You Don't Know The Meaning of Life Until You've Stared a Pants Full of Shit in the Eye

Sometimes our bodies do something so shocking and unexpected that one's outlook on life is often forever changed by it. What you are about to read is an account of one of those moments. [Side note: This is something that happened a few years ago, back when I was still living and working in New York City. And if this story sounds familiar, that's because I've told it before. Regardless, enjoy.]

Last Tuesday morning I was in the men's room here at the office having a pee when I felt a bit of gas trying to work itself out. It suddenly became clear that the gas was more than gas, and before I could take any preventative measures, boom--pants filled.

I locked myself into one of the stalls and tried--in vain--to get myself back together. Went through two rolls of TP. And my underwear was completely shot. I stepped out of them, tossed them into the waste basket.

Whole time I'm in there, I'm kind of in shock, laughing a little, unable to believe this was even happening to me. Muttering "Jesus, Jesus, Jesus," to myself.

I washed my hands about a million times and looked at my embarrassed face in the bathroom mirror.

My day clearly couldn't continue without underwear. There's a 24-hour Duane Reade downstairs which has a small Hanes section (I love drugstores in New York; they literally have everything), so I pulled my jacket on, took the elevator to the street.

I tried the double doors of the store, but they were locked for some reason. I peered through the glass. I could see people inside, but they weren't customers--they were all employees. That's when I noticed the handwritten sign taped to the doors: REGISTER SYSTEM DOWN--CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE.

Unbelievable. In the seven years I've worked here never once has this Duane Reade been closed. Not one goddamned time.

Suddenly, my plight for new Hanes had taken a kind of Kafka-esque turn. The sky was low and gray and looked like impending doom; it might snow at any moment. I stood in the middle of the sidewalk on Park Avenue, in the cold shadows of nearby buildings, underwear-free, people pushing past me, despairing as much as I've ever despaired.

There's another Duane Reade over on Lexington, about three blocks away. I struck out for there....

Thankfully, this one was open. I was unfamiliar with the layout of this particular store, so I had to do a fair amount of hunting before I found the Hanes section (it was under a sign that read HEALTH, BEAUTY). I also bought a travel-sized pack of Huggies and a box of Imodium. I realized as I set these items down on the register counter--Hanes, Imodium, Huggies--I might as well have had a sign taped to my forehead that read YES, I HAVE SHIT MYSELF.

For some reason the woman running the register chose to squeeze these items into the smallest, least opaque shopping bag Duane Reade offers. "Don't you have any of those bigger shopping bags?" I asked sheepishly.

The woman was clearly more interested in the Chaka Khan song playing on the store sound system than she was in tending to me. "We ain't GOT no more shopping bags," she said. End of story.

Back at my office, I locked the door, then proceeded to change into my new Hanes. Mid-change, I suddenly realized I was standing half nude in my office, something which had never before happened in all my years of working here. How many occasions does one have to get nude in his office? Not many. I felt terribly vulnerable; a slight chill ran up the backs of my legs. I quickly stepped into not one but TWO brand new Hanes. (I reasoned it would be best to "two-ply it" for the rest of the day. Call the second pair a form of insurance.) I pulled my pants back on, ate a couple of the chalky-tasting Imodium, then tried to go about my day, business as usual....

...But it became clear that I couldn't function in any sort of normal capacity any longer. The day was over for me. The trauma of the whole shit event had derailed me. And I worried, quite honestly, that I might smell a little. There was nothing to do but go home.

I couldn't imagine trying to explain this to anyone, and I really didn't feel like making up some lie about my stomach or something (I'd taken a phony sick day just the day before), so I bolted, just shut down my computer around 2 and headed for the train. Nine out of 10 times, I reasoned, no one would even notice I was gone....

Went home, showered, changed, was relaxing, recovering, feeling better, when my telephone rang. I didn't pick up. No message. A few minutes later, it rang again. Again, no message. When it rang a third time, I decided to *69. The calls, to my dismay, were all coming from the office.

Around 5:30, voice comes on my answering machine. It's Mr. Traverson--the company president--from work. "No one knows what happened to you," he said. "I've been trying to reach you all afternoon. You'd better have a VERY good reason for leaving, or else I'm going to be really upset with you. Call me as soon as possible. I need to know what happened."

Getting a call from Mr. Traverson at home--a man who I rarely ever see, and rarely ever speak to when I do see him--was an event. This was obviously getting serious. It struck fear in my heart.

I tried to put the whole thing out of my head, kept telling myself that I'd deal with it in the morning. Took me two hours to realize that I couldn't do this, that I was far too preoccupied. I phoned my co-worker Hal on his cell, to ask his advice. Told him what happened, the shit, the Hanes, the whole deal. He started laughing. "That happens to everyone," he said. "It happened to my father once at hunting camp..."

"Really?" I said. It was a great comfort to hear this.

I said, "You know, nine out of 10 times no one would have even noticed I was gone."

