Sh*t Happens

I woke up hungover. It was two-to-too-late-for-a-mid-twenty-something-to-be-waking-up-o’clock in the afternoon. I needed to get my butt in gear. I had an audition in a couple of hours for a new twisted cable comedy show. Yes, I am an actor. You may recognize me from such hit shows as “Oh yeah, wasn’t that with Britney Spears’s sister?” or “Nope, never heard of it”.

As an actor, our office is our car. We keep all of our stuff there. To further that stereotype, I was a lazy actor. I usually left all of my junk in my vehicle. I hated schlepping things from my car once I parked. (Still do. Still lazy.) It’s so awkward and tight in a mid-century car port. If you’ve ever made $40k or less and lived in an apartment in Southern California, you know what I’m talking about. It truly is a NASCAR feat anytime you get out of there without hitting something.

I anticipated a busy day of rushing while seated. My audition was on the Westside. I lived in Hollywood, which is on the opposite side of town. It was Friday afternoon. Simply put, fuck-a-me. As if that wasn’t bad enough, after my audition I had to rush back home so I could pack and then hit the road for a five-hour drive up north to see family… lots of driving…. yada, yada, yada — double penetration, oh my!

Needing sustenance before kicking into high gear, I walked into a bougie, over-priced restaurant. They litter Los Angeles with food that’s so-so, service that’s so bad and customers that are oh so desperate to be seen. My kind of place! I ordered some tortilla soup, a Coke and a chocolate chip cookie. I needed the sugar. My glucose levels were low and I was feeling like crap. I was hoping the soup would lift me up and get me caliente for my audish. Sure enough, my mood lifted. I was ready to hit the road.

My agent called as I was heading over. She was a mix between Melissa Leo in “The Fighter” and a grifter managing her players at a race track. You know, an agent.

“Ready to kill it today? Gonna book it! I know it!”

“Oh hey…” I said surprised. She didn’t even say hello. Agents rarely do. They have hundreds of other actors and casting directors to call and pitch and meetings to take and lunch… basically, you should be so lucky to talk to them. So they jump right into it like a true hustler. No time for small talk.

“Feeling good! Just heading over there now!” I fell into it too. That’s what we do, actors. We play the role we’re given, which is usually Bullshit.

“They’re looking for gay, so play it up.”

I love it when industry folk tell me to play up my gay. And when I say “love it” I really mean, “This makes me uncomfortable.” Society tells me to shut it down, Hollywood tells me to turn it up. But only so we can laugh at it. Because gay caricatures are funny. Except when they’re real people. Then they make society uncomfortable. So we need to laugh. And the cycle continues.

“Ohhh I can gay-for-pay!” Yes, I just said that after I ranted about the injustices of Hollywood. That makes me complicit. God, I’m a hypocrite. See, I have depth. Cast me!

She laughed heartily with the rasp and phlegm of a smoker who should stop smoking, but instead pours herself another cup of coffee.

“Call me when you get out so I know how it goes.”

“Will do!” Suddenly, I felt a twinge in my tummy. Was that the tortilla soup, this awkward conversation or the growing anxiety I felt from all the stuff I needed to do? I pushed it aside. I ain’t got time for you, body!

“Thanks for — ” I looked at my phone. She had hung up. They don’t say bye either.

I effortlessly made my way to the audition site. Things seemed to be going better than anticipated. If I could get in, bust out my audition, rush home, pack and be on the road by five, I thought I could get out of LA reasonably well. Sure, none of this made sense as Friday at five is the worst time to hit the road… anywhere… in the world… but I chose eternal optimism because everything looks better with rose tinted glasses!

Ow! My stomach seized, then churned as I grabbed my headshot and rez. I rolled my head down to look at it. It chortled back at me. Something was definitely not sitting well. Oh no… I needed to go to the bathroom… and bad.

I hustled down the street. My stomach violently punched me with each step. I clenched my buttocks, pushing myself faster and further down the sidewalk. With each step, I felt as if I was stepping on a detonator that failed to explode.

“Just get to the bathroom, E, just get to the bathroom,” I silently repeated, hoping my mantra would be enough to calm my somersaulting tummy.

I opened the door to the casting office and stepped inside. I quickly scanned the place, like some Terminator searching for their target, only my target was the loo.

