Times I Shit My Pants #6

Hot Shit in a Cold World

It was a rare, breezeless afternoon in Zaragoza, Spain, and I was unseasonably depressed, again. Sacked from the only job that had ever half-fulfilled me, all for being in the wrong place at the wrong time: in a tub full of lagery urine at the time my shift began.

Depressed expat is not the summer vibe, moping around the Irish bar, grumbling at a local barman about the elasticity of the bacon in the English breakfast. So I prised my sorry mass from the sofa and attempted to run away from my woes. I sighed into some shorts, a T and, with all due blessings to the patron saint of robed-defecation, my Lycra undershorts.

As I got going, my joints clacked from levering my heft off the pavement. My lungs were heaving in dry air and heaving out complaint. Sweat and tears, one bodily fluid shy of the complete set. After a creaky mile or two, my panting became louder than that little voice telling me what a fat useless piece of shit I am. Alas, I was not the only fat useless piece of shit to worry about.

At the top of the bridge, I caught my breath and squinted down at the obvious splendour of the Catedral-Basílica reflected on the river’s surface. Accepting that beauty through an endorphin glaze, I started to entertain my friend’s reasoning that maybe, maybe things aren’t actually quite so shit.

My circumstances soon realigned with my worldview, and my situation got shittier, quick. My pre-race diet was fizzless 1-euro-beer and these little saucers of gratis snacks, which make another fizzless 1-euro-beer undeniable. Nutritionally, my body wanted no part of this thirst-quenching-and-inducing sludge. Despite my protests, it instructed me to drop a squat into my workout, and this lively summer’s street was the ideal spot.  

Each slap of trainer on stone sent a tremor up through my organs, loosening the mudslide. The carefree 80’s cheese in my headphones was in discord with my desperation. I needed this.

In shitting distance of my building, I got caught slipping by that pesky biological urge to relax in sight of home – rookie move (in terms of the more mainstream pursuit of ‘not-shitting your pants’). 

I waded back to my apartment, sole proprietor of my very own private swamp. Trying to keep my shit together, I cupped the offending hole and faked a dead-central buttock strain. Luckily, lycra undershorts seal everything in a squelchy poop-tight pouch. Pro tips from a career pant-shitter.

Even before the ejection of my unwelcome guest, I wasn’t really in the mood for bumping into anyone, now, less so. I hobbled into the lift, hot-shit-walking. As the doors slid closed on my embarrassment, a gleeful little kid haired through the gap. He was punished for his youthful exuberance. As he held the door for mamá and papá, I watched the stench age him. Grown-ups normally do a better job of masking revulsion, but this was beyond politeness. My trunk-funk bonded with the regular lift awkwardness and made for a long ascent.

As the luxury of a bidet tickled me clean, I started crying with laughter. The thing is, Life is messy. Life comes at you fast, and out of you quicker. Life festers in your Lycra underlayer at the head height of a Spanish minor. If you can’t see the funny side of shitting yourself running, then the whole thing really is a meaningless waste of time.