Chapter Thirteen: IBS in NYC

Nov 17, 2007

Chapter Thirteen: IBS in NYC

After enjoying a pretty amazing night of public affection then private oral pleasure with a gorgeous Canadian musician, I awoke around 6:00 AM. The area surrounding NYU was surprisingly quiet.

Maggie arose a few hours later and began filling in gaps for my holes of the evening. After hooking up with the Canadians at a small oak pub called FuBar, we all proceeded to the dance club, CroBar. We smiled for a photo of us crouched next to a giant octagon sign reading “DON’T STOP EVER” and took the advice to heart. Almost immediately we got separated from each other. I assumed she knew where I was in the club and would find me when she was ready to leave. As I fornicated openly with the swarthy Canadian under a strobe light, she disappeared barefoot into the rainy night unnoticed until hours later when she was scooped up by do-gooder cab driver, Miguel “Mike” Menendez. Wanting to ensure her safety, he made sure she got in the vehicle to get a ride to the hotel. When she’d opened the door at 4:00 AM, she noticed the Canadian’s dark legs on the bed and headed to the nearest all night diner to have “THE BEST OMELETTE EVER.”

So, I begged her to join me there for my early lunch since I had enjoyed nothing but a pack of pretzels on the plane and roughly fifteen beers and cocktails the day before. I was anxious to tear into some greasy food and to meet some people in a local restaurant. To me, one of the best ways to get a real feel for an area of New York City was visiting the places where locals eat, shop and booze hound. I’d considered applying to NYU as an administrator or an instructor, so I wanted to devour this area, too.

In a sunroom attached to the deli, I had a huge, chicken melt sandwich and a mess of greasy fries…the perfect cap to a lovely evening of sexing a hot stranger and a super start to a lazy day roaming The City. Sadly, it also would be the beginning of my worst bout ever with Irritable Bowel Syndrome.

Strolling by Union Square Park, we continued for blocks and blocks. The weather, a positively perfect 72 degrees with no clouds competing with the skyline, provided an opportune atmosphere for exploring. We tried on weird shoes, smelled sweet flowers, made friends with restaurateurs and soaked up the kindness of strangers who wanted to tell us details about every neighborhood. “We have the last park in the area that only opens with your personal key.” “I’ve been selling these globes for thirty years here.” “Could I interest you girls in a pastry?” I talked to everyone I could, wishing to know them all.

Maggie wanted to see SoHo, so we made our way there and then continued the walk. Finally, she stopped into an outside market to buy her twins, Ian and Danielle, some trinkets. While she shopped, I propped myself up on a meter as I began feeling the effects of the night before. Sure, a make out session with a gorgeous Canadian musician punctuated with a Big O for yours truly was worth the morning after. I’d suffer a day on only two hours of sleep for hot, male contact any day (and have numerous times), but spending that day on foot for hours on end after a day of non-stop activity…an MRI…a flight up the East Coast…checking into the hotel…binge drinking and dancing until 3:30 AM…enjoying oral pleasure with said boy until 5:00 AM…well, that was a bit much for me to take. I started to feel very weak and questioned whether I’d be able to walk much further. I found Maggie and told her that if she wanted to see Chinatown we’d better get there soon. I wasn’t feeling too well. With every step I felt my jeans tugging at my stomach, which seemed full of compressed air looking for a home. I knew this sensation all to well since I have had to live with excruciating stomach pain and severe digestive trauma my entire life. I hoped that I would be able to use the bathroom when we got back to the hotel room. If not, then I knew I would be a miserable bitch for the rest of night…perhaps for the rest of the trip.

Noticing my contorted facial expressions, Maggie said, “I’m hungry. Let’s stop in here and sit down for a moment.” As the upscale deli employee began assembling her spinach and chick pea salad, I located a table near the window, so I wouldn’t miss a minute. I peered out of the glass and noticed a Starbucks across the street. Hoping the caffeine might give me an artificial boost of energy and help me “rid myself” of the baggage I hauled in my lower abdomen, I bolted over and purchased a steamy cup of joe. I brought the brew back to the table at the deli and sipped on it slowly as Maggie put a dent in her salad. Suddenly, my stomach began the familiar lurches that only someone with IBS can understand. The natives were restless.

