School Toilet

There was an unwritten rule at my secondary school that you did not shit on the premises. Certainly, if only due to necessity, this rule was broken more than any of us could know. But to be caught was unthinkable; not only would everyone know your business by next period, but in the typical style of an all-boys school, the story would inevitably change to the offender having been interrupted mid-wank.

So it was to my horror when I found myself clenching to preserve honour during the period before lunch. It was IT, and we were designing rollercoasters. I couldn’t concentrate; even the vicarious excitement was enough to loosen my ailing defences.

How could I cheat this fate? I could hold on and pray for the contractions to subside. I could waddle from the premises and defile an unfortunate bush. Perhaps my boxers could be fashioned into some kind of slingshot to pitch the evidence over the back fence? It was no good. This was my Waterloo.

The teacher charitably let me exit five minutes early after I flung my project at his beard. Likely he recognised the impending disaster etched into my face and decided his career would not recover from letting me loudly shit myself.

My options were few: most of the toilets were still locked, and those already open were missing cubicle doors. It was a risk I couldn’t take. Camera phones were the new craze.

On a (desperate, excruciating, agonised) whim I shuffled rapidly to the gym changing room. Here, the smell of mud, shit, and body odour was always so muscular that any contribution I offered would be background noise. A class was finishing as I arrived. The supervisor was Mr Meredith, an Australian teacher whom I’d become tight with largely by doodling Crocodile Dundee homage in the text books. Sweat soaked into my shirt.

‘What’s up, mate?’

I stood on a bench to reach his ear. There were still kids changing all around us. ‘I need to go number two,’ I whispered sharply to him.

He burst into laughter, and I feared he’d return me to my cross-legged walkabout. Instead he performed the greatest kindness on record from Aussie to Pomme. He ushered out the rest of the class, and dropped the changing room key into my hand.

‘Lock yourself in,’ he grinned. ‘Enjoy yourself.’

I slammed the door shut behind him and rattled the lock. One movement took me across the changing room, undoing my belt and plunging my trousers around my ankles before I even hit the bowl. There was no time to clean the area. I touched down, and opened the hatch. The release was so powerful that every valve in my body was breached. I sprayed piss over the floor, over my trousers, over my legs. Tears leaked from my eyes and snot dribbled down my face. I expected wet patches of lactation on my shirt.

This bodily stigmata lasted no longer than two minutes. My retention abilities have never recovered.

I cleaned myself up the best I could, blotting the piss from my clothes with toilet paper. My body felt light as air. I pirouetted across the changing room. As I unlocked the door, I noticed a stray £1 on a bench. I flipped it into my pocket with a smile.

Lunch ended, and there was no mention of my indiscretion amongst my peers beyond the suspicious sniffs of anyone within a three metre radius. At the end of the day I returned the key to Mr Meredith, and slipped him the £1 as a tip.   

First Kiss

The girl who gave me my first kiss threw a pint glass at my head. Not at the same time. That would have probably classified the whole incident as some kind of sexual assault. No, the attack swiftly followed.

I should point out that I was twenty at the time. It was this tardiness that made the whole experience so acutely terrifying. We met at a bar. I’d become separated from my friends, and this girl was quick to latch on to me. She wasn’t unattractive, had a lip-piercing, and told me my hair was pretty. So I didn’t run away.

 We sat on a sofa romantically located just outside the toilets. I’d always envisioned my first kiss either taking place with lambent fireflies circling and a soporific soundtrack of cicadas, or instead stumbling through the process so drunkenly that I wouldn’t remember it come morning. This was neither. I was woefully sober.

 I felt much like a child does when he turns round in the supermarket and finds his mother missing. Only instead of a friendly shop assistant taking my hand until the ordeal is over, there was a girl lunging at my face.

 I don’t remember the kiss itself. I do remember her slight sigh of disappointment afterwards. That was it, I thought to myself. Your first kiss.        

She removed herself to the toilet (perhaps to shed a tear of shame), leaving me sat opposite a black guy who flashed me a white-toothed grin.

            ‘That your girlfriend?’

            ‘No, I just met her.’

            Big grin. ‘You gonna take her back?’

Such a development hadn’t occurred to me. ‘I guess so.’ My heart began to pound. Things were moving too fast. I wanted to throw myself on his mercy and beg him to smuggle me safely home. All I managed to utter was, ‘I’m terrified!’ 

He laughed, and offered no trafficking service. The girl came back from the toilet, and we went back to hers. 

Thankfully there’s no need for things to turn pornographic here. She continued to drink while I remained painfully sober. I had my second, third, and fourth kiss and began to get the hang of it. It wasn’t until we snuggled up that things turned sour.

I had removed my jeans for the sake of sleeping in comfort. Our legs entwined, she started whispering to me, ‘So pretty, so pretty.’ A slightly unusual compliment. ‘So pretty. Something so pretty could never hurt me.’

Now it was time to be alarmed. I realised she had hold of my wrists, and when I tried to pull them free she wouldn’t relinquish. I insisted for several minutes that I needed the toilet, and this eventually won my freedom. I promptly started to re-trouser.

            ‘What’re you doing?’          

I was made of excuses: I have a presentation tomorrow; I need some fresh air; I fear tranquilisation and a subsequent awakening to find my kidneys replaced with Monster Munch. She tried for my wrists again but I wriggled loose.      

I was going to leave. But I remembered my manners. ‘Thank you for a nice night.’      

 That’s when the pint glass went airborne. Finally, being sober was valuable. I ducked and the glass smashed to pieces against the door.

            ‘Now put down your jeans!’ she screamed.

I did no such thing. I slung them over my arm, lunged for my boots, flung open the door and jumped the broken glass into the hall. I ran. I ran for my life. Screams and other things breaking chased me to the front door.

 I ran bare-legged into the street. I didn’t stop to dress until I was three roads away.