Your voice is faint, calling me from the bathroom. I can only imagine what you want or need from the privacy of the throne. I open the door and peek my head in to find you straining to push out a poop baby from your anus.
My rescue brain goes quick into action bringing you a plethora of antidote recipes, until I’ve exhausted my resources. Finally, I tell you to relax, of which you cannot, due to the tremendous pain you are in. You cry a little, but I reassure you that you are fine, before stepping out.
It has been thirty minutes since I last heard you peep. To rest assure you didn’t fall asleep, I speak through the wooden door to check on you, without invading your space, unless asked. You say you are hanging in there. Feeling assured you got this handled, I move back to the couch to work.
I hear the toilet flush and ask you for the tenth time if you won the war. I find it better off to handle the seriousness of this complication with humor. You reply that you had not, exit, then proceed to walk around the fireplace once; as I encourage you to keep going until it feels like you are going to crap your pants. After three times, you decide to try “dropping the kids off at the pool” one more time.
I’m finger tip deep in work, when you call out to me once again. You ask me if I can see it. I already know what you are referring to without asking. Reluctantly, I lean more intimately than I ever wanted to be near your backside, my face looking at the dried poop you wiped up your butt crack and the murky toilet water below your body’s shadow. Of course I see nothing, but I can no longer handle your physical and emotional pain that you’ve drawn on for the last six hours, since you initially paced the house for some kind of movement.
I did what any caretaker would have done, I donned my hands with vinyl latex gloves and told you to lean over. The anus now swollen like a woman dilated enough to deliver a newborn, I reach my fingers into the space where things should only exit and dig at the compacted boulder, tightly wedged inside. You wince each time I try to get just a little out. Its like digging in hard Georgia clay. Nothing is budging, until a little splash echoes in the porcelain bowl. We are getting somewhere, but really nowhere fast.
I pull out and tell you to relax, while carefully removing the gloves from my hands to place in the trash, grab you another glass of warm water and tell you to drink it. You oblige, doing just about anything for relief, while I return to work.
Five minutes later, your voice, I know so well, reaches me. Again, I rise to save you from this monster, of whom, you wonder is out of your body, yet. I again adorn vinyl mitts, noticing your long nails are coated in either poop or chocolate. I regained focus, after almost throwing up in my mouth, and went back in for a chance to unplug you. Little by little we filled the toilet with abstract size pellets, but it wasn’t enough to pass it all. I again eject myself from the gagging space, unearth my clean hands from the toxic waste and return to work, after washing for the millionth time to make sure I didn’t get anything accidentally on me.
I am deep in thought when again you call. It’s become a game, rescuing you from your misery; here we go again.
You tell me you are pretty sure you have won the war and asked if I would check to make sure. Seems like you would know if you passed a spaceship out of your butt, wouldn’t you? But I didn’t ask questions. Instead, I’m starting to believe vinyl looks good on me and went in for a final check, giving you the all clear signal.
Becker, T. J. (2018). Knowing You. Unpublished manuscript.
Keystroke Stories 