“Hey man!” I looked over. There was some dweeb that I was only chummy with whilst waiting at commercial auditions. We had seen each other the day before at… a commercial audition.

“Oh, hey dude! What’s up?” I didn’t want it to seem like I had to go to the bathroom in front of this guy and the other ten actors seated around him and the casting assistant seated at the front desk, so I pretended that I was pleasantly surprised to see him.

“Not much. How’d your audition go yesterday?”

“Great!” What else was I supposed to say, Nerdbot? Bad?

“I crushed. Funny bumping into —”

“Where’s the bathroom?” I stopped him before he proceeded with anymore useless banter. Fuck the pleasantries. I needed to GO!

“Oh, I think it’s around the corner.” I dashed past him and around a wall as I heard his voice trail off. “Don’t you want to sign in first…?”

As I turned the corner, everything shifted into slow-motion. I saw the bathroom in front of me. It was unisex. A blithe girl stood in front of it though and, holding a huge load of clothes in her arms, closed… the door. I was so fucked.

See an actress, with a change of clothes, is a death sentence at a casting office bathroom. That bitch will take 10-to-70-minutes to get primped for her two-minute meeting.

Huge, black binders rested on a shelf in front of me with the names of famous shows written on them. I assumed the casting office had worked on them. Shows that made people famous. Shows that won awards. Shows that I wasn’t on.

I held my right leg up off the ground, violently shaking it in vain hope that that would ease my vicious, pulsating stomach from losing its shit. Literally. I was about to lose my shit. And this girl… oh my god… this girl was taking forever.

I had never felt such extreme pressure on my abdomen before. The clinching, holding, squeezing of every centimeter of my conscious body was futile against the automatic response system of my subconscious being. It was like that scene in “Alien” where the alien jettisons out of the guy’s belly, but this alien didn’t want to come out of my gut. No, he was a proper gentleman. He wanted to go out the back door. Hey, I get it, an Irish goodbye is my people’s thang!

The pain was excruciating. Every second felt like an eternity. My mind raced from thoughts like “You’ve got this! Just a few more seconds! Breathe…!” to “Oh my god, I’m gonna die! I’m gonna shit myself and/or DIE!” Essentially, I was in labor birthing out a giant poo.

There was a second when it paused, though. That was a defining a moment in my life.

I saw two paths: one, where I continued to hold it in with what little strength remained and somehow got past the pampered actress, where I nailed not only the toilet with my supreme shooting skills but also the casting director with my supreme acting chops, thus leading me to book the job, thereby booking more jobs and then becoming the world famous actor I was destined to be: and the other, where I shat myself. I chose the latter.

It was the most amazing feeling. I just let it go. Me and Idina Menzel, lettin’ it go! I didn’t give a fuck. Everything melted away. I fell into a deep abyss of ecstasy. My stomach released. My butt released. My heart slowed. I could breathe. Ahhh…relief! Then…

EMERGENCY! 9–1–1! CODE RED! FUCKKKK!!!!

My eyes bulged. I just shat myself in a casting director’s office right before I was to go into their office and meet them. What had I done?!?! My mind raced. Maybe I could go in there and do it fast and then get out of there. No one would notice. Right? Right?!

I looked down. My front side looked normal. Fortunately, I was wearing dark blue jeans. I whisked my head back and slowly put my fingers towards my buttocks. Yep, it was wet. This was not an actor’s worst nightmare. This was my nightmare. Then, I started getting a faint whiff… I smelled my fingertips… No…! Someone walked up behind me.

“Is this the only bathroom?” he naively asked.

I bolted. Really it was more of a waddle but it was a very brisk waddle. I sped past Nerdbot actor who called after me as I stormed out the door.

“Hey, where you going…?!” Actors: So. Damn. Needy.

“Just need to grab something from my car!” I yelled back at him.

I looked around. Where was I headed? I needed to calmly assess the damage. Maybe it wasn’t as bad as I thought. I saw a dumpster to my left down a dark alley. Hiding behind it, I dropped my pants as best I could. They stuck to my body wet with…well, with doo doo.

It was not a solid dump. You know, with one or two logs. No, that would’ve been too easy. This was a nice runny, light brown-slash-mustard yellow waterfall of shame that was spread over every inch of my lower extremities. That’s right! It didn’t just hit one leg, it ran down both legs. I was covered in my own feces. And the smell…oh God, the smell…. an acidic death scent of rot and humiliation.

