You Gotta Poo - When you Gotta Poo

In Amsterdam one morning after a night of drinking Jameson’s and this piss beer called Columbus- I think it was like 9% alcohol- I woke up in this little boat on one of the canals with the most terrifying urge to defecate. It was like God reached down and grabbed me near the base of my spine with his mighty hand and was slowly squeezing until I leaked shit. Before I ruined my only pair of pants in a foreign country I searched like hell for a toilette. All I found was a playground full of children with no good bushes for cover. I feared being chased by an angry mob of Dutch mothers so I tried to make it to my friend’s squat several blocks away. I made it half a block along the first main street, when there was God’s firm grip on my bowels again, this time unrelenting. I felt as if I were a tube of toothpaste being squeezed by an overzealous dental hygienist. Leaning against a brick building the poo ran out of me and formed a hot mud mask around my butt cheeks. I remember grabbing my pant legs around the back of the knees in an attempt to maintain the leakage. Like a dejected animal I walked -somewhat ridiculously-hunched over with my hands gripped around my knees for six blocks.




When i got to the squat I yelled up to my friend Burgers' window for him to let me in, they had running water and a shower... posh I know. Burger came to the window up on the 4th floor and yelled down that they were all still sleeping and to come back later, he started to disappear back away from the window.
"WAIT!" I yelled "it’s a goddamn emergency!!"
He came back to the window annoyed and yelled back
"WHATTHAFUK?"
Seeing no use with discretion i let him know
"I shat myself okay? I need to use the shower for christsake!!!"
a moment later it had registered with him and everyone else up there for that matter, because i heard a raspy if not thunderous amount of laughter come from the window.
Finally he threw down the keys and i was making my way up the four flights of stairs, hunched over with feces beginning to make its way into my boots.
Once inside burger opened the door holding his nose like a little kid about to jump off the high dive at the local public swimming pool, I saw half a dozen heads peak out of sleeping bags then disappear back inside to snigger at me.
After being shown down a dark hallway with no lights to the bathroom that also had no electricity, I took the coldest shower I ever experienced-in total darkness.
I got in, turned the water on, then I took all my clothes off. I washed all the shit off my lower body then tried to clean my pants, forcing little turds through the tiny holes in the drain with my toes, until the poo was all disbursed. When my pants were nearly clean I put them on inside out and just stood under the icy water shivering in the shower for about 20 minutes while waiting for the smell to wash away.
It never quite did.
I dripped dry as best I could, turned my pants right side out then left the bathroom and left the squat.
Later that night I was mostly dried out. i ran into a few of the people from that squat that night on Dammraak- the main street near the train station and the red-light district. They were all quite jovial and happy to tease me about the morning. Someone handed me a warm Columbus and said "here you go paddy poopy pants" and everyone laughed their asses off at my expense.
The nickname hung around me about as long as the odor did.
I left Holland for Germany a week later and it was cool with me that the nickname didn’t follow.