drieux

It happens to everybody, and at some point you find yourself in some tepid rathole, pants around your ankles and sitting on a bowl that hasn't been clean since Madonna was relevant. You think back on what it was you ate or drank that forced you into this low position and quietly hate yourself as you push out that hatred from your hindquarters.

But as I said, it happens to everybody. But which is the worst - the absolute worst - place to drop a deuce? A few suggestions, if I may.

The Old Standby: The Bar

There was - and probably still is - a bar in East Lansing when I went to college called "The Landshark." For whatever reason, the men's bathroom was right off from the dance floor of the place, and for some inexplicable reason it featured three urinals and a single toilet - placed in a corner with no barriers up whatsoever.

So pity the poor soul who has to take a shit, goes into that bathroom and then has to sit there and shit like a prison inmate while everybody else goes in to eliminate the last 45 minutes worth of cheap beer. And imagine the soul-crushing horror of going in to use that toilet in early summer, when Michigan humidity causes wooden doors to expand, and when some drunk swings the door open to walk back out to the dance floor and the door sticks on the floor, wide open and revealing you, sitting on the toilet that's too far away to get the door.

And imagine that guy yelling as loudly as he can, "Somebody close the door, please! Please, somebody close the door!" as he sees all the hot girls looking at him and laughing as he takes his crap and he knows that he'll never be able to come up with a line that breaks through that image of him with his khakis around his socks and his polo shirt rolled up over his gut as he drunkenly defecates in a shitty college bar.

No, this didn't happen to me. But it sticks with me as a memory of why we don't poop at bars. In a bar, that toilet is for vomit and only a drunk should have to be at a bar when they need to defecate. Yeah, we've all shit in a bar. But none of us are proud of it.

The White Trash Special: On A Greyhound Bus

Is there any luxury liner of the damned more obvious than a Greyhound bus? To witness the poor, misaligned souls driven to travel by Greyhound cross-country is to see every bad choice you ever made compounded, multiplied and then flung at you in widescreen high-definition. THAT GUY is what would have happened if you had gotten married to that girl you were obsessed with in high school. THAT WOMAN is what would have happened if you had run away with that guy with a motorcycle when you were 19. THAT GUY is what happens when you dedicate 13 years to doing methamphetamines nonstop.

You put all those people on a single steel tube barreling towards destiny - or, more likely, Biloxi - and you've got a toothless, angry generic-soda-swilling, lotto-scratcher-playing ill-informed-racist failure train. And on the way, all that Arby's and Doritos dust and Milwaukee's Best is going to hit their lower intestine and everybody on that shiny wingless death march on wheels shares one lone crapper. Do you think they clean it often? Hell, no - and why would they? For these awful human goobers that ride these things? It's their impacted bowel, and now they get to live in it.

Chances are if you're riding on a Greyhound, life hasn't exactly been going the way you planned. But the moment you step into that bathroom and drop your pants to take a shit, it's time to find the next payphone you can and call your mother. You could sit in your seat and quietly cry, but people on Greyhounds see that so often, it won't do you any good.

The Boner-N-Bowel-Bonanza: at a Strip Club

While there are a number of sub-genres, there are basically two types of guys who go to the titty bars: the guys who are really, really drunk at the end of a guy's night out and the guys who, try as they might, just can't function at regular bars anymore and they just always end up at the strip club. Either way, these are not people that you want to follow into a stall.

Besides, do you really want to sit down to drop the Cosby Kids off at the pool and have to rub your twig-and-berries on the same spot where some drunk loser had to push his boner down to pee? And that's assuming your at a moderately decent titty bar, not one where some laid-low stripper has taken to paying for her kid's ear medicine by giving out blowjobs to lonely old men for $40 each, and you not only get to wipe piss off the seat before you sit down, but all manner of biodisease. You may worry about crabs, but believe me - that lonely, 88-year-old alcoholic thing can be caught through sitting on the semen. Avoid at all costs.

Ashes To Ashes, Dust To Dook: The Funeral Poop

"Doesn't grandma look great? They did a great job, didn't they? I still think she went too young. Oh, what plan does the Lord have for us? Excuse me, I have GOT to take a monster shit!"

Funerals are generally sad and mournful affairs, and excusing yourself to sit on the bowl and let your butthole spurt and sputter while Aunt Jane talks about what a generous man Uncle Frank was is just in poor taste. You couldn't have taken care of that beforehand? You had to drop the deuce now?

You know, Uncle Frank is in Heaven, watching you now. You could be talking to your family about that time when you went snowmobiling with him and then he made you hot cocoa. But instead you're having a movement just feet away from his corpse. Good play, home slice.

I'll Have A Number Four, A Number Six And You Can Have My Number Two: The Fast Food Crap

Despite all the negative things said about fast food, I believe it is essential to our economy. Without it, teenagers wouldn't be able to save up money for their roofies, middle-aged failures wouldn't have anywhere to be manager and boss people around and, if everybody stopped eating it, our all-important Diabetes Medicine industry would crumble. In short, we need those bright pastiches of neon hate all over our rest stops and main streets. They're like the major organs powering the body of America.

But as we all know, they're not exactly bright spots of hygeine or cuisine. In fact, it's nearly inevitable if you eat an even remotely diet that after consuming this stuff, you're going to have a bout of diarrhea. You simply can't eat reconstituted beef tongues formed into a patty without your body needing to process it as quickly as possible and get it out the backway.

But to step into a clown-themed bathroom with Matchbox 20 in glorious symph--o-matic Elevato-tastic surround sound, step around the unexplainable large puddles of dirty water and walk into a stall that has the dark shininess of the "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" remakes and actually bare your ass and do your business - yikes. In fact, dining in the restaurant itself is almost forbidden once you're past the age of 25. At some point, you take your bag of shame home with you, eat it on the couch while wearing baggy sweat pants and wait for the inevitable crushing of your bowels.

Y'know - like an adult.