A man was setting out all the beach equipment for the day, and another man was in the water wearing one of those synthetic water shirts worn by men who are ashamed of their bodies. I exchanged a brief hello with both of them, avoiding eye contact at all costs. I walked a little farther down the beach in order to keep from having any further conversation with the man swimming. I do not and have never liked when grown men wear T-shirts in the sea. A perfect candidate for a pubic transplant, I thought.
I got in the water and began my swim back to the house. My Pilates instructor, Andie, who is certifiably bat-shit crazy, told me if I could tread water for at least thirty minutes, I would burn a significant amount of calories and it would be fine on my knee.
I swam for a total of what I would guess to be three minutes and was just passing the beach club when I felt a sharp thunderbolt in my stomach. I thought maybe it was a swimming cramp, but after another painful jolt, I grasped that it was quite different. I needed to go to the bathroom—number two. It’s funny that adults—like babies—don’t always know that sometimes a stomachache means they have to make a deposit.
Interesting twist, I thought. It had been so long since I had gone to the bathroom that I had begun the process of accepting that I might never move my bowels again.
I picked up the pace a little faster in order to get back to the house in time for my explosion. This was a surprise, after all, and not an unwelcome one. I gracefully transitioned from doggy paddling to the fly to a full-on panicked free-style. When the thunderbolts started to become increasingly unbearable, I realized I didn’t have the ten to fifteen minutes it would take me to swim back to the house. Time was not on my side. I knew I couldn’t shadoobie in the ocean—even I wouldn’t do something like that—so I opted to swim to shore, go back to the beach club, and find the bathroom.
I hauled ass as quickly as one with a bum leg can effectively haul ass, and made it halfway up the beach before it became crystal clear that I had about thirty seconds to find a place to squat. Let me declare something: I am not a quitter. I will turn over every stone or grain of sand before I submit to the callings of Mother Nature.
My brain was weighing all options, but the only option that was not an option was shitting my pants while standing up. I found the nearest dune, hobbled over to it, and pulled down my bathing suit bottom just in time for me to detonate.
I could not believe this was happening to me. I felt the blades of grass from the dune gently caressing my backside as I scanned east to west to ensure no one could see what was happening. Meanwhile one fulmination after another ricocheted out of my asshole onto the sand and back onto my calves. “Dear Lord,” I muttered, looking up and trying to find any sign of God.
The man from the water and his onesie had somehow disappeared, either out to sea to continue his life as a male mermaid, or out of the water—but he was gone, and that was the most important thing.
There was a mega yacht parked a few hundred yards out to sea, but I deduced that since I couldn’t see anyone, no one without binoculars could see me. It was too late anyway. What happened had already happened, I had shat myself on a beach—like an animal.
Like any normal lady who hadn’t gone to the bathroom in eight days, I wanted to look at my excrement with pride and assess how much weight I had lost, but I was too appalled by the way the events had transpired. I grabbed a bunch of sand and covered my shame while rivulets of sweat dripped off my forehead. Forgetting that my hands were covered in sand, I swiped the sweat that was dripping down my face, and ended up wiping sand all over my forehead, giving myself an early-morning exfoliation.
I pulled my bikini bottoms up as loosely as possible and awkwardly sauntered back into the water, trying to avoid major contact between my ass and the hammock that was my bathing suit. Once submerged in the sea, I rinsed myself off—first down below, and then my face. Looking back on that moment with more mental acuity now, I realize what I had actually done was dive into my own feces.
“Well, this will make an interesting story,” I said aloud to myself. I remembered a dinner party at Shmelly Shmazoff’s house not long ago where a bunch of famous people went around the table telling their worst shit and diarrhea stories. By the time it came around to me, my friend Shmarlize Shmeron looked at me and said, “Well, Chelsea, we saved the best for last. Let it rip.”
“I know you may all find this hard to believe,” I announced to the table, “but I can honestly say I have never shit my pants. I know you probably think that’s something I would do, but sorry to disappoint. I am not a pig from HELL. I know it’s a hard pill to swallow, but I haven’t done it and I can’t say that I ever will.”
“Oh, come, on!” Shmarlize groaned. “Like any of us believe that.”
“Listen up, girls! I have not shit my pants. I have peed in my pants several times due to excessive laughter, and I have dated several men who have shit their pants in my presence—once even in the bed while we were sleeping, and I’m willing to tell you that story—but I will not make up a ‘shit in my pants’ story in order to make friends with famous people.”
As I swam back to the house, I reflected on the irony of that night and looked forward to the next dinner party where I would be able to add more to the conversation. Then the thunderbolt hit me again; my asshole wasn’t done with me. I had to go again and this time it wasn’t going to be nearly as graceful. I ran out of the water and managed enough wiggle room to make it all the way back to the beach club.
“Hello????” I wailed. “Someone!… Anyone! . . Sargeant!”
There were four small, tented buildings and I hobbled to each one but everything was closed as it was before 7 a.m. Where the hell did that onesie guy go when I needed him?
I had to make another executive decision. The dunes were too far behind me now, and the closest objects were three kayaks and two water tires.
I reached around and felt the back of my bathing suit bottoms, which were rapidly filling up with my own entrails. They had essentially turned into a diaper. Africa was coming out of me, and I could not stop it
“Oh my god. This is the worst. You are the worst,” I told myself as the culprits slid down my good leg.
I headed toward the kayak, leapt in just as my bikini bottoms were about to give, and emptied the rest into the kayak. I had never felt so defeated; I had no choice but to give up and let everything come out that was supposed to. “Good-bye, Africa,” I declared to the sea.
Simultaneously, I spotted the same yacht from a few minutes before, and my anxiety kicked back into full gear. In an effort to deflect attention from what I was actually doing, I picked up the oar that lay next to the kayak, and started rowing—in the sand.
By this juncture, I had lost at least a gallon of water in sweat and was basically urinating out of my asshole. I won’t deny that as humiliated as I felt, I couldn’t wonder how much weight I had lost. I had to consider what my next move would be and how I would get this mess cleaned up without anyone seeing anything. I also knew that another bomb could drop at any moment. I couldn’t bear to look down. I’ve seen photos of Hiroshima, and I was not interested in revisiting the site.
There is a reason diapers are held together by tape, I thought to myself.
I got up out of the kayak and saw that my lower body was a disaster. I threw myself into the sand and rolled around in it like I had just been thrown from a burning building. Minutes later I was camouflaged well enough to make the trek into the water. My leg was throbbing, as this was the most activity it had seen in months. I hopped as quickly as I could to the ocean and then dove headfirst into a half a foot of water.