A Very Shitty Story.

There's an old joke that goes, "Q. Why are turds tapered at the end? A. So your asshole doesn't slam shut when you're done."

This joke came flooding back to me at a truck stop in South Carolina. You see, I was northbound on I-79 when I felt this overwhelming urge to defecate. It wasn't urgent, or "critical" as I sometimes say, but there was no telling when it would be. On one hand, who wants to shit at some redneck truck stop? And on the other, I didn't want to pass up this opportunity to use a bathroom only to get ten miles down the road and have my sphincter give way during a lane change. And so with great reluctance, I moseyed on into the bathroom stall on the end, a handicapped one because I have a wide stance, and began my business.

Normally in a situation like this, I'd lay down what I like to call The Barrier, when is when I line the toilet seat with approximately 8,192 pieces of toilet paper before allowing the tender flesh of my ass to come anywhere near it. But time was of the essence here -- when I'm on the road it's gas-and-go-baby, so having to take the time out for a bowel movement was already putting me on edge. So given my tight schedule, instead of The Barrier, I chose to implement The Hover. You know the move I'm talking about. That's where you pull your pants down and lower your asshole over the bowl, but don't actually make contact. There's a greater chance of bowl water splashing up and making your asshole pucker, but that's a small price to pay for the peace of mind knowing you're not going to catch the cooties from the toilet seat. It's a position designed for speed and is not recommended in bowel movements that require stamina, as I would soon be reminded.

So among the buzz of activity in a truck stop bathroom somewhere south of the Mason-Dixon line, my tiny brown starfish sat glaring at a fresh bowl of the purest h2o that South Carolina had to offer. I applied a gentle amount of pressure to get things moving and to my angst nothing seemed to be happening. A deep breath and some more stomach flexing and still, no poo. Obviously my ass was just experiencing stage fright since I was in a new place. I closed my eyes and tried to imagine my bathroom at home; the white tile floor, my handheld game of Battleship, my stack of MAXIM and Car And Driver at the ready. Still nothing.

This made me very uncomfortable for two reasons. First, I had a schedule to keep and every minute I was sitting here trying to get rid of my number three extra value meal was a minute I wasn't on the road. Second, I realized that for a good two or three minutes, I was just a man standing in a truckstop with his pants around his ankles with his ass hanging out. Okay, time to get my game face on. I broke The Hover and stood up. Catch my breath. Stretch my neck from side to side a few times. Do a little jogging in place. Do a few windmills with my shoulders. "It's okay," I assured myself, "this I what I do baby, I go poo. I am a poo man. A poo monster. A poo machine. A poo god. So let's go poo now."

I again returned to The Hover and much to my relief felt something stir in my lower intestines. See, that's all I needed, a little pep talk to get things going! But again as time was short, I applied a little stomach action to get things moving. And that's when I realized that my asshole was about to stretch itself beyond its design limits. No buildup, no warning, no chance to warm up. Just right from 0 to 60. From normal one minute, to James J. Bullock the next. Something was wrong. It didn't take me wrong to realize that I was essentially about to shit a cone. Only instead of the pointy end coming out first to allow my asshole to stretch out slowly, the big round flat end wanted to take the lead. Oh dear God no... it was a breech birth.

I tried my best to control my fear and think back to all those episodes of E.R. - the emergency procedure at this point would be Dr. Green reaching his hand up into the mother's womb to turn the baby around. But I wasn't in an emergency room, I was in a truckstop. And since I noticed that the soap dispensers were almost empty when I walked in, there was no way I was going to let one of these slack jawed locals reach their unwashed hand into my asshole. No, I was on my own for this one. So now I'm stuck mid Hover, and have this terrible choice to make. It was a question of time versus damage. I could take advantage of the fact that I was already in a bathroom to allow this backwards leviathan to force its way into the world, but doing so would completely destroy my asshole in the process. Or I could abort, continue on down the road and hope that this monster turns itself around for proper delivery, but at the same time risk shitting my pants in the left lane of I-79 some twenty minutes later. What to do. What to do?

Sir Winston Churchill once said, "I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat." And I guess the deciding factor for me was I wasn't driving alone, I had another soul to think about. Surely a copilot might lose confidence in their pilot, if said pilot shit himself mid journey, right? Dammit man, I had people's lives in my hands; people counting on me! I decided to 'push' forward with the delivery and suffer the consequences like a man. I swear I could feel Churchill's hand on my shoulder as I gritted my teeth and pushed. My asshole groaned and flexed. My fingers dug into my thighs; thighs which were already burning from holding The Hover for much longer than it was ever designed to be. The pain radiating from my sphincter grew from tiny white speckles of light, to a stalwart New England lighthouse; it's bright searchlight calling in all local vessels to come deliver their cargo of pain and discomfort.

Allowing your asshole to be slowly manhandled open is one thing. But to have the blunt end of a freight train come steaming its way through without so much as a warning, is quite another. And it wasn't like I could let some of it out and then pinch it off, thus nibbling this movement down bite by bite. No, it was all or nothing right from the get go. I winced. I bit my cheek. Stars danced around the outer ring of my vision. Sweat began to bead up on my forehead. My legs trembled. My vision grew dim. And still this Thing forced my ass to stretch further and further to accommodate it. How wide was this fucking thing? Would my asshole split in half? Would I be discovered an hour later, dead on the floor, anus ripped open for the whole truckstop to see? And then, just as I was considering all these things I wanted to accomplish in this lifetime but would never have the chance to do, the punchline of the joke came to me. The searchlights of pain radiating from my ass began to quiet. There was movement now, yes I could feel it. The breech birth was almost over. I had made it through the worst of it.

Normally I would recoil when the splash of toilet bowl makes its inevitable appearance; this time I relished it. It was cleansing. Soothing. Like when you save the last few swallows of icewater to dump over the back of your head after working outside on a hot summer afternoon. Still lightheaded, reached over to the huge rolls and half expected another bolt of pain when the truckstop toilet paper made contact with my poor abused asshole. Thankfully, No such pain came as my asshole was still mercifully numb. Tiny specs of blood dotted the white paper. I was wounded, but I would survive.

The next few hours were filled with me in the drivers seat, uncomfortably shifting my weight from one ass cheek to the other as the feeling slowly came back. While the beads of seat were gone, the finger shaped bruises on my thighs would serve to remind me of the day I had a breech birth at a truckstop in South Carolina. I can guarantee you, there's no way the south shall rise again. At least not with that Thing weighing them down.