by Renea Dijab
2015
VODKA YONIC; a column of the
Nashville Scene
Sometimes, we, women, like to torture ourselves by wondering if our significant other truly loves us, or if they love us “enough,” as if love can be quantified in a measuring cup.
And every once in a while, a shared experience, so shocking, so horrifying, so disgusting, comes along, that we know, forever and always, that yes, they truly do love us.
My husband and I had gone to visit friends in another city and we’d eaten a festive dinner at a restaurant that shall remain nameless. After too much food and waayy too much alcohol, we went back to our friends’ house to spend the night.
Our friends had just moved in that very day, even arriving late to the restaurant because they were still frantically unpacking boxes.
After the overindulgence of all that food and drink, I slept in a restless and slightly drunken stupor. The blinding bright light of morning came way too soon and was accompanied by the intense pain of stomach cramps that reminded me, as if I could forget, that I’d imbibed a little too much the night before.
Anyone who’s ever eaten too much food and drank too much wine and slept too little, and poorly at that, knows what happens next, and needless to say, it wasn’t pretty.
I flew into our en suite bathroom. Our friends had told us that the house had been vacant for quite a while before they bought it, so most likely the toilet hadn’t been flushed in months. I proceeded to create a bowl of sewage so foul that it can never be unseen… or un-smelled. The toilet hadn’t been flushed in forever apparently and it wasn’t planning on being flushed that morning either.
I can’t quite describe the panic, the incapacitating horror, at realizing that I had just thanked our hosts for graciously offering their home to us by creating a literal septic tank in their guest bathroom.
So, I did the only thing that I could do. I ran out of the bathroom, scrambled under the covers, and told my groggy husband that he had to rescue me. Bless him, he came out of a deep sleep to hear that the commode was stopped up by my intestinal deposit and he had to do something about it.
This is how I know he loves me. Without complaint, outright refusal, or unnecessary explanations, my hung-over knight in shining armor went down the hall, got a plunger from our friends, and then proceeded to go to town on the blockage.
I heard a lot of splashing and swearing… and then more splashing and a lot more swearing, as I died a slow death, with a pillow over my head. At one point, our hosts, who shall also remain nameless, come into the bathroom to assist my husband and discuss their options: “It is Sunday after all; can we even get a plumber to come over?” They said.
I could not believe it. There was a three-way conference being held to discuss what to do about my bowl of shame as it made its presence known with a zippy little odor wafting on the breeze throughout the entire house. As you can imagine, I refused to attend this meeting. Instead, I laid very still and tried to pretend it wasn’t happening, all while telling the Angel of Death that I was ready now.
Eventually, they declared defeat. They decided that a plumber would have to be called on Monday - they had two other bathrooms they could use in the meantime, thank God - and they also decided that we would all vacate for breakfast to the nearest Cracker Barrel.
Obviously, we were not going to be able to eat breakfast there.
But the story gets worse. And believe me, I know how hard that is to imagine. We were getting ready to leave the house and I noticed little spots magically appearing on the floor every time my husband took a step down their hallway. After a couple more steps, I detected the stench of what could only be my own fecal matter, as it dripped off his pants, up and down our friends’ lovely wood floors… and you can imagine at this point, my eternal gratitude that the hallway was not carpeted.
My hubby had been plunging so violently that he had splashed giant wads of mess from the toilet onto his pants and hadn’t noticed!
I screamed in horror for him to JUST. STOP. WALKING. I frantically grabbed some paper towels off the kitchen counter, dropped to my knees, and began to clean my own shit off our friends’ floor.
It is somewhere in those moments that my consciousness finally split from my body and I was no longer really there. My body was moving, but my mind was off somewhere singing “The Good Ship Lollipop.”
We frantically threw those pants in the trash, borrowed another pair from our friends, and I left that cursed outhouse behind… along with significant amounts of my DNA.
How can I ever again doubt that my husband loves me? I just hope he never has to prove it that way again.
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