The Man Who Could Neither Shit, Nor Get Off the Pot

From: "Rev. Ivan Stang"
Date: Sun, Aug 15, 2004

By Rev. Ivan Stang
8-15-04

It was a hot day at Burning Man and the line for the chemical toilet
was very long. But the man inside couldn't shit. He needed to shit,
desperately, but it wouldn't come out. Not all the WAY. There were
plenty of turds in there, no question about that, and the one in front
poked its head out often enough, in fact it would extrude itself half a
turdlength before somebody in the line outside would say "Would this
guy hurry the fuck up?" and the turd would snap its head back inside,
hunkering down like a tortoise in a shell.

The man felt terrible about keeping all those people waiting. He knew
he was monopolizing the only chemical toilet for half a mile, and that
all the people out there needed to shit too.

He kept trying to leave the toilet. He would have been perfectly
willing to hike off into the distance and suffer through this
nonshitting, crouched alone in the desert. That would have been a
thousand times better than this. But each time he relinquished trying
to shit, and hurriedly pulled up his drawers and short pants, and
pushed open the stall door even while still buckling his belt, to which
the people in line outside would invariably APPLAUD, suddenly the shit
was ready not just to emerge but to SPRAY. The readiness of the
shitting to happen, once he'd mostly pulled up his pants and STARTED
out the door, was not to be questioned. In fact, if he didn't
immediately drop his pants while throwing his ass back onto that blue
plastic seat, he'd be spraying diarrhea down his legs, right in front
of everybody, possibly onto their shoes.

So, to the groans of the waiting bastards, he'd have to slam the door
shut again and sit back down, listening in the deepest humiliation to
their wisecracks, outside clenching his fists in supernatural pain as
the cramps started up again, spastic colon cramps that caused his
knuckles to go white, his teeth to grind together, and a fine sheen of
icy sweat to break out over his whole body, while he trembled and
shook, waiting for the spasm to pass that a recalcitrant turd might
finally dare YET ANOTHER venture out-of-butt and into the cold cruel
world. And that world awaiting it, below his ass, down in the tank of
the chemical toilet, that was no inviting world, even for a turd. He
had been forced to glimpse what was down there often enough. The turds
of countless others, a mountain of turds in an ocean of pee and
chemicals, studded with soda cans that would clog the hoses of the
honey-dipper trucks just as surely as the turd was blocking this man's
road to Slack. He couldn't blame the turd for not wanting to fall face
first onto that last guy's turd, which, he had unfortunately noticed,
was of a deep diseased black color and topped with a delicate curlicue
like a sundae at Dairy Queen. Nor could the man blame the people in
line outside for their relentless disgusted wisecracks and bitter
commentary on his failure to either shit or get off the toilet. But he
had been trying to do either, or both, for hours. It seemed like days.
The line outside had none of the same people who had been in it an hour
earlier. All eventually went elsewhere to shit. Sometimes he heard
people stomping around to the back of the chem-toilet to pee. A couple
of them peed directly against the chem-toilet so that he could hear it,
rattling against the plastic sides, making a drumming of urine, just
more soundtrack for his misery. He could feel their anger at his
failure washing over him like heat waves inside the blue plastic
toilet. And it was so very hot inside the toilet, too. He would have
traded places with any one of them happily.

BUT HE COULDN'T. Time after time, minute after creeping minute, the
turds promised to emerge, like a reward for his enduring the cramping,
only to shatter his hopes and threaten disastrous public evacuation the
instant he actually tried to leave the shitter.

It was as close to hell and he had ever been. He is still there.

And *I* need to shit too.

I MUST SHIT, BUT THERE IS *NO TOILET.*

((Tips of the hats to Dr. Philo "We Put the Turd in Saturday" Drummond,
and to Capt. Beeheard for "The Thousand and Tenth Day of the Human
Totem Pole," which I think must have been inspirational.))

--
The SubGenius Foundation, Inc.
(4th Stangian Orthodox MegaFisTemple Lodge of the Wrath of Dobbs Yeti,
PRABOB

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: "fenian" <fenian@start.ca>

Jeeeesus. That was fucking horrible. Does this have any basis in reality? I
would hope that Burning Man wouldn't be so full of complete death deserving
ASSHOLES. I'm a pee shy type, so I can relate to your hero. It can be a
truly awful, mind bending, tortuous, infinately frustrating experience.
Standing in front of the pisser, having to achieve a fucking zen state just
to relax that first set of muscles, and some jolly fucker comes whistling up
next to you and unleashes a flood, and you have start all over again. Not
much you can about it either. It all depends on your state of mind.
Strangely having to shit doesn't cause nearly the same issues. Different set
of controls I guess. Some of us just have that conspiracy pickle jammed so
far up our ass that some permanent neurosis have latched on like an
artificially birthed, mutant rabid prairie squid.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: IMBJR <imbjr@imbjr.com>

I don't usually go pee-shy, but when it does I think "Fire!".