"Well, this was the 10th time," Hal said. "Today wasn't your lucky day." Hal told me that Mr. Traverson was indeed very angry with me. "The thing to do is call him at home," Hal said. "If you want to save your job, that's what you have to do. Call him."

"Call him at home?"

"Yes, call him at home."

"When?" I asked.

"Right now," he said. "He's probably just sitting there, watching some dumb TV program..."

I started laughing.

"What's funny?" Hal asked.

"I'm laughing because you're right, that is what I have to do," I said. "And I'm laughing because I can't believe I'm going to actually do this. This is surreal."

"It's really for the best," Hal said, then gave me Mr. Traverson's private cell phone number.

I dialed. Took several deep breaths. He answered on the third ring. "Hello?"

"Mr. Traverson," I said, my voice shaking a little. "Sorry to bother you at home.... It's Scott. From Editorial."

"We were all wondering what became of you today," he said ominously.

"That's why I'm calling you, Mr. Traverson. You see..." I said, pausing momentarily to gather myself. "I was standing at the urinal peeing this morning. I felt a little gas moving along, and before I knew what was happening, I'd shit my pants. And that's why I left. I ran out of the office because I was too embarrassed to try to explain this to anybody."

Mr. Traverson didn't say anything. A space yawned between us, for one second, two seconds, three seconds. I felt it my duty to fill these empty moments with nervous chatter of some sort, but I managed to restrain myself, counseling myself with the thought that I'd said my piece, now let it stand, and let him react to it however he was going to react to it.

Finally, he spoke. "This is obviously a delicate matter," he said. "You know you can always come to me with these...private things. You can trust me. But the bottom line is, we're running an office here. Communication is the key. We need to know where everyone is at all times, or else the whole system breaks down."

"I know," I said. "You're right. I'm sorry."

"Well," he said, "I'll see you in the morning." And he hung up.

I hung up the phone. I was exhausted on a core level. I couldn't believe all the shit--literally--I'd been through the past 12 hours. What a day. What a motherfucking day. After I got off the phone, I drank. To use one of John Galvin's favorite phrases, I moved through all the beer in the house. The beer helped. It burned off some of the tension, calmed me down a little.

I can tell you this much: I've become much more respectful of my bodily functions. And the simple act of peeing is slightly more stressful than it once was. I'm doing it with a great deal of caution these days.

A week has passed since this happened. "Today's your one-week anniversary," Hal wrote in an email this morning. He suggested I celebrate by buying myself a brownie.

Everyone's a smart-ass, I guess.

My First E3: Part 3

[Missed earlier chapters? Read one and two.]

According to my MapQuest map, Maryanne's apartment was only a block off Santa Monica Boulevard, not far from the Jack In The Box.

Santa Monica Boulevard was lousy with lumbering buses--buses which I would come to know intimately soon enough--and a fleet of sports cars with their tops down being driven by beautiful women wearing sunglasses that made them resemble prehistoric bugs. But a mere half block off of Santa Monica Boulevard, things abruptly got far more peaceful. Birds were chirping. I could smell the salt in the air blowing in from the Pacific. After the millions of terrible things I'd heard New York people say about L.A., it didn't seem too bad so far.

All the buildings on Maryanne's street looked modern and clean. They weren't old and crumbling with huge banks of garbage cans crawling with rats out front like they were in Brooklyn. In fact, I didn't see any trash at all. Where did California people put their trash? New York people put their trash out front, as if they were proud of it, as if they were saying, "Fuck you, here's my trash."

Maryanne's building was a humble, sand-colored structure with a large, clean glass door and not one bit of trash out front. Per her instructions, I peered into the planter next to the building's entryway. It's the second ficus tree in the concrete planter from the left, she had said on the phone. As nonchalantly as possible, I began to dig through the cedar chips at the base of ficus, not wanting to draw attention to myself.

I dug a path with my bare hands around the base of the ficus. I dug casually at first, and then with an increased amount of urgency, as my digging turned up no balls of tinfoil. I double checked the building's address. (I was at the right address.) I re-counted the ficus trees. (I was digging beneath the second ficus from the left.)

"It's not here," a voice said. I recognized the voice. It was my father, only as usual, he sounded like he was using one of those voice-changing things to make him sound like Darth Vader. "You went to New York, and you made a fool of yourself, working that terrible, shit job and running up loads of debt," the voice said. "And now you're here, looking for a key left for you by a total stranger that's supposedly buried beneath a tree. All in the name of doing what? So you can go to a videogame convention. Look at yourself. You've got your hands buried in the dirt on a strange street in a strange city, looking for something that simply isn't there. Do yourself a favor and go home before you permanently erode the last shred of dignity from the Skywalker family name."

My dad, to put it mildly, hasn't always been supportive of my life decisions.

As much as I try to ignore The Voice, it still has power. Just as the voice began to work its strange voodoo on me, just as I began to feel sick to my stomach with doubt and anxiety, I found it.