The best way to describe an attack of IBS is to imagine that you have, say…a ten pound brick trying to exit the pin hole of your anus. You are well aware that this will be “better for everyone” once it finally happens, but both your mind and your body are terrified of the actual event. Maybe petrified is the more appropriate word since that is precisely what the feces feels like as it rips its way through your tender flesh. When my girlfriends broach the subject of anal sex, I almost pass out from the discussion alone. The idea of feeding a pink polish sausage to a brown growling bear with nothing but my anal opening as a cage door is unfathomable. Ain’t gonna happen.

If an IBS sufferer merely had fewer bowel movements, in our busy world, you might say, “Hey, that’s not so bad. One less thing to do!” But there’s a reason the medical condition used to be a “spastic colon.” On day four or five of IBS constipation, you can almost picture a hyperactive turd unleashed in a room of lethargic old farts. Colon is trying his best to move but keeps getting waylaid by the stiff crowd. And just like any other kid who isn’t satisfied, Colon’s becoming a giant pain in the ass.

Unbearable gas pains initiated their havoc on my lower stomach just as Maggie finished eating. I began looking for a restroom sign so that I could at least go defumigate in private. I located it at the bottom of a long steep staircase which led into a basement in the bowels of the restaurant. Obviously, the owners had invested all of their money in the shiny yupped out dining area because the unisex bathroom was literally the pits. My first trip in I tried my best not to focus on the cracked seat and disgusting overflowing trash can. As I urinated from the pressure of the swollen ball of shit I had pressing against my bladder, I pretended I was somewhere else. I even dropped a pebble in the toilet which was a good sign. With IBS, usually, if you can manage even the smallest deposits then soon the others join the herd. And did they ever.

I edged my way up from the pit and saw Maggie enjoying an iced mochaccino. I guessed she too felt the effects of the night before although she had three hours more sleep than I did.

The minute I approached the table, smiled at her and began to comment unnecessarily on her own exhaustion, a mother pain hit. Apologizing, I ran right back down into the pits, skipping every other step. But when I got to the bottom another patron was waiting. I paused about five seconds before I knew that something had to give. I ran back up the stairs, two at a time, and jetted past Maggie who had a puzzled look on her face. Froggering across lanes of traffic, I burst into the Starbucks in a full-on run, threw myself into the bathroom and double latched the door. My expectations of the Starbucks bathroom were hardly met. You’d think a multi-billion dollar franchise would lead its industry in hygiene. Oh no. This location apparently had decided to “keep it real” to grungy, misfit coffee house fashion and thus had one of the scariest public bathrooms I’ve ever had the misfortune of shitting in. The walls were splattered with what I prayed to god was black and red paint. Large swirl patterns with schizophrenic messages chipped in the wall encircled me. I was so skeeved by the sticky concoction on the flooring that I literally balled my Capri pants into my fist to prevent them from making direct contact. The toilet seat was covered with orange and yellow sprayings of human matter. The handle appeared broken. The squares were low. It was a control freak’s worst nightmare. I had no choice.

After seriously considering shuffling across the crowded street, with my pants around my ankles, down the steep staircase, back into the pit, I decided to buck up and do the deed there. Straddling the seat which is bloody murder for a girl who has thunder thighs, I began to tweak out baby turds in mid-air. With everyone that fell I would notice another frightening word scrawled on the cinder block. Then, other natives became restless.

As is well known, coffee is a diuretic which almost instantaneously triggers an urge to piss. As I battled my bathroom demons, many slaves to the bean organized themselves into a long waiting line, no doubt wondering “what the hell is going on in there?”

I heard them discussing how badly they had to go and how there “really should be another stall.” Anxiety finally shut my exit door then and I wiped and flushed with the broken handle, soaked my hands in the water’s trickle and scrammed. You would have thought this congregation was the line for a half-priced showing of The Producers and I had gotten the last ticket from the sheer amount of animosity that greeted me when I swung open the door. Of course, I had the advantage of knowing how disgusting each of their own experiences were going to be in a few moments and that carried me happily across the street back to meet Maggie.

