A Million Inches Delicious

The Fall came the following October, in the first semester of my senior year. It followed a relatively quiet summer, one full of backpacking and public nudity, and one instance where I peed underneath a table at a local Burger King because the service had been awful. The woman behind the counter had a name tag with only one lowercase letter inscribed on it, r, and she was so unjustifiably rude to Kabir and I—even taking into account that she worked at a fast food burger joint—that it felt almost righteous to simply unzip my pants under the table and evacuate my frustrations all over the floor. In retrospect, it was a horrible thing to do, sure, but I never got caught for it, and therefore it will always remain a frosty moment in time that my conscience can gloss over eternally.

In October, I got caught. There was to be no glossing.

It was College Outreach day at my high school, a day when universities throughout the southwest set up tables in the school library and peddled their programs to the senior class. All seniors were let out two periods early to partake in this academic onslaught, and what resulted was merely a massive midday hangout session lightly peppered with brochures. In the middle of these semi-scholastic festivities, I realized that I needed to urinate. Badly. I announced this fact to Kabir, and, jokingly, he dared me to pee in my pants. As per our routine at this point, I immediately laughed it off, then half considered it, playing out the hypotheticals in my mind. It was only a little pee. I could clean it up as soon as I was finished and no one would ever know. It wasn’t like I would be hurting anything or anyone by doing this. I was just peeing a little. In my own pants, no less. I accepted the challenge, and, in doing so, cast another spell. This spell took the form of eight of our friends suddenly surrounding us, in on the dare and willing to place a collective 15 dollar wager that I wouldn’t go through with it. I was overwhelmed by the unexpected promise of a cash reward and drunk on the collective attention. One minute I was just a kid with an unruly bladder, and the next I had nine people willing to pay me 15 dollars if I just peed a little in my pants. I didn’t think twice. I walked behind a bookshelf, relieved myself, and collected. And then I made one of the biggest mistakes of my life. Under the pretense that no one would believe that I actually did it (even though all parties concerned were present and paying out) I allowed the Student Body President to photograph me in the library with pee-soaked pants. I even posed a little for the photo, pointing down at the stain and flashing a distressed half-grimace. I used that 15 dollars to buy The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan. Flawless victory.

Two days later I got called to the principal’s office. I had been vaguely aware that a storm was brewing within the administration over my act in the library, but I was so certain nothing bad would come from it that I had started attending school with a “Give PEEce A Chance” button pinned to my flannel vest, an insolent means of owning up to my action and condemning all those people too stupid to see the hilarity in it. As it turned out, Principal Daya was one of those people. She told me that because I had been photographed with the school’s camera, I had somehow damaged school property, and that was an argument so nonsensical for an action so indefensible, I had no choice but to accept it. Then the avalanche hit: “We know about the streaking and the Graduate incident last summer. These were terrible things to do, Ben, and not what we want associated with our student body leadership. Or any of our student body, for that matter.” It was a kick to the kidneys. “Am I being expelled?” I trembled, white knuckles gripping her desk. “Let’s arrange a meeting after school today,” she said without looking at me, “We can call your parents and see what they think should be done.”

I felt the familiar dissolving of stomach lining as I watched Principal Daya dial my mom’s work phone, heard her explain what I’d done as though I wasn’t in the room. “Yes,” she said to the ghost in the receiver, “it is terrible. Yes, in the library. No, into his pants. Yes. No, he’s here right now. Would you like to speak with him?” Quivering, I put the phone to my ear. I made a sound. “Do we need to get you a babysitter?” my mom asked, deadly serious. I fell to the ground, broken on the floor of the principal’s office.

Judgment came hard and fast. In the following week, I was removed from senior class presidency (the only impeachment that anyone could remember), lost my position as Editor in Chief of the student newspaper, and with it, the spring newspaper trip to Chicago (“When the sheep goes astray, the shepherd must break its leg and carry it,” my newspaper adviser explained, paraphrasing some bullshit Bible parable). But none of this compared to my dad’s reaction. Although his cancer was now in remission, the radium seed implants had severely damaged his prostate, and in doing so had all but destroyed any attempt at bladder control. To him, this stunt in the library was just some baseless mockery of his failed recovery. He told me this with chilling dispassion, Sherlock solving the case, and as if to prove it to us, he ran to the bathroom and evacuated, the pathetic shocks of urine on water punctuated by gasps of pain. Then he left the house, slamming the door behind him. I have never cried harder.

It was then that I realized something was wrong with me. There was a screw loose in my moral compass, a dent in my self-preservation instinct. A superhuman ability to shamelessly evacuate my bowels in public that, if gone unchecked, could result in my complete and utter undoing. So my parents and I did what all middle class white people do when they face an introspective problem. We took me to therapy.

My therapist’s name was Gerry. I hate Gerry so much, even to this day, that there is no way that I would allow this man to hide behind a Kabir Daya moniker. If I had a last name, a telephone number, and an address for Gerry, I would disclose all this as well, but for now, just calling him Gerry seems like enough. Gerry was this silver-haired lanky psychiatric therapist (not a licensed psychiatrist, he would inform me) who wore oversized sweaters and baggy corduroys. For two hours every other week, Gerry and I would sit on overstuffed leather chairs and stare at each other, two strangers playing a pathetic imaginary chess game. On our first meeting ever, we began work on a scheme to help me if I ever found myself in another potentially feces-filled situation, a sort of “back-up plan” if my moral compass shorted out. “How about for number one we put down no more eliminating outside of a bathroom?” Gerry suggested. I nodded, and he scribbled this down on his clipboard. Three months later—three months of role-playing as my dad, discussing my “wiener phase” in middle school (my words, not his), and beating to death the fact that I was more of a “peacemaker” than an “activator” (his words, not mine)—the only real progress that Gerry and I had made was that when put into an uncomfortable situation, I would absolutely never again eliminate outside of a bathroom.

Meanwhile, back in high school, I was on thin fucking ice. At one point, I wore two different colored socks to school, one orange and one white (our school colors) and was called into the office of my senior class adviser, this squat little dike of a woman whose real name somehow nobody ever found out. “You just don’t get it do you?” she barked, her snakebite eyes spurting venom, “You’re looking at expulsion, Mr. Taylor. Expulsion. Now I suggest you straighten up or face the consequences.” This was over two different colored socks. I went to a public school.

I ended up not getting expelled from high school. In fact, the administration was so pleased with my attendance in therapy and adherence to matching socks that by spring semester I was given back my role as Editor in Chief, and was even able to deliver a speech at graduation as the standing senior class president (a speech delivered in the form of a slam poem, might I add). After that, I only ever made my dad cry out of happiness. It seemed like all of this was behind us. Until last month, when a cross-country road trip would put one final twist in this intestinal trial.

to be concluded.