I fucking found it.

The ball of tinfoil was there, exactly as Maryanne had promised. I unfolded it quickly, feverishly, peeling back the layers, until--voila--a pair of keys fell out. I wiped my hands on my pants, brushing off the dirt, then picked up the set of keys off the sidewalk. I inserted Key One into the lock on the glass door and turned. It opened. I dragged my crummy suitcase inside.

"Fuck you, Voice," I said, wheeling my suitcase into the elevator. "Eat my ass, Voice."

I knew that this wasn't the last time The Voice and I would battle. But in this particular moment, I was right and The Voice was wrong. And that felt really fucking good.

Maryanne's apartment was located on the third floor of the building. It was clean and neat and very adult, with photographs on the wall, a few pieces of semi-tasteful art, and a glass dining room table that appeared to be slightly too big for the apartment. A water cooler stood in the center of the kitchen. I'd never seen a water cooler in a private home before. (Yes, I had led a sheltered life up to this point.) To have one in your apartment seemed terribly indulgent to me. I found a glass in the cupboard, and filled it up, watching the air bubbles rise to the surface inside the cooler.

Man, I don't think I've ever enjoyed a glass of water as much as I enjoyed that glass of water.

I found the spare bedroom where I'd be staying. An extremely large piece of exercise equipment that appeared to not have been used in long time occupied the bulk of the room's square footage. A bathroom with a shower was across the hall.

I thought, I will be OK here. I thought, I am safe now.

As I mentioned earlier, Maryanne is the mother-in-law of one of my classmates from graduate school. I knew that this very spare room where I was staying was where my friend and his wife slept when they visited Maryanne. Thinking about my friend and his wife using this same exact bed made the place feel much less foreign to me.

The show floor opened at 10 a.m. the next morning. According to my MapQuest map, the L.A. Convention Center was an incredibly long way from Santa Monica--probably at least several hundred dollars by cab. I had to figure out some other, much more cost-effective way to get there.

I switched off the light and tried to get some sleep.

[More soon.]

Wii = Dead (Literally This Time)

Turned on the Wii last night only to be warmly greeted by a black screen and the following curt, clipped sentences: "THE SYSTEM FILES ARE CORRUPTED. PLEASE REFER TO THE WII OPERATIONS MANUAL FOR HELP TROUBLSHOOTING."

As if simply telling me that my Wii is fucked was not enough, the nice person in charge of creating this screen--yes, someone has to create these types of screens; paging Dr. Kafka--also saw fit to render the two sentences in some of jarbled-up, broken-assed font.

I was oddly calm during this moment. I didn't start sweating, or turning over furniture. I didn't pour myself a drink the way that Tom Hagen pours Vito Corleone a drink before telling him that Sonny got shot on the causeway.

I very calmly, cooly began troubleshooting. Step one: I have no fucking idea where my "operations manual" is. So I moved on to step two: restarting and saying a prayer.

The most curious aspect of the experience was the complete and utter lack of emotion I felt about the whole thing. I have had emotional relationships with my consoles. About a month ago, I visited my New York City at my apartment. I went through my closets and found my Super Nintendos (plural; my brother gave me his when he got married), my PlayStation, my Dreamcast, my Nintendo 64, etc. I held each machine for a moment, wiped the dust from its casing, and as cornball as it sounds, I spent some time recalling all the terrific times the two of us had together.

Let me tell you, those machines got me through some rough periods in my life. Break-ups. Deaths. Firings. Even smaller moments--example: missing the 10:19 bus in Chicago, knowing that I'd be late for my shift at the stupid, dumb, fancy restaurant where I worked in the '90s--were bearable because I knew at the end of the day, after all the bullshit and headaches and arguments with Frank the sous chef, it would be me and M. Bison going at it hammer and tongs in Street Fighter II on the SNES.

Which brings me back to my cold reaction to the Wii's death.

Make no mistake, the Wii and I have had some fun together. The Super Mario Galaxy games? Excite Truck? Mario Kart Wii? Good stuff, all of it.

But the aspect of the Wii that I have always loved the most was the Virtual Console. The white, unassuming little box has always been little more than a cipher to me, an empty vessel that appropriates old dreams and experiences. Of course, I downloaded all of the best shit from the past. Super Metroid? The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past? WaveRace 64? They're all on my Wii's corrupted hard drive.

Which should make me panic.

But it doesn't.

Because I know I can simply download them all again once a new Wii comes into my life.

Or, I can get on a plane, fly to New York. I can always hook up my old consoles and play them there.

Old consoles, which by the way had a failure rate of 0.000000000 percent.

CORRECTION: My friend John Teti who edits the A.V. Club's videogame section sent me this useful bit of information: "The thing is, you can't download all your Virtual Console games again -- at least not without paying for them again. Because Nintendo is shit and they tie downloads to a single machine." Thanks, John.