We walked a few more blocks into Chinatown since I wanted to show Maggie almost every face The City had to offer. The illegitimate siblings of Gucci, Prada, Coach and Louis Vuitton to name a few. Usually bargain shopping fills me with an inexpressible joy and comfort, but that day I felt completely detached from the crowd. With every step, my abdomen reminded me we were at no armistice yet. War still raged inside of me.

After an unpleasant experience with a pretzel vendor there (the thing tasted like a twisted smoky sock) a few years back, I have never again purchased anything to eat or drink in Chinatown. And I certainly have never braved a toilet there.

Approximately one minute after we submerged ourselves into the hustle of Canal Street, I knew very bad things were about to happen to me. When IBS reveals her bipolarity in public and goes all Sybil on your ass by switching from the whiny bitch constipation to the incensed “can’t take her anywhere” diarrhea, you have a real situation on your hands. I do not mean to diminish those without IBS who have suffered bouts of diarrhea. God help you, I am sure it was a trying ordeal. But when diarrhea commences inside the body of someone who hasn’t had a bowel movement in four to five business days, let’s just say, the shit hits the fan. Like Forrest Gump’s description of Vietnam rain, it comes “frontways and sideways” from you. Actually, from every angle possible.

I told Maggie I needed to find a restroom fast. So we poked into a few local establishments, but most of them did not offer bathrooms to the public. “You go to Subway” they’d say in broken English, and I prayed they pointed me toward the sandwich chain instead of the nearest train station. (I couldn’t imagine that anyone would enjoy watching me soil myself on the platform waiting for the N or the R.) Finally, we located the Subway, and I went into yet another filthy bathroom and didn’t come out for awhile. There was no “bucking up” anymore. I was sick.

After emptying everything I thought I had in my stomach, I met Maggie outside. I apologized for cutting the day short, but I knew I wasn’t going to make it to South Street Sea Port. Hell, I felt lucky to have made it out of Starbucks and Subway.

She admitted she could really use a nap too, so we began walking to the nearest station. We rounded another block, and I felt a stronger, sharper shit pain. It racked my entire body and almost made me faint. I ran into the closest “eatery” which boasted unidentified beige meat hanging in its window. I flew past the owner who began screaming in Ching-lish, “You buy someting…you no use bathroom til’ you buy someting!” Running through the double doors to the tiny bathroom situated next to the kitchen where I witnessed unbearable things being done to some dead skinned animals, I locked myself into this bathroom which was about the size of an airplane lavatory. I supposed it posed no problem since the Chinese tended to be smaller, and I was too after I left that bathroom.

Before I could get out the door I had to go back (almost knocking over another young Chinese girl trying to edge in). Outside she banged on the door and justifiably cursed me in her native tongue. But no performance anxiety would stop me this time. Lil’ Kim Lee, bless her heart, could knock the door down with a mallet if she liked. My fecal marathon was ON.

Passing through the dining area where I met the piercing eyes of the owner behind the counter, I noticed Maggie purchased a soda to keep the lady from following me into the bathroom and jerking me off the shitter mid-stream. I smiled and thanked her for that but declined when she offered me a sip. That “restaurant” was for deposits only.

Walking back onto the street, everything began to seem positively unreal to me. The pressure in my stomach would not let up. I began to sweat in anticipation of when the next attack would rack my body. As we passed through alleys behind garment stores, Maggie picked up scraps of discarded silk. “Don’t you think this would be pretty in my hair? I am going to get some of this,” she said. I nodded my head “yes,” but I secretly imagined it as toilet paper in the event that I had to squat and shit in a drain pipe. I encouraged her to pick up as much as she could.

I told Maggie I didn’t think I had the time to invest in a subway ride back to the hotel, so we tried to hail a cab. But finding a cab to pick you up at 5:15 on a Monday afternoon is kind of like finding a clean bathroom on Canal Street. Ain’t gonna happen. She knew her newfound cabbie friend, Mike, drove late nights so he would be vampired up in his Chelsea apartment at this time. We had no other choice. We descended into the subway.

