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I’d like to think it was the low point of my life, but at this point I just couldn’t tell. That’s pretty depressing, when you think about it. When Judas burst apart on the ground after betraying Jesus, I’m sure he was able to say, “Yep, this is as bad as it gets.” When Elvis felt his heart explode and realized he was dying on the toilet, you know he must have thought, “Wow, this is going to be about the worst way to go out anyone could think of.” And when one of those guys who sometimes fall into sewage vats began to drown, they surely thought, “I really wish I had died like Elvis.”
They all knew without a doubt when they had hit the low point of their life. Maybe it was easier for them because they died at their lowest point. But I thought of that already, and death isn’t always a person’s lowest point. If I had a heart attack while having sex after hearing that I’d won the Nebula Award for my first science fiction novel, that sure as hell wouldn’t be my lowest point. That would be pretty cool.
Death wouldn’t be my lowest point by far. I was forty-one years old, about a billion pounds overweight, and I was sitting in my bathroom trying to decide if I should wear an adult diaper.
It was my wife who first suggested it. Out loud, at least. I guess all my emergency bathroom quests started to get a little annoying, and the whole diaper thing just came about naturally.
“Why don’t I just keep one of those little camping toilets in the car?” I said, rather frantically.
“Because that’s just gross,” said my wife.
“And shitting in a diaper isn’t?”
“At least we don’t have to see you doing it. And the smell would probably be better. And would we have to pull over for you to get in the back of the car to poop?” My wife always said “poop.” Comes from having three young children. And English being a second language. “If you go in a diaper then we don’t have to stop.”
“Well, I’d hate for you to have to stop the car, or anything…”
“And what about if we aren’t in the car? Most of your emergency poops at Disney World weren’t in the car, they were standing in line at rides, or on the ferry, or – “
“I get it,” I said.
She had a point, the bitch. My strongest memories of our last two trips to Disney World were the quality of the many restrooms I visited. I think we went on some rides too, but those parts were a little hazy. “But a diaper, Jesus, Miyuki. I’m only forty one!”
“So? How long have you been barely making it to a bathroom to poop?”
“Yeah, yeah, I know. But a diaper. There’s no going back from something like that.”
Not everyone agreed it was a good idea. My friend Scott, for example, was horrified at the idea. “Man, you can’t wear a diaper. That’s just wrong,” he said.
“That what I said. But Miyuki thinks it’s a good idea.”
“And I hope you popped her in the mouth when she said that,” he answered, taking a last drag from his cigarette. He tossed it on the driveway and ground it out.
“The idea crossed my mind,” I said. “But then I had to go to the bathroom, and the opportunity passed.”
“A diaper,” Scott said, shaking his head. “That’s just wrong. It’s just wrong.”
Somewhere around this point you’re probably wondering to yourself, “Just what the hell is going on with this guy?” Was I mauled by an angry lion? Hurt in an airplane crash? The lone survivor of a mountain expedition slowly dying from a disease modern science can’t explain?
Don’t I wish.
What I am, or “what the hell is going on with this guy,” is more common than I ever realized. I manage to combine it in a truly interesting way with a grab bag of other physical and mental issues, but the back-story is nothing as dramatic as I would like. Embarrassing, definitely. Educational, maybe. I’ll let you decide.
