Revelations by Gastric Release

    Perhaps nothing seems to make you feel more vulnerable, or perhaps more revealing, than pooping next to a friend. The toilet was a hallway, consisting of four stalls to the left, two to the right. Signs on the walls indicate directions for use, women on the left, men to the right. So the two of us, books in tow, toilet paper wads in the other hand, reserve ourselves to timely bowl movements, sitting in stalls next to each other. A stall has been a poor choice of word: the hallway has six, again four to the left and two to the right, separate rooms, which are small enough to house simply a toilet against the wall opposing the door, with a small ledge of about one inch elevating the toilet area above the other half of the room, a shower. The half of the room closest to the door, and an inch lower than the toilet space, consists of a pipe coming down from the ceiling with a plastic shower head at the end, and a drain in the center of the floor. Again, the room is simple, the size of a conventional, United States found, bathroom stall.
    So what distinguishing factor makes pooping in a room next to anyone, discomforting, asks the inquisitive reader?
    The single wall separating our two rooms from being one, has the existence, or lack, depending on the reader’s potential optimism, of about one foot of space, or not wall, at the top.
    “This should mean nothing, as all conventional stalls reach neither floor nor ceiling!” cries out the reader. And under normal circumstances, you would be nothing short of accurate.
    However, and yet, with utmost emphasis, I must dispute that under these particular circumstances, with all things considered, this is a most displeasing of locations for one of my most personal moments. The events leading to our communal release, coupled with the described location make the scenario unsettling.
    Let me explain. Taking a stroll through town, the morning preceding this blistering hot one, we struck up a conversation concerning our current bowel movements.
    - It’s good that we haven’t needed the cypro.
    - Yeah, nobody wants to poop their brains out thousands of miles from home. Or at     home for that matter
    - Unfortunately, I have yet to use the bathroom. Four days and nothing.
    - Uh huh, I could use a good shit.
    This matter of fact conversation concerning the inner movements of one’s feces being in no way abnormal or insulting for the modern American man, the reader, after today’s short introduction must still be wondering where the great travesty, which motivates the author, finds validity. Now, each event builds upon the previous to join collectively in explaining the nature of this insult. And so, after our rather unassuming conversation, our morning stroll took us by way of a small café, directly off the main plaza and to the Northwest of the church, where we sat down to a cup of coffee. After annoying, to her humor, our waitress with three orders, separated by seven to ten minutes each, of two cups of coffee each time, we continued our days wanderings, strolling at a slower than casual pace into the church.
    Being built around 300 years ago, the church contains the expected splendor, or godliness, of a Catholic facility, and yet maintained the understandable simplicities found in the architecture of the area. The altar was the typical central cross with two stacked spaces on either side filled with the images of patron saints, or prolific donors, maybe even just important figures. It was made of faded gold as was also the old raised pulpit, a space where the priest could physically be raised up above the congregation inciting the wrath of God (forgive the prejudice stereotyping) or encouraging the pervading thoughts of goodwill for all man (I am not trying at cynicism, it just happens). Of course, it is possible to see the post-Vatican II changes, as the new altar is built closer to the congregation and made of elaborately carved wood, as is the pulpit, which now resides to one side of the altar rather than looming high above. The thought has just struck me now, however, that before the days of microphones, it would help to have the pulpit in the midst of the congregation, raised above all so as to allow for better audible potential.
    Forgive me; I realize I have strayed far from the point of the story, the uninviting nature of pooping next to a friend and the thoroughly revealing nature of this particular act. It was, in fact, in this most divine of locations, beneath the edifice of the epitome of good, that my innards seemed to be the most stirred and struck of organs, and I felt an urge that could only be contained for mere minutes before culminating its desires in a fashion only described as erupting. A quick glance to my partner, which any sensible human understands as, “stomach issues, now!”, and a nodding head from him, we were off. The hostel being less than a block from the church left us in no hurry beyond the pleasure of release. And this is where the diatribe begins, with a release, as all rants and arguments do.
    A person does not, and should not travel nearly 5000 kilometers for the hope of revealing oneself. Now those, who remain foolishly hopeful can step down from their pedestals and realize that almost all travel is self-indulgent and therefore reclusive. People travel to escape what they know through pulling inward the expected, socially expected, attitudes and acquaintances in an attempt to lose them somewhere inside and reveal only that which they so choose. At this point my same perceptive readers will question the ability of a person to truly escape or withhold those previous intentions when travelling with a close companion or friend.
    Here I challenge the reader to A) find new friends, B) travel with pure intention and understanding (Whatever those grand yet empty words may mean), and C) go places that are both infinite and yet demanding.
    A friend worth travelling with is one who will be simultaneously pulling away with you, a person who does not allow you the satisfaction of remaining disengaged with the people and places you have been and are seeing. As such, they will allow you to travel with the understanding that you are saving nobody, that others don’t care that you are there and the reasons you are travelling are entirely self-propelled. This does not mean you should not be open, in fact you must be open, to the ideas they will unintentionally force upon you at all times. If you are travelling with this type of partner, with this understanding, you will travel without the “It’s Tuesday, this must be Belgium” attitude of the old, and the options will be seemingly infinite for where you can sleep, where you can eat, what train you must be on, and yet, goddamnit, where you go will demand that you speak to people, and assimilate even in the slightest. And here you wonder why I divert again, but I insist that this is precisely why the pooping incident is overly revealing and necessarily out of place. The grace bestowed on the traveler is the allowance to, for the slightest bits of a lifetime, reveal oneself as they wish. The echoing of the gush, the plop, the anal exhalation, and the grunts of exasperation should remain the interests of the traveler, for they have been granted the traveler’s grace, the justified escapism which so few shall understand. When a caffeine induced movement pulls you from under the bosom of God to the echoing reverberations of a seemingly private bathroom where a foot of open space means your friend can hear every squeak and grunt, you feel cheated; forced to reveal what should be yours amid the inability to speak, and the lack of necessity to be anywhere, doing anything, you feel cheated into revealing what you weren’t ready to expose.
    However, the guilt of feeling cheated, despite the free movement accompanying your genetic lottery winnings, supersedes the feeling of being cheated, so post-release, you return to the church in silence, wishing for the priest upon the high pulpit, the judgment raining down, the satisfaction of release.