Part 7: A Shitty Story

DISCLAIMER:  THIS CHAPTER BEST READ ON AN EMPTY STOMACH.

 

RECORD STORE TALES Part 7: A Shitty Story

August 1995.  Beautiful warm summer day.  The sun was up early and so was I.  It was Sunday, the best day to work the store.  Sunday was just a four hour shift and in the summer, very slow.  It was your basic fun day to be at work, cleaning away and listening to tunes in air conditioning.

I usually walked to work.  I put on some shorts and a big baggy T-shirt and headed out on foot.  The best way cut across this school and park with two baseball diamonds.  While walking I couldn’t help but think of how great life was.  The sun was out, it was summer, I only had to work four hours.  My family was at the cottage that weekend so I had the place to myself when I got home too.

Right in between the first baseball field and the second, I felt my stomach gurgle a little bit.  I’d had the farts a bit that morning but that was nothing unusual.  I continued along my walk.  It sure was a quiet day in town that morning.  I loved the way the sun was shining through the leaves.

As the gurgles continued, I entered the mall.  I strode down the empty hallway to the big glass window of our store and opened the door.

Just when I had closed the door, locked it behind me and was in an enclosed space, I let off another stinker.  It was rotten, like a rotten egg had just been dropped behind me.  It was powerful and sour.  They kept coming too, in little squirts here and there.  I started to feel crampy.

I picked out my music for the day (Joe Satriani), opened the door letting out the smell, and waited for customers.  I was really starting to feel rotten.

I worked the first two hours just farting up a storm.  Unsurprisingly, I didn’t have many customers that day.  They could probably smell me down the hall.  I don’t know what I ate, but I know what my sausage farts smell like, and this was worse.  I wasn’t feeling too mobile anymore, so I pulled up the chair.  Suddenly I really had to shit.  I was still farting too.

2 o’clock rolled around.  I made it halfway through the day.  The rest should be no problem.  Halfway there.  Point of no return!  Hah.  Whatever.  Piece of cake.  Only a few people came in.  The cleaning could wait.  I’d just tell the truth.  I really wasn’t feeling well.  Besides I could really just catch up the next day anyway.

I farted again.  It felt good.  I felt a tremendous amount of relief.

Then, the horror struck.  The feeling that something wasn’t right.  The smell.  I looked down, to see a tiny trickle of liquid shit rolling down my leg….

There was someone in the store!  Holy shit, I couldn’t leave!  Oh fuck.  Oh fuckity-fuck-fuck!

Although I was in complete denial of it at the time, there was no way that guy didn’t smell me.  There was just no fucking way.  It was unavoidable.  It was a wall of stench just hanging there, stale, in the air.  It was incredible.  Still, the man had etiquette.  As he paid for his cassette, he politely asked me, “Are you feeling OK?  You’re turning green.”  I told him I had thrown up earlier.  He wished me well and left.

Completely and totally freaking out, I waddled over to the door and locked the store.  We didn’t have a washroom.  I had no choice, I had to make it to the mall washroom and fast.  I prayed to God that it would be empty.  I improvised a “back in 5 minutes” sign.  I tried to waddle anonymously down the hall.  I hung a right.  Down another hall.  Why the hell were the washrooms so far away?

I entered.  It was empty.  I entered a stall.  Bracing myself for whatever lay ahead, I took a deep breath and prepared to look down below.

It was bad.  A deep puddle of rich brown liquid shit lay in my undies.  Luckily, it had acted as a bowl, to catch most of it.  A few streams went down my legs, but none reached my socks.  Small victory.  I’d take that.

I had no choice, there was only one thing to do.  I removed my shorts, and then carefull removed the underwear while maintaining the bowl shape.  The flushed them down the toilet.  I prayed that it would not plug.  It did not.

Grasping a generous amount of toilet paper, I cleaned myself up the best I could.  The washroom still empty, I wet some paper towels as well.  My shorts had been stained through.  I cleaned them as best I could but they were definitely tainted.  Luckily, my baggy shirt, when untucked, more than covered the stain.

