Back in 83 I was working on my machinist’s apprenticeship in a Northwest Indiana steel mill. Groundhog day, I’d had a horrible case of the runs, and stayed home from work. It wasn’t common for me to do so, at the time a couple late or missed days could lose you your gig.

Anyway, a day and a half later, I’m feeling pretty good, in fact, I had even had a solid bowel movement and a couple of dry farts. So at the end of my day, pretty well convinced that I had returned to normal, I finished up my workday and headed for the showers.

Showering in a filthy concrete room with 182 guys trying to get under the same 12 showerheads was never a pleasant undertaking, For any woman who might think a glimpse inside a men’s shower would be interesting, let me assure you, it would not. 182 dirty smelly guys with company-issued purple towels would engage nobody’s prurient interests. Sort of like Ms Jackson’s right teat and pierced nipple.

Anyway, the water heater, furnace, and water pumps were at the end of the locker room, the door just to the end of the row of lockers I inhabited. The noise was overbearing, you tended to do your thing and get the heck out.
I was standing at my open locker door, toweling dry, oblivious to all around me (code of the locker room; Look in your locker, or at eye level, don’t pay attention to anyone else) when I felt the presure of a little gas. I thought, hell, I’m clean and green, why not? I put my left foot on the bench to towel it dry, and as I bent over, let loose.

Now, if you were going to sit on a bench behind a naked guy bending over, don’t you think you’d move your head a little to the left or the right? Well, King didn’t. I knew King, at the time, only because our lockers were across from one another’s. We said hello to one another every day, little more. King was 6’6″ and built like an Olympic weightlifter. I never knew it before, but King had a tremendous basso-profundo voice, which I heard for the first time as he shouted “MOTHERFUCKER!!!!!!”

I turned to find that not only had that fart not been dry, but it had been enhanced with seemingly supersonic speed, and a stream of liquid shit had pulsed forth from my rectum and virtually covered King’s complete head. The burning, acrid vileness drifted forth from his eyebrows, which dripped liquid shit down the side of his face and onto his freshly laundered work shirt.
He glared at me as if to say, ” I WILL KILL YOU AS SOON AS I WASH THIS SHIT OFF MY HEAD!!!” then stormed off, still clothed, to the showers where he washed so hard observers feared his skin would come clean off.

Eyewitnesses say he must have heard the rumbling, as he tipped his head back to look just as I let go, and caught the full fury of my stream of excreta directly in the forehead. It must have been like looking into the center of hell with night-vision goggles.

For my part, I used a spare towel to clean myself as best as possible, then hurriedly dressed and left, never to return to that locker again- I got a new locker assignment and moved on. I still saw King once or twice after that, each time he looked at me as if I was dinner, and I stayed as far away as I could.

21 years ago today, man and boy. I’ve heard of baptism by fire, but this is one anointment that, if I can, I’ll pass on receiving.