True to script Maggie had trouble with her card and became hung in the revolving bars right as our train closed its doors and exited. My temper quickly flared, but soon the pain in my stomach would become so severe that I couldn’t even be angry that we had missed the train anymore. I just pressed my ass cheeks against the walls of tile and prayed that I could stop it. I simply could not handle the prospect of shitting myself in front of everyone in the crowded sub station…of being known by each of them for the rest of their lives as “the girl who shit herself in front of me in the subway.” So I prayed and I pressed really hard. I started to sweat through my clothes. Where was that goddamned train?

As it arrived, we filed in with half of Manhattan. I’d never been on a train this crowded since I usually try to avoid rush hour traffic. Luckily, I did get a seat, but there were mounds of people on top of me. Now, I feared being known as “the girl who shit herself while sitting next to me on the subway.” With every bump, lurch, twist and moan of the car, I had one of my own. I avoided eye contact. I became religious again. I made Maggie get off at Union Square because I knew I was about to have an accident. A stop at a Hallmark store later (where again there was no public bathroom available), I sprinted down the streets as if on rails. My internal compass divinely directed me to the hotel where I could have my first hygienic colon cleanse of the day.

As we pulled the doors together in the old fashioned elevator and ascended to our tenth floor room, realization hit me. Shared bathrooms. I’d booked the Hotel 17 because it looked so charming and was very reasonable. I’d had no trouble surviving in shared bathrooms during dorm life nor had I encountered issues with shared WC’s in Europe. But then again, this was the worst case of diarrhea I’d ever had, and I just desperately wanted to be able to curl up next “my commode” in “my room” so I could shit uninterrupted whenever I had to. Sadly, I accepted the fact. Ain’t gonna happen.
At first, things were pretty smooth (aside from the fact that I shit my guts out an innumerable amount of times and began to feel so weak that clawing my way inch by inch holding on to the thickly lacquered chair-railing in the hallway was the only way I made it back to the room). But around 7:00, people started showering and preparing to go out for dinner. I quickly made real enemies on our hall as guests first had to wait for me to finish my latest bout and then had to endure the smell while showering. I started going to other halls hoping maybe these people weren’t as sanitary and didn’t require showers. I heard several room doors open and close as people purposefully interjected for my earshot, “Bob, what time did you say our reservations were?”

I enjoyed an intimacy with the toilet closest to our room that’s hard to explain. I studied every crack, noted every vent, counted every tile, catalogued every trickle from the shower head. Quickly, I memorized a sign on the back of the door in front of me which read:

• Please dispose of garbage in waste basket Thank you
• Por favor bote la basura dentro del tarro Gracias
• Bitte werfen sie ihren abfall in den abfalleimer danke
• Veuillez mettre vos dechets dans la poubelle merci

A few times I looked at myself in the mirror and saw a different person. My tan looked grey. My hair looked Brillo. Once I peered down into the old laundry chute which was open to the bathroom through a small portal window and considered flinging my body down the shaft rather than endure another shit pain. I splashed cold water on my face and tried to drown out the pounding in my head, the butterfly farm in my stomach and the neighbors screechy, “Bob, what is that girl doing in there?”

After my twentieth visit to the can, I decided it could come out of my ears if it wanted…I wasn’t going back. This soldier was AWOL. The tours had left me not only weak but also dehumanized. With every grab of the tile, squench of the eyebrows, forward lean needed to produce the next installment, I felt less and less like a person and more like a chocolate factory. I recalled the I Love Lucy episode where she finds herself working on an assembly line at a candy company and has to eat chocolate quickly to keep up with the mass production coming down the line.

I was that oiled machine.

So, I settled into my twin bed and sipped ever so carefully on the Sprite Maggie graciously bought me at the corner bodega to wash down a shot of Kaopectate. I propped up against two pillows, turned on the TV and watched as Maggie readied for her night out. I advised her to make the trip to another hall’s shower for obvious reasons. She tried to make me feel better by saying, “Oh, I’m sure it is not that bad.” With a knowing look, I informed her that I even showered in the other bathroom. And I had been one with this stink for nearly five hours. She laughed and told me that nothing could smell worse than the mangy farts the guy next to her on the subway had been letting loose. I told her, “That wasn’t that guy.”

