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It’s Hong Kong, 1989. My dad, mum, sister, and I are making a pit stop, because my restless parents have decided to move to Australia. My 19-year-old brother was like, I don't want to do that. SO THEY LEFT HIM IN CANADA. Somehow, greater mistakes were about to be made.
I was 15 years old and bright eyed, new to the wider world. Day one, we went on some crazy walking tour. Hong Kong was unlike any city I’d seen, a futurescape of glass and shining steel. It was also one billion degrees Celsius. I would have been cooler inside a llama.
We staggered back to our hotel late that night. Well, “hotel.” We were staying in the deluxe accommodations offered by the local YMCA. I immediately guzzled ten glasses of tap water. If I could take back anything in my life, it would be drinking that water. And I’m divorced.
I retired to bed with my dad, because I was too skeeved out to sleep with my little sister, who slept with my mum. No clue why I thought sleeping with my dad was the better option, but I woke up in the middle of the night, because he was snoring like Homer Simpson.
I felt a dampness around me. Sweat? No, friends. I had shit the bed. Not a discreet little Mr. Hankey, either. I had expelled a Great Lake of Fail, like I’d dissolved in my sleep. It was my first non-toilet shit since childhood. No idea what to do. Now I’m a pro. Then? Panic.
I crept into the bathroom. I was wearing boxers, which were a Superfund site. I took them off and stuffed them between the toilet tank and the wall. I can't explain why. Delirium. Fear. It was like I was flushing a bag of cocaine before the cops broke down the door.
I sometimes still wonder about that hellish pair of shorts. Are they still there? If not, who found them? What did they think when they did? These will always be mysteries, but I suspect some poor maid in Hong Kong tells her own version of this story.
Anyway, I showered and came back out into the room. My side of the bed looked like the Shroud of Turin, so I crashed on the couch. In the morning, I woke up to my dad’s screaming. He was bellowing like that guy in The Godfather who’s just found the head of Khartoum.
In fact, here is a picture of that morning—my mum and sister looking at my dad from the safety of their clean bed.
“Why didn’t you WAKE me?” he cried. I didn’t want to wake you! He took a very long shower. My family decided to head out for the day. I was still very ill and stayed at the Y. I watched some TV I didn’t understand. Then I decided to go to McDonald’s to try to eat. Mistake No. 2.
I was like an Olympic race walker dashing back to the toilet. That cheeseburger shot out of me like a kid off the bottom of a waterslide. My ass was like a sprinkler on a golf course. My family came back and told me about their adventures. I just asked to be held.
My parents weren’t big on “seeking medical attention.” I never had a day sick from school—not because I was never sick, but because I was never dead. I broke my elbow once, and I got sent to my room. But the next morning, we went to the hospital. That’s how unwell I looked.
In came the doctor. He asked me whether I’d eaten anything. Just McDonald’s, and only briefly. Then he asked me if I’d had any tap water. Of course. Many glasses. I can still see the confusion and pity on his face: “Why?” Because it was hot! And I was thirsty! He shook his head.
I shit through the eye of a needle for weeks. Thirty years later, my VERY REAL GIRLFRIEND and I had to transfer in Hong Kong. I was terrified. (I swear I have PTSD: Post Traumatic Shit Disorder.) I told her: For the love of Pete Simon, don’t even think of drinking the water.
She was like, What kind of idiot? I just looked at her, and she knew. She made the same face the doctor had made, the face everyone who knows me eventually makes: Why? It was hot, I mumbled. And I was thirsty. She sighed. “That can’t be your answer for everything.”