I was mortified. I couldn’t go in there like that. Maybe I had some clothes in my car. I just needed to change, I told myself, and then I could nail this audition, get home, pack…yes, my rose tinted glasses were still on! I slid my soiled pants back on and awkwardly trotted towards my car.

I opened the front door to my Jetta. Wait- I couldn’t sit down on my car seat! It would stain and that would be disgusting to clean up. I rushed to my trunk and opened it. Remember how I said that actors carry everything in their cars? And then I qualified that by saying I’m a lazy actor? Right. So I did have things in my car, just nothing I needed. All I saw were my head shots and resumes. I grabbed my resumes.

As I laid flimsy, white pieces of paper with few credits and oh-so-many-special-skills like “driving” and “running” down on my car seat, the irony was not lost on me. Oh no, it t’wasn’t. I saw the sheer absurdity of it all and knew that one day this would make a really funny story, but for now, it sucked. It sucked really bad and I hated that this was my story.

I gingerly sat down on my front seat, trying my best to avoid spreading the caca around. I closed the front door and wiggled out of my pants. I threw everything off me, including my undies, and tossed them on the passenger side floor. I proceeded to take my resumes and used them as toilet paper. As I wiped myself, the smell became palpable and gag inducing. Great, not only did I shit myself, I thought, but now I was going to barf on myself. I rolled my window down. I continued to frantically wipe but as I tried to get cleaner, I was only getting crappier. This was not working. I needed to rinse off. I needed to shower. I needed to get home.

Staring at the red brake lights in front of me as the red-orange sky flared with the sun’s setting, I was drowning in manic panic red. My agent waited for some response.

“Hello?! I thought you were headed there?” she pressed.

“I vomited on myself!” I exclaimed. Oh that was good, E. You didn’t poo yourself, you puked on yourself. You’re not sick, you’re drunk. Big difference. Idiot.

“What?! Are you –”

“I’m not lying!” I shouted, blatantly lying. For an actor, who career is to portray someone under unusual circumstances, I wasn’t winning any Oscars. Or Emmy’s. Christ, not even a Webby.

“Lying? I never said you were lying. Are you lying?”

“I – no, I’m sick, I can’t explain now. Please, see if they can see me in an hour. I’m running home to rinse off and then I’ll head straight there.” My heart was racing, sweat perspiring. My pleas fell on deaf ears.

“E, I don’t know what’s going on, but it’s Friday at five o’clock. They’re going to be wrapping up by six–”

“I can get there by six!” No I couldn’t. That wasn’t possible at all with the godforsaken traffic that was in front of me. But at that point I might have well pushed those rose tinted glasses into my eyeball sockets because God damn it, I was going to make it work!

“It’s not going to happen.”

“Great. Thanks! I’ll call you when I’m heading over!” I hung up.

I was delusional in my belief that she was going to rearrange the appointment. She probably wasn’t even going to try. I had messed up and now I looked like I was keeping something from her. I was a sophomoric fuck up. Worse, I was a half-naked, shit stained, baby who needed a bath to rinse off his poo poo before he went to beddy bye.

I got off the freeway and took a side street up towards Hollywood, a shortcut I normally navigated with ease. Today, not so much. With each passing block, my anxiety rose. I wanted to get home. I wanted to shower. I wanted to be anywhere but there. I was so close to home it made my heart flutter.

I thought to myself, “Wouldn’t it be funny if…No, stop it, E! Be careful. Don’t get pulled over. Don’t hit a car. Don’t hit–”

BOOM! I hit a car.

“YOU HAVE GOT TO BE FUCKING KIDDING ME?!” I laughed. Not because this was funny. Nay. This was absolutely, batshit fucking INSANE. All I could do was laugh at the sheer lunacy of it all.

The emergency lights flashed on a white Mercedes as they pulled over. Of course, it wasn’t even a jalopy but a high end, rich, fancy vehicle. It had to be something classy. Just so God, or whoever, could rub it in my shitty fucking face. Now what was I going to do? Was I supposed to hit-and-run? I saw it flash before my eyes:

There I was on KTLA, the local news station, with their choppers hovering over me filming me being chased by the LAPD, then dragged out of my car by the popo, naked, covered in poop from the waist down. I would’ve made headlines, that’s for sure, just for all the wrong reasons. Pass!

