Frosty Freeze

Behind the bathrooms a 40 foot rock wall led up to the highway. It formed an amphitheatre of sorts, which caught a cacophony of sounds cascading from the campsite. I could clearly hear the Christians singing songs and the low hum of campers moving about.

From across the campground, a lone voice yelled, “Shut the Fuck Up.” It was obvious that the Christians were making the most noise and the comment was directed at them. The campground was silent. Without missing a beat, the youth minister yelled back, “It’s not 10 PM.” As campers know, it’s hush-hush after 10 PM. Before that, it’s fair game. The Christians knew their camping rules. They went back to singing and the campsite grumbled with noises. The lone voice of dissent was never heard from again.

I walked into the bathroom and all the stalls were occupied. Taking a cursory look under the doors, I deduced the people in the stalls were in there for the long haul. I have no idea how I came up with that theory - maybe they were reading newspapers or all their shit was laying on the ground in front of them. Either way, I made the ill-advised decision to crap in the shower stall and push it down the center drain with my feet.

This decision came from knowing my bowel movements. I’m not of those people that don’t go to the bathroom at work, waiting until they get home to explode. No. I can pretty much go anywhere. The one problem is that once the telephone call comes down from the bowels saying it’s time to go, and the time limit is given, there’s no stopping the impending movement. It’s like a 10 minutes stop watch: if I don’t find a bathroom in 10 minutes, I’m going in my pants or on the side of the road, or in a box in a back of a van. This knowledge helped me make this decision. I’ve crapped in the showers many times, almost always at home, so this was no big deal; however, the call came and I needed to go.

It was a pay shower, so I came prepared with 4 quarters. By this time the stopwatch was down to 30 seconds. My knees were touching and I moved in an accelerated motion. I put quarters in the receptacle, turned the handle and nothing. Nothing. I panicked. It was broken I was about to crap on the floor of the showers. I knew that no amount foot stomping would get a turd successfully down the drain without the constant flow of water from a shower. I was fucked.

I was camping with my girlfriend’s family, who were not necessarily fond of me. They had a reason not to be: I didn’t have a job, preferring the income of General Assistance; I had a drinking problem that would get worse and I was prone to verbal bursts of low self-esteem masked as self-deprecation. I was in a band, though, that I tirelessly worked to implode anytime we played. I was a catch.

I somehow knew that shitting on the floor of the campground showers and leaving it for the next campers would somehow get back to me. I envisioned forcibly being removed from the campground in front of my girlfriend’s parents:

Park Ranger: “Are you the guy that shit in the showers?”

Even if I denied it to the end, everybody in our campsite knew I was capable of such an egregious act, except for her parents. It was all too much to bear.

Standing naked in the stall, butt clenched, I came up with a plan. Pulling my Chicago Bulls baseball cap from my head, which I found on the side of the freeway, literally pulling over and running to back on the shoulder to get it, I squatted and placed the baseball hat in my right hand - upside down – under my ass to catch the falling poop; my left hand was used to pull my left ass cheek as far away from the anus as possible. This would allow a clean fall into the cap.

Since I had to go real bad, building up to the final countdown, it came out like a frosty freeze ice cream. A day of drinking, eating chips and shitty foods contributed to the unfortunate texture. I breathed a sigh of relief, carefully putting my clothes back on, taking extra special care with my shorts. I opened the shower stall door and all the bathrooms were still taken, so I decided to wade into the lake and clean off.

It was a beautiful night and besides the troubles I just had, i was happy to be somewhere that was different than San Francisco, where my life was cold, foggy and depressing. My troubles were at least suspended for a weekend in the waters of a warm lake. I was happy.

Wading into the lake, I held the ball cap full of poop by the head area, not the brim. When the water flooded over my privates, I gently turned the cap over. The crap reluctantly fell into the water. I immediately started pushing water toward it, while moving backward. Once I was far enough away, I plunged the baseball cap into the water and vigorously scrubbed the areas that were soiled. I did the same with my shorts.

Before going back to camp, I dunked my head under water, to appear that I took a shower.

I wore the cap for the rest of the weekend.