I notice there’s something wrong around 71st street. My stomach – flipping, twisting, curling itself inside out – I needed to shit take a dump.
Of course, there is no way I would get to a toilet anytime soon, I’m on the bus on the way to school. The discomfort isn’t bad, passing a few discreet farts might relieve my intestines temporarily until I had reached UBC.
The time between the stomach rumblings shorten. What was previously a kicking baby in my gut is now something more akin to a toddler in mid-tantrum locked in a time-out cage made of flesh. The crack between my butt cheeks is sweating profusely. My rectal muscles were trembling as they tried their best to hold in what was likely the Niagara Falls of whatever breakfast wanted to defy my digestive tract this morning.
I high considered getting off the bus partway and finding a washroom, but it was morning, and having to get off and get back on a later bus would likely make me miss my first class of the day. I was too much of a decent student for that, no, so I held on desperately.
“Just hold it until the the end,” I repeated in my mind.
By the time the bus stopped at Thunderbird Stadium, I was barely swimming in reality, but I could sense that I was almost at my goal. Next was… 2100 Block. Less than 5 minutes until I could get off of this vehicle I could swear was filling up with my noxious gases that everyone was too polite to make any comment about.
Hearing the pre-recorded voice announce UBC Bus Loop was hearing the swan song of the valkyries, notifying me that my war with my anal sphincter was almost at an end. Without jostling and subsequently pooping my pants against whoever I hit on the way off the bus, I leaped for joy out the double-doors of the 480 bus. I had plans to speed-walk to the nearest convenient building (The old SUB before it was closed off) and let loose the food that betrayed me this morning. I turned the corner towards my long-awaited toilet and what do I see?
Fences. Construction fences everywhere.
The closest entrance that I would usually take was completely blocked off by the familiar yellow fences of the University of Bothersome Construction (UBC) that were not there yesterday. No, they were definitely not there yesterday! It was too early in the morning to play Maze Runner, especially not while I could feel the head of my brown baby pushing against my desperately tired sphincter. Another betrayal by another inanimate object today and it was not even 10am.
The next-best option was Buchanon, my castle, my palace, the building that I had 80% of my classes in so much that I developed a relationship with the microwave in the Buchanon D lounge. Thus, having class in that building, I dashed into the D building bathroom on the first floor because dear lord what sane man in that dire situation would run up a flight of stairs for a poop emergency he’s been holding for the past 45 minutes?!
I couldn’t have ripped my pants off any faster and plopped myself on the gracious off-white seats of the toilet bowl. Had my self-control been any weaker I would have sprayed an embarrassment to the janitor all over the toilet itself whilst still standing with my pants half down.
Sweet platypus guts! I released the cause of the now – screaming snakes of flesh known as my large intestine into the waiting bowl. Had I consumed yogurt this morning? But there was no way that mere yogurt could trigger my lactose-intolerance to the point that I was squeezing steaming chocolate soft-serve ice cream from the caverns of my body. Nothing mattered anymore: not the migraine that grew from the strain of holding my nearly liquid feces in, nor the sounds that came from my rear end that sounded like a one-man brass band, not even Poseidon’s kiss as the tainted water splashed back onto my cheeks from the impact of my half-digested food hitting the toilet water in the bowl. I was probably in there for a good 15 minutes, not from the poop itself, which was nearly instant, but from the wiping. I had to make sure all the evidence was gone.
There is always a battle of how much toilet paper it takes to clean yourself satisfactorily versus how much toilet paper will eventually clog the toilet and prevent you from flushing any of your crime away. The key is to wipe until you see blood. Wipe until the brown disappears and you see red. Once satisfied and anus thoroughly torn for the next week, I wash my hands quickly, and decide that I should have taken more Creative Writing classes instead of all these English Literature classes.