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: "Rev. Ivan Stang" <stang@subgeniusNOSPUM.com>

In article <IfOTc.11$Mk4.301@news20.bellglobal.com>, fenian
<fenian@start.ca> wrote:

> Jeeeesus. That was fucking horrible. Does this have any basis in reality? I
> would hope that Burning Man wouldn't be so full of complete death deserving
> ASSHOLES. I'm a pee shy type, so I can relate to your hero. It can be a
> truly awful, mind bending, tortuous, infinately frustrating experience.
> Standing in front of the pisser, having to achieve a fucking zen state just
> to relax that first set of muscles, and some jolly fucker comes whistling up
> next to you and unleashes a flood, and you have start all over again. Not
> much you can about it either. It all depends on your state of mind.
> Strangely having to shit doesn't cause nearly the same issues. Different set
> of controls I guess. Some of us just have that conspiracy pickle jammed so
> far up our ass that some permanent neurosis have latched on like an
> artificially birthed, mutant rabid prairie squid.

In defense of Burning Man, in actual fact they have way enough
chem-potties and I never had to wait at all, to speak of. I started to
say "hot day at the festival" but Burning Man fit so much better.

My day of horrible indecisive shits was actually at DISNEYLAND -- no,
make that Epcot Center, in the late 80s. I was there ALONE (all the
rest of the family was too sick to leave the motel) and I was TRIPPING
MY FOOL HEAD OFF. I had to sit there inside a booth waiting for the
cramps to pass, watching the floor tiles writhe and listening to the
conversations of Pink gentlemen who came and went. No one was actually
waiting in line.

That night when I got back to the motel from Epcot, still tripping my
fool head off, an old Doc Savage paperback that I had brought with me
FELL OFF A SHELF as I futzed around, AND HIT ME ON THE HEAD. I looked
at the cover -- Doc fighting a dinosaur, in a Lost Valley or somesuch
-- and right then and there I knew what kind of story to do for that
anthology we had just contracted to do, "Three Fisted Tales of "Bob."

It's a good thing that I wandered around Epcot after shitting, or the
crappy novella I wrote might literally have been ABOUT crap. Maybe it
would have been an improvement. I think the Doc Savage/pulp-junk
take-off aspect of the story I ended up doing was lost on pretty much
everybody.

This particular shitting story is along the lines of "Care Dog Meets
Pee Bear," which is just about the only other short story type of thing
I ever wrote. There was also one when I was 18 about a robot or cyborg
guy who "jacks on" uncontrollably, but that was more of a veiled
autobiographical piece. It's in one of those old timey Semiotexte
publications. The real sci fi mags all turned it down, though they all
also asked if I had anything that wasn't about robot dicks.

--
The SubGenius Foundation, Inc.
(4th Stangian Orthodox MegaFisTemple Lodge of the Wrath of Dobbs Yeti,
Resurrected, Rev. Ivan Stang, prop.)
PRABOB

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: "alliekatt" <pogmothon@myarse.com>

Tripping at Disney.

Man, no wonder you're skinny enough to blow away; the fat cell storage of
THAT flashback would pucker your skull so hard, you'd shit your medulla.
That's probably what was trying to happen.

Just the thought of animatronic Lincoln on 'cid gives me a nosebleed.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: HdMrs. Salacia the Overseer

"Rev. Ivan Stang" <stang@subgeniusNOSPUM.com> wrote:
>That night when I got back to the motel from Epcot, still tripping my
>fool head off, an old Doc Savage paperback that I had brought with me
>FELL OFF A SHELF as I futzed around, AND HIT ME ON THE HEAD. I looked
>at the cover -- Doc fighting a dinosaur, in a Lost Valley or somesuch
>-- and right then and there I knew what kind of story to do for that
>anthology we had just contracted to do, "Three Fisted Tales of "Bob."
>
>It's a good thing that I wandered around Epcot after shitting, or the
>crappy novella I wrote might literally have been ABOUT crap. Maybe it
>would have been an improvement. I think the Doc Savage/pulp-junk
>take-off aspect of the story I ended up doing was lost on pretty much
>everybody.

One simply can't underestimate the inspiration and insight one can
recieve from an arbitrary blow to the head. Can one?

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: "Rev. Enoch Soames" <davidsum68@hotmail.com>

fenian <fenian@start.ca> writes:
>'m a pee shy type, so I can relate to your hero. It can be a truly
>awful, mind bending, tortuous, infinately frustrating experience.
>Standing in front of the pisser, having to achieve a fucking zen state
>just to relax that first set of muscles, and some jolly fucker comes
>whistling up next to you and unleashes a flood, and you have start all
>over again. Not much you can about it either.

Have you tried *total urinary retention*? induced in my case by a
mixture of conspiracy 'medication' and constipation, over a couple of
days your bladder swells up to full capacity, like a soccer ball but
full of piss, and you're introduced to a *new form of agony* and
dread-ful bodyfear.
ER, tube down the tract, orange bag oh the release. Embarrassment of the
prematurely geriatric.

--
Rev. Soames hello, quite new 'here'

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: "nu-monet v7.0" <nothing@succeeds.com>

Ivan Stang wrote:
<The Man Who Could Neither Shit, Nor Get Off the Pot>

Who for his next birthday party gets a
liquid Fleet enema bottle with a little
bow on it.

Which makes a fine holiday gift jsut about
any time of year.

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Original file name: The Man Who Could Ne#192F0D.txt - converted on Saturday, 25 September 2004, 02:05