Memories of Venice

"Do you remember," she said tentatively, "when we stayed in the camper off of Venice?"

We were hanging out in her attic room a month after said trip, surfing the net for K-Pop music videos over a plates of pasta, when she suddenly turned to me with a serious expression. "I have something to confess."

"What?" I asked distractedly.

"Do you know why I rushed to use the toilet first on our last morning there? You know I normally want to lie in bed for as long as I can."

"You had to pee really badly?"

"No..." she hesitated. "But you mustn't judge me after this."

I casted her a sideward glance. "I won't. What happened?"

"Well," she said, "the night before I had to shit."

"Uh-huh..."

"And it was really big."

"Okay..."

"It was so big that it couldn't go down when I flushed. So I panicked."

I started laughing. "So what did you do? Did you pour soap into the bowl?"

"That's the thing, I didn't know what to do! I flushed like three times but it was still there." She looked up at me in almost gleeful anticipation of my reaction. "So I reached in..."

"YOU DID NOT!"

"I was desperate! I picked it up, but it broke in half. By the way, it felt quite solid, even though the surface was slimey."

Bear in mind that this is a girl who visually inspects her products every time she uses the washroom, and then reports to me.

"It was interesting, I've never seen it up close before. So I inspected it for a while. Then you know what I did with it?"

"I don't know - wait! Holy shit, please don't tell me you put it in the pizza box on our night stand! I knew there was a reason why you didn't want to take it out with us when we left!" I clapped a hand over my mouth in horror.

"No no no," she hastened to assure me. "Of course not, I'm not that gross. I put them in the bin in the bathroom. Then I had to cover them with tons of toilet paper so you wouldn't see it. You didn't notice when you went in to shower after me, right?"

"Oh god, no."

"You know what the worst part is?"

"Can it get worse?"

"Yea. I shit two pieces. But I picked up three, because I reached all the way inside. So I think I must have picked up yours too."

I fell off the chair, convulsing with laughter. "I didn't use it that day! You must have picked up someone else's."

She shuddered. "And then during the night, I had to use the toilet again. When I went in - whoa! It smelled like someone had died there."

At this point of time, I was rolling helplessly on the floor.

"I was so scared that you would find out. I sprayed my deodorant all over the bathroom. That's why the next morning I had to run in before you - to hide the smell. You didn't notice anything wrong right?"

I was too breathless to answer.

"But anyway, that was our first trip together so I still cared about my image. If the same thing happens now, I don't care if you see my shit. I'm proud of it."

Even now, I can't imagine what the housecleaning staff must have thought when they cleaned up the room.