I sat there on the store chair the next two hours, not moving my ass once.  I phoned up Tom who was in Waterloo.  “I just threw up man,” I lied.  “What should I do?  Should I go home?  I have two more hours to go.”

Tom urged me to go home, but some perverse sense of duty prevented it.  I’d hang in there.  That day, our store earned a record low amount. $99 in sales, for the day.  That record stood the whole time I worked there.  Even on the worst snow days we’ve ever had, my record stood.

I closed up shop.  Spraying our vinyl chair with a healthy dose of Lysol, I wiped it down.  It stank.  I cleaned it again until the smell was gone.  The last of the evidence was wiped clean.  I waddled home, the shit now drying in the crack of my ass.

As I walked, the friction turned to heat, the heat turned to burning, and the burning turned to agony.  I walked through the park, now occupied by many people watching a baseball game.  I strode between the crowd and the diamond, the only pathway.  I walked like I had a pickle up my ass.

I got home, tossed out the shorts, ran a shower and cleaned myself thoroughly with generous amounts of soap.  After my shower, I just ran a cold bath and soaked.  Ahhh.

When you have a day like that, you can handle anything, I guarantee it.  I am not ashamed of my incontinence.  Rather, there is a lesson here.  Shitting your pants is definitely a good reason to close the store early!

27 comments

  1. Oh Melvin, I so agree.So detailed.I was watching a doc on Child Soldiers when I started reading this ‘Pooh tale’ &
    now I am in tears & it’s not from
    those Rwandan kids.
    TMI but I must be sick cuz I
    laughed ’til I cried! STOP THIS!

    Like

        1. As you can see, I am a night crawler.I love true
          crime.
          Is there such a thing as ‘false crime?’
          Making counterfeit money? Oh,that pic of the pooh up
          top,it makes me crave chocolate.It looks like a big chocolate macaroon to me.
          What is it?

          Like

  2. Been there, my friend! Not while running a store, mind you. But, still in a serious bind. Couldn’t help but lol at the farting (hey, farts are funny!).

    Like

    1. I’m glad you share my sensibilities about farts! If you enjoy that, then you’ll be pleased to know that the subject does come up periodically in the Record Store Tales. “Rock Video Night” is a memorable example. But I’ll let you read in order :)

      Like

  3. Four months later, and still effin funny. Your story reminds me of my friend who worked at a comic book store – same scenario. Gut rot, runs, make-shift 5 minute sign. Only thing was he kept having to leave to go, and he was the only one working. Terrible situation.

    Like

  4. BTW, if you think shit stories are funny, you’ve heard of the Haribo sugar-free gummi bears that cause the runs, right?

    Read the reviews. Make sure you aren’t drinking anything – you’ll choke with laughter. And, you’re welcome!

    Liked by 1 person

        1. I can’t recall to be honest…reddit? Metafilter? Can’t remember…I come across this shit at random – sometimes it’s gold!

          Like

        1. Here’s the thing. When I did Record Store Tales I had some backlash from people who said I was nasty to some people and unfairly kind to myself. I point to this story as the one that best illustrates that I gave myself just as much shit as the bosses. Fuck man, this is the internet. This is here forever. Under my name! I never named anyone who did me wrong.

          Liked by 1 person

  5. There’s nothing in your posts that I’ve read so far which doesn’t balance a bit of banter against people who got on your tits whilst working (I’ve worked in specialist retail, books not music, but I know how it is) with some stories about yourself where you end up with egg on your face or, indeed, shit in your pants.

    I think that some may be too quick to take your early reference to yourself being a mix of Barry and Rob from High Fidelty a little too concretely (for want of a better word) and the backlash is a result of that.

    It’s all rock and roll… and we all like it. Yes, we do.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Well I do get a little more blunt later on, but that was well after more shit hit the fan.

      I think there was a misunderstanding among those I worked with. I think some of them thought I was trying to write the “official” history of the store. But that’s not it at all. I was just writing my own personal story.

      Like

Rock a Reply