The Stretchy Pants of Orange Salvation

Back to London today for the UberCommute. Now, it should be duly noted here that I’m under a strict ban, enforced by d, and adhered to by me for my own good. I take no Xenical on either a Sunday or Monday, because the power of the little blue pills that turn your innards to a volcanic orange grease-fountain is built up in the system over some days, and, as has been pointed out to me on more than one occasion, the last thing you want is to be faced with an UberCommute when your ass is in a particularly explosive frame of mind.

So I was good yesterday – took no grease-pills. Only actually ate one meal yesterday, but it was a biggie – a Sunday lunch at a local hotel called Ty Newydd. Last night, I was fine. This morning…I was fine. Stopped off at Starbucks for my normal couple of de-caff skinny lattes (or buckets of pointlessness, as I affectionately call them), got on the train. Got off the train, feeling fine, grabbed a smallish selection of nuts and fruits and the like from the Cranberry store at Paddington station, walked through Hyde Park and got into the office.

Colin, our administrator, sauntered in, looking happy.

“Tony!” he exuberated, as he always does on a Monday morning, as if trying to catch me in a hungover state.

“Team meeting at 11.30?” he suggested. “Unless you wanna just get it over with?” I looked at my watch – it was 11.21.

“Hellllno!” I exuberated right back at him. “Some of us have spent a few hours on the train, and need the bathroom,” I explained. “Sorry if I’m sharing too much there…” I stood up and grabbed my Kindle, in preparation for the walk down the corridor.

And that’s when it happened. It was a thoroughly ordinary fart. The only hint of its superhuman nature was a certain…puffiness about the trouser. The point that concerned me more, really, was that I hadn’t known it was coming. I smiled, a vaguely rictus smile around the room. My mate Sally-Anne frowned at me, as if to say “Dude, seriously, you look a bit creepy now.” Colin nodded slowly and headed back to his own office. I clenched a fist around my Kindle and walked, fast, but with very small steps, to the bathroom. It was occupied. “Baaaaaaaaaastttttaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrdddd!” I yelled…I’m fairly certain, only inside my head. The guy who was in there came out almost immediately, looking patrician and haughty to the very roots of his hair. He was carrying a kettle. As ya do.

“Good morning,” he sneered, walking past me as if on stilts of pure condescension.

“Yeah, whatever, you old fuck, get out of my way!” I yelled…again, I’m fairly certain, inside my head.

I got in, locked the door, whipped down my jeans and underwear and began…

…

…checking.

This is an undignified procedure for one who’s never had the delight of changing a child’s diapers. Starting from the front of my underwear though, I was beginning to relax – clear, clear, clear, cl-

That wasn’t clear. That was a devastation pattern, a dark nightmare, sneering its mysterious existence up at me.

“Oh, Goddddd…” I whined.

Could be sweat, I thought, trying to convince myself. I took a floret of toilet paper, and experimentally wiped it across the offending dark spot.

Orange. Bright, and everywhere, orange.

I did the best I could to clean them up, then set about myself.

You know that thing babies sometimes do, where they end up with shit all up their back, and you have no idea how they do it? The only thing you can think of is that baby’s asses come equipped with periscopes for projectile sewage disposal, especially to put new mums and dads through their paces as the baby does its Exorcist-child thing.

I have now been that baby. I was grabbing armfuls, yard after yard of toilet paper, going higher each time, searching for the boundary of the disaster area. Every time I’d start higher, thinking “it can’t possibly have reached up here, it was only a little farrrrrt!” and wallop, there it was, the incriminating orange evidence – bloody everywhere!

Took me about 20 solid minutes of clean-up and one terse rattling of the doorhandle by some other poor schmuck who – bless him – thought he wanted in right then when he truly, truly didn’t, before I was ready to face the world again. The underwear, I decided, couldn’t really be saved. I’d cleaned them as best I could, but I ended up throwing them in the bin. I wodged myself into a whole new dimension of sanitary protection, and had little option but to go Commando for the rest of the morning, clenching with all the will my sphincter possessed.

At lunchtime, I went down to my local branch of Marks & Spencer, picked up some new underwear, and a pair of stretchy sweatpants. I took them to the cashier, then was suddenly struck by a thought – what if the trousers didn’t fit?

“Scuse me…have you got a fitting room?” I asked, suddenly. She pointed absolutely opposite her desk. I smiled sweetly and followed her finger. 

Now…I do realise that it’s technically deeply unethical to try on trousers while going Commando and having suffered a Xenical explosion – if they hadn’t fitted, I might have had to buy them anyway, along with a pair in the next size up – but fortunately they did. I high-tailed it back to the office, and changed. New pants, new trousers, new man – sure, technically, I ended up losing my underwear and bringing my jeans home in a Marks & Spencer carrier bag, but apart from a degree of mortification, I got off relatively lightly from what could have been a truly disgusting event.

By the time you read this of course, I’ll be home from the UberCommute. I take pills on a Monday night…

Batten down the hatches, Disappearing Folk…