Fully warned she left, and I started channel surfing. After a few minutes of pausing for the premiere of yet another ridiculous “reality” show called Outback Jack, TBS announced that Sex and the City was coming up next. I remembered they just began repeats of the show from start to finish, and I smiled and relaxed a bit, feeling like an old friend had stopped by for a visit. This was an early episode when the show hadn’t quite ironed out the best way to make Carrie “the voice of New York singles.” The writers borrowed from movies such as When Harry Met Sally, including clips from interviews with a montage of singles addressing whatever topic her article touched on that week. It was distracting and a little hokey. Soon enough, they’d learn that one woman’s voice was just plenty.

As I watched the gorgeous shots of The Park, trendy wine bars, the flower stands, shiny shoe stores, my mood started to sink. Here I was in New York City and because of some damn stomach condition, I was holed up in my hotel room watching characters enjoy the beauty that was outside my fucking window. Maggie called her new friend and savior Mike, the cabbie, and he agreed to show her Queens for the entire evening from the passenger side of his yellow cab. With every preparation she made to go out, I cast a look at the TV then a longing glance out the window. This was so unfair.

Tapping into my signature fortitude, I screwed up the energy to peel myself off the sheets. I pried open my suitcase, beat the wrinkles out of a pair of jeans and slid into them taking great care with the buttoning around my mid-section. I slicked my wet hair back into a pony tail at my nape and affixed hoop earrings to my ears. I knew it was still warm out because Maggie had been smoking bud through the open windows. I found a black sleeveless shirt and pulled it over my head. Maggie excitedly watched me stupefied. I decided to let the grey tan stand and passed on the make-up application. It certainly wasn’t going to help anyway. No one approaches a soldier when he returns from the fight weathered and worn with a tube of lip gloss in hand to make him “more presentable,” so I wasn’t feeding into it either. This was between New York City and me. The rest of the world could feel nauseated when they looked at my face for all I cared. Hell, I’d share the wealth.

We walked through a park near NYU to get to some restaurants. Suddenly, we found ourselves in a prototypical collegiate setting with cheap bar food and inexpensive beer on every corner. We stopped into a cantina that touted the best burrito in New York City, and I told Maggie I thought I could stomach some plain tortilla chips. We made our way into the restaurant and gave the youngster our order. He asked where we were from (the standard Yank reply the minute you open your drippy Southern mouth) and how long we’d been studying at NYU. When I stated that I was from North Carolina and that I actually taught students his age there, he smiled and handed me a brochure from their restaurant. I read the company’s history in amazement. Less than a year ago, they too had migrated north to the NYU campus from Chapel Hill, N.C., where they had served burritos for decades. I considered this a sign.

We sat outside on a patio next to some “too cool for school” kids who were discussing Fahrenheit 911 over their penny drafts. I grinned as I thought of how college environments were the same no matter where you found yourself. Maggie went and picked up our order when they called the number. She brought the basket of tortillas sans salsa to the table, and I sat there nibbling on the triangles, listening to the buzz of student life. The optimism and expectancy sponged in college students' voices always energized me. Their beliefs in new ideas laced their speech like a brogue indicating exactly where they currently were situated in life. It was music to my ears.

Convinced it probably wouldn’t be that different to teach at NYU, my eyes skimmed the street. Just then I saw a large store sign that read, “Medieval and Gothic Wrought Iron Antiques.” I’d never seen such a store on college strips in North Carolina. No, I quickly decided. This was still wild, weird New York City.

I waved at Maggie and Mike as she sped off in the cab, saying “Bring her back in one piece or your ass is mine.” He just smiled and tooted and waved back. I had a pretty good feeling about the guy though. I concluded he hadn’t been laid in a long while, but he was relatively harmless. You simply had to notify a man with whom you entrusted your girl’s safety for the evening that, heedless of the law, you’d cut him in an instant. You know, fair warning.

Around midnight, I walked back a few blocks to the hotel alone but not frightened. Frankly, I’d had seen the scariest thing New York had to offer today, and it wasn’t a gun toting gang banger demanding my Pulsar wrist watch. It was a bathroom in lower Manhattan.