Shit

Apparently there was a man, a poet, who had a moderately successful career and had published a couple books. He lived a satisfied life and didn�t have much to complain about, except that he hadn�t had a regular bowel movement since he was twenty-seven years old. He had two published anthologies of poetry to his name and spent several hours a day on the toilet, either constipated or wracked by heaving bouts of fiendish diarrhea. He took to writing most of his poetry on the toilet, mostly out of necessity, since he could never sit at his desk for very long before the need arose. With his laptop, he could sit on his toilet for hours, uninterrupted. His commode became his primary workstation.

As the years went on, the situation got worse, but he continued to meet success as a writer. He branched out into prose works, had some short stories published, and contributed an occasional piece to a literary quarterly. All the while, his bowels continued to give him a dickens of a time, but he never went to a doctor to have it checked out because he had no health insurance and didn�t want to spend the revenues generated by his artistic success on doctors� fees. He found a strange solace in his bathroom at home, which had taken on a bit of a legendary aura as the site of so much creative inspiration. He was now in his mid-thirties and spent perhaps eighty percent of his day on the throne. He installed a makeshift desk and pillow in front of the toilet so he could rest his head and sleep through the night without the nuisance of waking several times a night and getting out of bed for the shits.

By this point the man never wrote except when he was on the toilet. He did get out every so often. He�d go to a caf� not far from his home, close enough that he could make the drive without ruining a perfectly good pair of trousers. His marriage to the toilet and to the various creative and gastrointestinal acts which took place there prohibited him from having much of a social life, and he was dreadfully lonely. He�d never fallen in love. But he wrote wonderfully poignant and much-praised love poems, and here�s how: he�d go to this caf� and sit down at a table briefly, just long enough to look around and note the young pretty single women who frequented the place. He�d become inspired by them, and they were his muses. He�d invent stories about them and, in his head, craft passionate verse in their names. As he sat, he�d consume perhaps two or even three strong latte beverages, which as we all know behave as a wonderful natural laxative. He�d then proceed to the establishment�s restroom, which had an occupancy of one and thus afforded him a great deal of privacy, and he�d take his laptop out from his shoulder bag and generate beautiful poetry while evacuating.

This went on for some years, apparently, until the man�s insides were virtually destroyed by his disorder. The increasing severity of his erratic bowel movements had wreaked havoc on his GI tract, until he had no choice but to check himself into a hospital. His colon was damaged beyond repair, and he had perhaps a few weeks to live. He was forty-four. He spent all the money he had left on the hospital expenses necessary to maintain his life functions for what remaining little time he had. The doctors and nurses outfitted him with a sophisticated device which sufficently simulated his bowel functions. He was able to continue eating some semi-solid foods while a machine shat for him.

A few days before he died, he wrote that he was glad he was going when he was, because he felt he was running out of ideas for poetry anyway, and couldn�t be sufficiently inspired while a machine was doing his shitting�it just wasn�t the same as sitting on a real toilet.

Then he died.

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