Eating shit

There’s been a lot of shit around lately.

Two Thursdays ago, at bottom of the first, short set of stairs of the Vernon-Jackson station, right before exiting through the turnstiles, someone had taken a dump and it somehow had been smeared on the platform. At first I thought, “Somebody just stepped in dog shit.” Then reality set in, when is the last time you saw a dog in a subway station, and was it shitting? Never, to both. I almost stepped in it. Not doing so was more gratifying after realizing a person just took a shit on an open train platform around 7pm, and not a seeing-eye dog.

It only got worse. Just beyond the turnstiles, Active Anus had left artifacts behind: one heavily used paper towel and a smeared pair of boxes, linking him to the scene of the crime. Quick maneuvering required.

As the night aged, I found myself free of both company and activity. The DVR's been recording a TV series called Vanguard, a journalism show on Current (started by Al Gore) that discusses interesting, often obscure, meaningful things in a non-patronizing way. So I watched the previous night's episode. (Preview is first video; full episode embedded at bottom.)

Shit. That’s how it begins. The host, Adam Yamaxfdre...or something like that, is talking to the camera as he holds a cup of human shit, barely suppressing the urge to vomit that he’s spent two weeks try to perfect. So far, so good. The next sixty minutes skip among different places in India and Indonesia where people crapping in the open has traumatized local water supplies—people bathing and cooking with water contaminated with human and animal excrement—and hastened death and disease. Host Adam floats down an Indian river of black so filled and toxic with untreated raw sewage it’s like sailing in God’s ink jar. A local activist explains the details in educated-outside-of-India English. It sounds disgusting. Adam wants to throw up; so do I. And he does, quickly once on land. There are onlookers in the field nearby as Adam hurls…they are shitting. (All true.)


The show explained, titled the "The World's Toilet Crisis," how toilets and simple sanitation help societies progress, help them evolve. They showed examples of success. Of why open defecation is messy. One Indonesian (?) town made installing a toilet a status symbol, locals cheering one older woman who’s home underwent the upgrade. It’s the type of weird thing that might surface in a dream later in the night. I don’t remember, but I’m not convinced poop didn’t show up in my head.

That should’ve been enough real and televised exposure to human feces. At least for a while. I went to work on Friday morning free of the thought. Ascending the stairs of the 7 train station beneath Bryant Park, I see what I’m hoping is not another shit. It is. It is human, but with Teen-wolf like size. I’m then past and on the sidewalk. That quickly.

But the questions have returned with each subway ride. I’ve been on the lookout for terds when entering and exiting each train station. Begun considering what types of economic, social, and psychological circumstances have to collide for someone to reach the point where taking a shit in a public space is the best option. Homeless person? Maybe, seen a few of them posting up in these stations, almost stepping in a piss river one morning while a shoeless man let it go during rush hour. Or was it some drunk yuppie asshole, bent enough to drop his drawers with no cleaning supplies? What if it was a legitimate emergency, and she just had to go? That’s kind of understandable. Do you refrain from getting pissed-off that she didn't clean it up when you accept that you wouldn’t either? Or, simply, why? Quandries.

That’s what has circulated through my head the last week. And it’s not yet over. What We Leave Behind is a book about how changing perceptions of our use of ‘waste’ will improve the planet. Only a few pages deep, the authors are still revealing their fascination with poop, and shitting outside to feed the slugs so the frogs will still croak (they eat slugs). When I again open the book, the next section will talk about the etymology of shit, which might have a Middle Eastern origin.

Guess shit will be on my mind for a while to come. Here is the Vanguard episode about poo: