it was evidence to be destroyed.

  “I touched it,” Jorge said. “I actually felt it.” And then he shuddered.

  I watched him with a mixture of awe and disbelief. Had this man really volunteered to stick his hand in a toilet where the sure outcome was to touch his girlfriend’s shit? I choked back another hysterical gobble of laughter, unsure whether now was the time to congratulate him or send him to therapy.

  “Did it go down?”

  He shook his head, still looking like someone in the throes of PTSD. “No, it’s still there.”

  I groaned. “Shit! Well what are we gonna do? Miguel will be home any minute.”

  Jorge exhaled deeply, his face resuming a more normal color.

  “We should leave the apartment,” I said. “Like, right now. Come on, let’s go buy the bus tickets for the north, which we need to get today anyway. We don’t want to be here when he sees it.”

  “O.K. Let’s go now. And we’ll take out the trash on our way.”

  Jorge and I made it out of the house before Miguel got back, headed for the bus terminal wondering about what might transpire in our absence. “What a horrible surprise,” I lamented. It would be one thing if the poop were anywhere near normal. There still existed the distinct possibility that it might never flush at all.

  We spent a few hours in the terminal, wandering the endless rows of bus company stalls, and then returned to the apartment. Miguel was sitting at his dining room table, thumbing through a magazine.

  “Hey guys,” he said. “How was your day?”

  I froze, so said nothing. Jorge played the cool guy part, and they talked for a bit about how work had gone, our bus ticket prices, our midday wanderings. He left out any mention of crazed plunger searches and touching my poo.

  As they spoke I headed innocently to the bathroom but was reluctant to enter. I had to. What if Miguel had stopped off to pee right away, like most normal human beings did when they got home? What if he’d seen it? What if—I stopped myself there. The sordid, smelly truth awaited me. I entered the bathroom. I lifted the toilet lid. Clear water sparkled back at me. I blinked hard and looked closer. No peeking poop log; no Andean mountain of toilet paper; no skid marks. It was completely clean. Thoroughly puzzled, I sat down to pee, letting my gaze wander as I mulled over the strange turn of events. Then my eyes caught something suspiciously familiar near to the sink base—a rubber suction cup. Except this one had a stick attached. Sitting out where it very clearly had not been hours before, and still moist from what I can only assume was a marathon and near fatal plunging session. My head dropped to my hands and I screamed silently, mortified. Miguel had plunged my monster crap, and worse yet, he had the plunger in the house the whole time. Where it had been, we’ll never know.

  I walked back into the main room, trying but failing to hide the shock and bemusement from my face. Jorge caught on right away. When Miguel received a call and moved to his bedroom, I told Jorge the sad truth. “The poop is gone.” I put my hand on his shoulder. “He had a plunger the whole time.”

  Jorge looked at me like this was some sort of cruel joke.

  “I’m serious. Do you know what this means?”

  He sighed and placed his forehead against my arm. “Yes.”

  “You touched my poo and you didn’t even have to.”

  Shannon Bradford is 20-something years old and has a fondness for outdoor markets, ancient ruins, and foreign tongues (as in languages). A native of northern Ohio, she is currently living in South America with her Argentinian partner, a detail she uses to justify her degree in Latin American literature. Her days are spent writing, mastering Spanish, and learning the ins and outs of the expatriate lifestyle.

  DAVE FOX

  My Night in a Shipping Container

  Kuala Lumpur to Nigeria, delivery not guaranteed.

  MY WIFE WAS GONE WHEN I WOKE UP. SHE HAD WRITTEN ME A NOTE. “Happy birthday!” it said. “Pack what you’ll need for the weekend. Meet me at the airport at 4:00. Don’t forget your passport.”

  We had been living in Singapore for two-and-a-half months. We hadn’t yet had time to take advantage of all the budget flights around Asia one finds here. Where Kattina was taking me was a secret, and “Don’t forget your passport” was hardly a clue. In an island nation just twenty-six miles across, there’s no such thing as a domestic flight.

  So in the afternoon I hopped the subway to the airport. Kattina was waiting with two tickets to Kuala Lumpur. We were both excited as our flight touched down in Malaysia’s capital, a little after sunset. “I found us a guesthouse online,” Kattina said as we bussed into downtown. “It looks cute. I got us a courtyard room.”

  A courtyard room? That sounded nice.

  Kattina and I like to think of ourselves as flexible and adventurous travelers. Accommodations aren’t where we normally splurge. Non-fancy rooms mean we can afford more nights in exciting places. But, O.K., it was my birthday. Why not live it up a little in a “courtyard room”?

  At first glance, the 41 Berangan Guesthouse seemed like our kind of place. “Snug, Safe, and Quirky!” cried a stack of brochures on the reception desk. “Spanking clean and fresh, 41 Berangan cheerily sits round the corner from all trappings of Kuala Lumpur’s must-do’s.... Snuggly comfy beds let you dream—berangan—away!”

  Quirky! Snuggly! At 130 ringgit (U.S. $40) a night, I was sold.

  “Please pay now,” the receptionist said.

  I’m an experienced world explorer, an international tour guide and travel writer, a guy who has been ripped off in enough countries to know better than to blindly hand over my credit card before seeing a room. But, I dunno, I guess I was distracted by thoughts of imminent birthday gifts.

  “Of course we’ll pay now,” I smiled. I signed the bill, and the receptionist led us to our snuggly, quirky, courtyard room.

  If you ever want to design a courtyard, 41-Berangan-style, here is how you do it: find a concrete building with two exterior walls at a right angle to each other. Place a shipping container to form a second right angle with one of those walls. Then complete a square with another shipping container so everything is boxed in. Add a picnic table and a couple of potted palms, and voilà! Instant courtyard! As an added bonus, you now have two shipping container rooms that, if needed, are easy to transport during the night.

  I don’t know about you, but when I think of sleeping in shipping containers, I think of human trafficking and dead refugees. Our courtyard “room” had a padlock on the outside of the door, which did not assuage these concerns. But, hey, I thought, we’re flexible and adventurous travelers. Two nights in a shipping container would be...quirky!

  It was a standard-sized shipping container with a bed, a small writing desk, and a retrofitted wall that separated a bathroom from the sleeping area. If
I left the container door open, I had a view of the courtyard, not to mention that safe, secure, snuggly feeling one gets knowing one will not be padlocked in from the outside and shipped to Nigeria during the night. Even when we closed the door—for privacy and because we thought a one-way ticket to Lagos might be interesting—we still had a view of sorts. A little window gazed out at a concrete wall six inches away. So, really, the place was lovely. There was even carpeting!

  Now, snooty cultural perfectionists might say, “Yeah, right. You can’t carpet a shipping container. It ruins the authenticity.” But the guesthouse owners at the 41 Berangan had thought of everything to create just the right ambiance. To make things rustic, the carpeting they installed had a faded appearance and musty aroma that created the sensation of sleeping in a shipping container that, at one point, had been dumped in the ocean.

  Kattina grimaced. “Do you want to stay here?”

  To be honest, I did not. Because, although I am a flexible and adventurous traveler, and this shipping container seemed pretty exciting, I wanted to splurge, pay the extra ten ringgit and upgrade to a “superior” room. What luxuries might await us there? A Jacuzzi? A minibar with rohypnol-enhanced beverages? The possibilities were endless.

  We went back to the reception.

  “Sorry,” the receptionist said. “Our superior rooms are fully booked. Maybe tomorrow.”

  We returned to our shipping container.

  “Do you really want to stay here?” Kattina asked.

  We discussed our options. We had already paid. It was too late in the evening for the guesthouse to sell the room to someone else, so they weren’t going to give us a refund. Besides, friends were waiting to meet us for dinner. And while I really wanted to see if we might find a place down the road where we could sleep in a cardboard box, or a retrofitted fridge, we just didn’t have time to look.