An Embarrassing Incident
Not many people have heard this story; there are the poor wretches involved, of course, but on the whole it’s not really the sort of anecdote I enjoy telling about myself. In the past twelve years, however, my sense of personal dignity has taken such a hideous beating that I’m now prepared to offer the ugly little tale to the public.
Kim (his real name because I’m such a jerk) had invited me to his birthday party. I’d known him for a few months; we were in a twelve-step program together. Which went a long ways toward explaining why this particular party was such a grim, sullen affair. Nothing says “festive” like a room full of antisocial, fidgety strangers who don’t understand small talk or know what to do with their hands.
The host of the party was Kim’s new girlfriend, an earnest young woman who seemed resolutely determined to avoid the fate of her numerous predecessors, Kim’s former girlfriends. Her chief strategy to this end was based on a hilariously flawed reading of Kim’s desires: she worked hard at being “deep.” What on Earth led her to believe that what Kim of the googolplex exes really wanted was a complicated, moody intellectual I don’t know, but it sure was entertaining to watch.
So there we were, about twenty people sitting around the living room of a small apartment, each one of us ready to kill for a drink and knowing full well that no drink was coming. Kim’s new girlfriend (referred to hereafter as KNG) stood up and announced she had prepared something special in honor of the birthday boy. She pulled a thin tan-colored volume from the bookcase and opened it to a page she’d bookmarked. I recognized the cover: The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran. A barely-audible groan swept through the group.
As she started to read aloud with Shatneresque pauses so we could fully “get it,” I experienced a sudden abdominal urgency. I had to get to the bathroom, and quickly.
Now, among the many unpleasant results of more than a decade of double-fisted drinking, my stomach had been completely trashed. Any meal I ate took the A-Train through my digestive system, emerging, how shall I put this, somewhat vigorously about thirty minutes later.
It had been half-an-hour since I’d eaten dinner.
I excused myself as unobtrusively as I could and found the bathroom. Locking the door, I pulled down my pants and sat on the toilet. I could hear KNG as plain as day, still reading aloud, and realized that if I could hear her, they could hear me. Therefore I attempted to do my business as quietly as possible. Slowly, carefully, using all the muscle control at my command, I tried to relieve the internal pressure a tiny, quiet little squirt at a time.
It was a trumpet solo.
Aghast, I clamped down hard, shutting off the sound effects. The bowl still reverberated.
There was the slightest halt in the living room recitation, and then it picked up again. I had to hand it to her, the girl was a trooper.
Unfortunately, my rush to judgment had not abated. I tried again, straining even harder to control the outcome. Which turned out to be a sustained, vibrato bass note gliding up from a flat to a sharp, followed by three staccato quacks and a mortifying whistle.
KNG continued reading, but her pauses seemed to have less and less to do with the meaning of the text. I was horrified, not only because of the noise I’d already made, but because I knew with awful certainty that it was a lost cause. Whatever happened next was going to be very loud and very embarrassing, and there wasn’t the slightest thing I could do about it.
So I just gave up and let go.
Holy Mother of God. To this day I cannot comprehend how a simple ring of muscle could have produced that kind of apocalyptic pandemonium. At one point it sounded like a mortar round going off in a diving bell. It went on and on and on. And on.
Somewhere in the middle of the cacophony I got the giggles. I pictured the poor pretentious girl in the living room (still gamely reading), and the dismay she must be feeling about her background accompaniment of brutal flatulence and spraying semi-solids. Oh, Jeez, what an image. It was just too damed funny. My humiliation vanished, tears streaming down my face as I tried to suppress my laughter. The grotesque noises I was making took on a distinctly rhythmic character as I snickered, which only made it sound worse.
Just when things calmed down a bit, both fore and aft, a thought struck me. Until the day they died, every person in that room would irrevocably associate Kahlil Gibran with explosive diarrhea. That produced more giggles and thunder.
Finally the ordeal ended. I flushed, washed my hands, and emerged. The reading had either ended or been abandoned. Several of the guests had difficulty making eye contact with me. I brazened it out as long as I could, then left early.
They never invited me back. I didn’t take it personally.
Yesterday my 4-year-old daughter received a birthday package from a friend we left behind in Texas. In it, among other things, was a CD of kid’s music.