I pulled over. If my heart could have exploded, I think it would have been the nuclear bomb of explosions at this point. I grabbed my soiled pants, but my resumes now stuck to me like posters to a subway wall. I ripped them off and threw them aside. I pulled my pants up, buttoned them and then —

TAP TAP!

My head jerked to the left. There stood a middle aged, sweet faced Asian woman.

“License?” She asked, muted by my window glass.

“One second! I just need to grab my registration….” I hollered back. I can only imagine what I looked like at this point. She skirted away to her vehicle.

I rummaged through my glove compartment, grabbed the registration, whipped out my license, found a pen from my console and exited my vehicle. I had no shoes on, just some white socks that had little dots of poo dripping down onto them. I again waddled forward trying to maintain some semblance of composure.

“I am so sorry! I didn’t see you in front of me.” I said. How that was possible was not possible as she was definitely in front of me. We were at a stop light when I decided to bump her because, as we’ve determined, I’m an idiot.

“It’s okay,” she said like it was anything but. “It’s just that this is a new car and you are the fifth fender bender I’ve gotten into in three months. People keep hitting me…” she trailed off pitifully. Of course, not only did I fuck up but I fucked up this poor woman who keeps getting hit by self-involved turds like me. Oh, and she ended with this:

“My husband is going to be so upset. He won’t want to deal with the insurance and the price increase… I don’t want him to be mad at me. Again.” She looked up at me with big, sad doe eyes. She was good.

“I will take care of everything, I promise,” I implored. “We just can’t call the cops. There can be no cops. I can’t have anyone else see me like this.”

“Like what?” she asked.

“I am having the worst day possible. I vomited all over myself.” Again with the lie- like it made it any better!

“Oh…” She looked me up and down, horrified. I smiled, a shit eating grin.

“If we can settle this ourselves I swear to God I will take care of everything it was my fault I take full responsibility let’s exchange numbers and I will call you after I get home to negotiate further I just need to shower I’m so sorry.” I don’t think I breathed when I said any of this. At this point, I had really lost all hope in God, but if He was there, this was going to be His last shot at showing His grace. The woman eyed me suspiciously.

“Ok…here.” She handed me her license and registration. I gave her mine. Finally, success! I mean, in the grand scheme of things I had royally lost, but I was taking whatever I could get my hands on. This brief moment of respite was quickly absolved though when my pen, of course, stopped working.

There you have it! God’s out.

“Excuse me,” I said, “but do you have an extra pen? Mine died.” The woman frowned, then scrounged through her purse. A moment later, she handed me a shiny metal pen. As it passed from one hand to the other, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a thin brown line between the palm and back of my hand. My battle marker. Her face puckered.

“What’s that smell?” she asked.

“Vomit. Thanks!” I swiped her pen, trying to avoid any further embarrassment.

“Keep it,” she retorted.

We signed everything and then handed our respective things back to each other. I trotted to my car, not even bothering to remove my dirty clothes. What was the point? I had acquiesced any remaining dignity long ago.

By the time I got home, I was a defeated blob of abject humility and disgrace. It was 6:30 p.m. The audition was long over. I showered and cleaned myself, but nothing could wash away the shame and guilt. I settled the issues with the woman later and called my Mom to tell her I had a change of plans. I needed to drive up the next morning. There was no way I was going back out in the world today. Sometimes, you need to take your cue and bow out.

Moms are really the only people you can talk to when shit literally happens, but even this seemed so humiliating I couldn’t divulge much. Yet, my Mom being my Mom, she got a big kick out of it. Remember, we’re Irish. We find the funny in pain and suffering.

“It happens to everyone one time or another. I’m just glad you’re safe.” She laughed.

“Wait- you mean this has happened to you?”

“Oh sure. Not as bad as that, but after working in an ER for most of my life, you come to find that everyone is incontinent sooner or later. Heck, I think your (insert relative) had something similar happen to him at a meeting once.”

I smiled, my first one after the hellish afternoon I had just suffered through. I love moms. They get it. Only they know the right thing to say when you’re feeling alone and blue. Maybe I wasn’t a complete scumbag after all.