On Pooping

Posted May 10th, 2004 by Sean Williams

If pooping is like a night out at the theater, and I maintain that it is, then first, you have to accept that the entire evening is part of the metaphor and second, it can either be a short comedy or a long Wagnerian operatic undertaking.

If you have live in the city, your theater plans are pretty fluid. You can think to yourself “Hm, I feel like going to see a show…” but the feeling might pass. And so it goes with pooping. You stop and say to yourself, “I’m feeling a certain amount of, um, pressure to make this happen”, but sometimes, that’s just, y’know, a fart. Of course, you can’t be sure. There is the age old axiom that every time you gamble, you might lose, and if you aren’t at your own home or within range of a change of clothes, you’re sort of gambling with *everyone’s* money, so to speak.

But, for the sake of argument, let’s say you recognize this as the real deal. It’s usually after you fart-gamble and you get away with it, but only just barely. It’s time.

You make your way to the theater and, depending on the nature of the room after your fart gamble, you generally know what you’re in for. But much like the theater, even if you know the name of the play and you’ve read the reviews, you might be in for much more than you bargained for.

The possibilities are endless. My personal favorites are the light musical comedies, the ones that burst forth on the scene with an uptempo overture, followed by a funny piece, provided there are meaningful and multi-dimensional characters. Every once in a great while, especially after a large cup of coffee in the morning after a huge dinner the night before, I like the three act turn of the century comedy, full of quiet dignity and gravitas.

But every once in a while, you sit down and you already feel yourself sweat and you know you’re in for it. The pace is just horrendous, the seat is uncomfortable, the theater isn’t air conditioned and every new development seems to be so much sturm and drang with no actual *development*. In the theater, this just makes me mad. When I’m trying to poop, I actually get nauseous.

The most disquieting moments are the more modern inconveniences, when you’re urinating standing up, you have a good stream immobilizing you, and you realize you have an entirely different experience bearing down on you. If you’ve done as much yoga as I have, you can actually aim carefully, swing your leg over the back of the toilet and then carefully lower yourself down so that all activity can happen in one fell swoop.

Actually, even if you aim carefully, you’ll still pee all over everything. Just trust me on that one. Remind me to tell Jordana to replace the tooth brushes.

The fact is that the most common unpleasantness is the missing third act, when the first two pass like hard dry biscuits dropped down a well and you know somethine wonderful and substantial is about to happen but then, boom. The curtain comes down and no matter how long you sit in the audience, there’s no more show. Elvis has, in fact, *not* left the building, but he’s also not going to perform any more.

It’s times like this that I wish I had a “comment” button.

You ever notice you can only talk for so long about pooping before someone brings up Elvis?