“Oh my god, Old Man Clemens hates shit” – William Madison
There are few prouder moments in a man’s life than when he finds out that his hometown liquor store played host to a public defecation. Typically such excitement is reserved for the big city, so when it happens in our lazy little town, a hot loaf dropped in a public place is liable to cause a real stir, and that’s exactly what happened one summer afternoon in Bottle King.
For those unfamiliar with the liquor buying habits of Glen Rock’s residents; Bottle King is the place where stressed out moms go for ice cold bottles of pinot grigiot after a long day of watching their kids play with iPads. It is not where we would go to buy booze underage. That right of passage was reserved for Segundo’s in Paterson if you had a pair of balls, or the Paramus Food Center if you were a pussy. Why the difference? Segundo’s sold liquor and beer, and the beer was cold, and all of this stuff was sold behind bullet proof glass, because Segundo’s was in the kind of neighborhood where an armed robbery was not only a possibility, but expected. So if you were a 16-year-old Glen Rock boy in need of some ice cold brews and a bottle of Bacardi, it only made sense to wander into a high crime area, unarmed, with cash in hand. On the other hand, if such adventures were a bit risky for your taste, then head on over to the Paramus Food Center for a warm case of Busch, because that’s all they sold, and that’s all you deserved if you were too much of a scared little bitch to go to Segundo’s.
But anyway, Bottle King is one of those big ass suburban liquor stores that’s packed to the gills with people grabbing an extra case of Sierra Nevada Celebration before guests arrive on Christmas Eve. It’s where you run into your old English teacher or your little league coach or your friend’s mom — so theoretically any of those people could be a prime suspect in the crime that unfolded earlier this month (fess up Mrs. Todd, we know it was you).
Here’s what was written in The Patch (the paper of record for suburban north Jersey).
The Manager of Bottle King reported that a male customer had asked to use the restroom in the store. The customer was advised that was not possible due to COVID-19 restrictions which were in place. The man then proceeded to defecate on the floor of a store aisle and left the building. Detectives are attempting to identify the subject and the store manager was advised of the procedure to sign a complaint under the Glen Rock Borough Ordinance, which prohibits individuals from defecating or urinating in public view.
I was struck by that last line, “Glen Rock Borough Ordinance, which prohibits individuals from defecating or urinating in public view.” Fuck your laws mister man, you can’t keep WE THE PEOPLE from defecating or urinating where we want. You say “stop urinating and defecating in public”, we say, keep your white male gaze off of our bodies while we perform a natural human function. NO JUSTICE, NO PEACE!
While my generation has mostly moved on from life in Glen Rock, there was a time not too long ago when any number of my contemporaries would have been a prime suspect in this hilarious act of public defecation. As such, reading this report stoked some powerful feelings of nostalgia for public shittings gone by, and I’d like to share them with you today. A few incidents of note:
The Locker Room Urinal Shitter: I have a reasonably good idea of who this was, and would not dare to out them here as they are a person who I like and respect, and would never dream of damaging their public, adult reputation. One day in the spring of my sophomore year, someone took a shit in the urinals of the boys locker room. Our track coach was furious as this incident followed an earlier sports related public shitting (either in our team shower, or in another school’s shower at an event that involved the wrestling team, the years have muddied my memory). In any case there’s nothing harder as a teenage boy, than holding back uproarious laughter while being interrogated and lectured about the ills of public defecation.
The Principal’s Desk Shitting: This one went down when I was in middle school, but with an incident this hilarious, word spreads faster than a turd on a roll of Charmin. A couple of high school kids took it upon themselves to break into the principal’s office one weekend and empty their bladders, ball sacks, and of course bowels all over the goddamn place. It’s only with the wisdom of the decades that I feel bad for the janitors who had to clean it all up, because as a 13-year-old my natural response was to laugh at the thought of someone dropping a log on the principal’s desk…and laugh I did, so hard that I almost shit my pants.
The Football Practice Ramp Shitter: I often pine for the days of my youth, those crisp autumn afternoons spent winning state championships with my schoolmates on the Glen Rock Panthers football team. But those memories are made of so much more than gridiron glory. One such moment comes to mind from preseason of my junior year. A freshman lineman appears to have made a poor dietary choice before practice, and found himself running for the bathroom…a bathroom that was located nearly a quarter of a mile from the practice field. Try as he might, the poor rookie couldn’t make it to the commodes before a deluge of dookie burst into his athletic shorts and spilled onto the ramp outside the locker room. He fled before he could be caught red-heinied and the team returned to find a stinky surprise, courtesy of one of the new guys.
The Dick Show-er Prairie Dogs The Neighbor’s Lawn: A classic moment in Highwood Terrace history. Two amigos, whose names will remain a secret, were engaged in a bit of late night Tomfoolery. One of the individuals had previously earned the nickname ‘Dick Show-er’ as he was known to present his penis to women at social gatherings in order to apprise them of his ample length and girth. He once made the mistake of employing this tactic with a hooker in a Bank of America ATM vestibule, leading to the arrest of both the Dick Show-er and the working girl with whom he was conversing. But on the night of defecation it would be his puckering rectum and not his pulsing rod that led to trouble. The Dick Show-er took it upon himself to squat and squeeze on the lawn of a less popular neighbor. With a turd inching its way through his anus and onto the grass below, his friend took action. He ran up, rang the doorbell, and sprinted off laughing — leaving our well hung hero alone on the lawn with a deuce still dangling from his hindquarters. Knowing the homeowner would soon be awake to inspect the ruckus, the Dick Show-er hiked his pants up slightly and waddled across the street, announcing to the world “I’m Prairie Doggin” (a term used to describe the act of moving about while clenching an unpinched loaf between your cheeks). His father, woken from his slumber by the commotion across the street shouted out the window “what are you Prairie Dogging?” causing the culprits to scurry off to parts unknown.
There’s more poop fueled fun from my past to be sure — like the time when I was three and my dad took me to the circus and when we got home I decided to imitate the elephants so I announced ‘I am the elephant’ and took a shit on the basement floor, or perhaps the time someone used the bathroom near the cafeteria and left a turd so large that it couldn’t be flushed until a janitor came in and broke it up with a plunger. It’s true what they say, great shits really do make for great stories. I’m sure you have some of your own, and if you do, feel free to share them in the comments below. If any tickle my fancy they’ll be shouted out in a future episode of my podcast The Savage Sacktap.
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