childhood trauma content ahead!

I’ve never shit my pants. Actually, that’s not true at all. A much more accurate way to say that would be to say that I used to shit my pants all the time. As a kid, I tended to not wipe as thoroughly as I could have and the results were lots of hastily wadded up and hidden streaky underpants. That’s not exactly ‘shitting you pants’ per se, but the general results: shit particles on your underpants, were the same.

I can actually only think of twice that I’ve actually dropped a dump in my pants, if we’re being completely honest. Once was when I was over at Eric Bachewicz’s house. It was winter and snowing and we were out ‘skitching’ which was essentially hiding between parked cars and then running out and grabbing onto the bumper of a passing car and letting the car pull you through the snow. This was an entirely stupid pastime, and it really didn’t work that well, but that didn’t stop us. We were out there with a dude named Norman and his brother who was named Rayhan. These guys were, uh…they were eastern Euros of some sort, maybe serbs (?), and they didn’t really like me that much. They were kind of bullies.

Norman and Rayhan were friends with Eric, and so was I so we tolerated each other (well, that’s not really a fair way to categorize the relationship. Realistically, they thought I was some kind of total fag and I pretty much just prayed they wouldn’t attack me [which actually goes a long way towards proving my ‘total fagdom,’ if I’m really examining the whole thing with unprejudiced eyes]). We’d all hang out and I, as the kind of outsider/loser of the squad, would foolishly try to do the ballsiest things I could think of to win the respect of these two guys who are probably both janitors now (not that I have a job of any kind. Just sayin).

This included hanging out and skitching even though I was feeling sick. SO, as a particularly slow moving car headed down Wellington ave. I came out from between the cars and grabbed the bumper. Now, skitching, as you may have guessed, doesn’t hardly work at all. When I grabbed the bumper, the only thing that happened was that I fell forward pretty violently and shit my pants with a savage ferocity that can only be summed up as “Totally Gross”. I went back to Eric’s house and scooped the bright orange goopy crap out of my underwear and off my legs. The shit had come out in spray form, not unlike the way that pink goo shot out of the dudes’ hoses in Ghostbusters 2, and it had done a pretty good number on my drawers, my pants and even my socks(!) and it also smelled kind of gnarly (if you can believe it!) I wrapped my ruined underwear in toilet paper and explained to Eric’s mom that shit wasn’t going so well and I was gonna just go home. Then I went outside and threw my underwear away in the dumpster (keep in mind it was FREEZING! And I was wearing wet [because of poo] pants), endured a little open mockery from Norman Rayhan and Eric and then went home and promptly took a hot bath. That sucked. The other time I shit my pants was way better.

My mom had this boyfriend who was a real asshole. His name was Michael Gratz. Michael Gratz had a son named Michael Gratz jr. and the day we met (me and the son) he called me a fag (this was obviously a common theme in my childhood) because I liked Michael Jackson. I was probably 7. I could not fathom how someone could not like Michael Jackson, much less think that his fans were fags. This kid was uh…probably ten or eleven, just by the way. He thought Michael Jackson and all his fans were fags. That’s pretty advanced, right? Anyway, I aksed him what music he liked, as I was so completely blown away by his opinion, and his response: John Waite and his classic jam (which was, at the time a current hit) Missing You. Now, if I can editorialize for a second, there’s nothing cool about being reductive and using the word “fag” in any sort of context, but seriously, the gayness of John Waite and Missing You cannot be overstated. Michael Jackson and Beat It are fucking Burt Reynolds eating a tiger raw compared to John Waite, bro. No two ways about it.

Anyhoo, we (me, my mom, and the two Michael Gratz’s) were going on a road trip from St. Louis (where I lived as a wee one) to Nantucket (where Michael Gratz had a summer home that he visited about twice a year). This was a horrifying prospect for me because while Michael gratz Jr. made no secret of openly hating me, his dad was more treacherous, threatening me and shaking me and shit when my mom would leave the room. The whole thing kind of sucked, and though I had a great time in Nantucket, I was always on edge, and I was constantly under attack by this father son team that really, for whatever reason, hated my faggy guts.

I remember that the house out there reminded me at the time of the house in Weekend At Bernies and I also remember that I got my favorite shirt from my childhood out there (it was a fish skeleton) and here’s the other thing I remember:

Michael Gratz yelling at me and Michael Gratz junior constantly punching me and me waiting, biding my time until the last day we were there. See, I hated these guys a lot, and I may have been a faggy cockblocker (a sentiment so personally revolting that I can barely handle it, but realistically, that’s why dude didn’t like me, right? He was trying to bang my mom and I was often in the way…ew. Ew. Ew. I, like all humans, like to imagine that my mom has no genitals and was impregnated in a lab) but I was also an intelligent and highly revenge motivated little boy. I KNEW that they only came to this house twice a year (when we showed up, the amount of getting shit together so we could function in the house betrayed that it had been a LONG time since anyone had been there) and I figured that I could pull a highly subversive move pretty easily if I just waited for my moment.

So, on the last day we were there, we’d packed our bags and everything, we were leaving and all in the car. I ran back into the house under the guise of going to the bathroom, which I kind of did. I shit in my pants. On purpose. I shit into my underwear, took off my shitty underwear and hid the shitty underwear in the vent of the room that I’d shared with Michael Gratz Jr. I knew it would be a bare minimum of six months before anyone found that dumpy load, and I was pretty proud of my little plan.

I rode all the way back to St. Louis with no underwear on, and it was worth it. It was great. This is also a story I’ve never really told anyone before, and if it wasn’t for the big bottle of Jim Beam on the table at the JBTV staff meeting (and my resulting hangover) I probably wouldn’t have told it right now. But, yeah. I’ve got lots and lots of great stories like this, folks. Lots.