Where lies your greatest dangers? - In pity.
What do you love in others? - My hopes.
Whom do you call bad? - Him who always wants to make ashamed.
What is to you the most humane thing? - To spare anyone shame.

- Nietzsche

Kirby's Pooh

When I was young sometimes I'd get that pooh feeling but didn't want to haul my ass out of the tub all wet and go to the toilet, so I'd just poop in the shower, break it up a bit, lift the grate up and push all of it in. Then I'd clean my bottom with soap. No problem.

I've had constipation once. I sat on the toilet for the whole afternoon, my family coming in and out to check on me. Eventually the shit just sort of rolled out, a whitish rock-hard ball that splashed water on my butt. I could feel it against the ridges in my asshole, an unfamiliar sensation that's stuck with me to this day. I guess it was the first time it occurred to me that things were happening inside my body that I didn't know about, nor had any control over. Granted, I was too young to grasp this - I experienced it later on.

After that I got worried about eating. I stopped for a few days thinking that it might cause me to get constipated again. So when I did start eating again I got prepared. I took toilet paper and soap and hid them on a shelf above my bed, moving toys and books aside, piling them up at the back against the wall, and then moved the stuff back in front. I thought they might remain untouched for years, but within a week my mom found my stash. "Don't ever let me catch you doing this again," she had said, and I never heard anything about it after that.

I started to stick my finger up my butt and sometimes I would get something on my finger and I guess it escalated from there. I started with feeling it and smelling it. I'd take a shit in my hand while sitting on the toilet, squeeze it, and I used to play with it a little. But I had to quit because my brother kept smelling it on me.

All that when I was young. I met Peter later.

Peter Lee was my first friend who wasn't white. His parents ran a convenience store, a small country shop, with their house behind it. The first (and last) time I went to his house my parents dropped me off in front of the store and then literally sped off.

I'd been inside the store only a few times before. The floor was made of wooden boards, some sagging under or else riding over eachother, and when you walked your shoes crunched dirt, sand that had been carried in on the bottom of boots during the winter, dried over the summers, building up over time and settling in a little more each year as the store slowly grew more dry and dirty. I wandered in and out of the tall stacks of cans, waiting for someone to come get me, to welcome me to their home. I must've walked past Mr. Lee half a dozen times, his face vapid, indolent, indifferently watching the activity of the day from behind the counter.

Eventually his mom came out to help bring in some boxes and saw me near the refrigerators. I just stared at her. She figured it out and led me into the backroom, into a corridor. I didn't tell her how long I'd waited. It must've been at least an hour.

The corridor, with a door at either end, was like an airlock preserving the pressure differential between homes and business. At the end of it she told me to take off my shoes. She waited for me. When she opened the door, I followed her into the kitchen, where I saw was Peter sitting on one side of a table along with his little sister, eating Pogos on paper plates and drinking Coke. Sunlight filled the kitchen from the big window behind the sink.

I dropped my bag and sat down at the table. His mom got me a plate with two Pogos and a side of barbecue chips. She poured me a glass of Coke. She walked back and lent against the door, watching us eat.

I'd already eaten, but I couldn't turn away their food. But once I started into them I was suddenly hungry, and the Pogos were warm and good. My parents would never let me eat something like that.

From the door she asked me how it was. But I didn't understand what she had said, so I thought what I'd do was, I'd pretend to not have noticed. Then she said, perfectly clear this time, "good," but not like a question. I looked at Peter and his sister grinned.

"Yeah," I agreed, "it's good."

I ate three Pogos, which seemed to please her.

Peter's mom left soon after that. But before she went she took out more Pogos and pizza for us to warm up if we got hungry, placing the boxes on top of the microwave.

"How long are you staying for?" his sister asked over a mouthful of mashed batter and meat, her first bite that'd I'd seen. The girl evidently took nothing for herself, was positively uninterested in food. And for a little girl she was really ugly. Her little scrunched-up face, her annoying tinny voice. I felt sorry for her.

"Shut up," said Peter immediately, then, to me, "let's go play Final Fantasy VIII."

"Can I play?" she asked. Her shoulders shot up as her little throat pulled the food down.

"No."

"I'll tell dad."

This was the first time it happened. While listening to Peter and his sister fight I felt this thing in my chest. I felt a hollow space beneath my ribs fill up with a warm liquid, and all the slack muscles in my gut tightened all of a sudden. I put a hand on my stomach, under the table, held it there and rubbed a finger into my belly button. Made me feel like taking a piss.

"Where's your guys' washroom?" I asked.

"I'll show you," his sister said. She hopped down from her chair and walked into the next room. I followed behind her. Their house was empty and clean, with the same blue-grey carpet running wall-to-wall throughout, streaked with fresh vacuum-tracks.

The washroom was small, cramped, little more than a closet. I took a rushed shit in the timeframe of a piss. Just as I flushed I could hear a chair sliding and someone running heavily through the house.

When I opened the door she was there.

"You flushed," she said.
"What?" I said, stepping out.

"If it's yellow, it's mellow," she said." "If it's brown, flush it down."

"It was green and had hunks of red peppers in it," I said. She giggled.

There was a wet sound in the washroom. The toilet. I went over and looked into the bowl.

Swirling, frothy diarrhoea. Right to the brim. She came up beside me and looked in. She made a face and drew back. I hadn't lied to her about the colours.

"You clogged it," she said.

"I'm sorry."

"I'll tell my dad on you."

I looked her in the eyes. "Please don't do that."

"Just kidding," she said quickly.

We turned off the light and shut the door. We started walking back to the kitchen.

"Do you know how to fix the toilet?" I asked her.

"My mom does," she said.

Peter was sitting with his elbows on the table. He was eating a new batch of Pogos, thoughtfully watching Dragonball Z in the next room.

We sat down.

"He clogged the toilet," she told Peter.

"What?"

"With a big pooh."

"That was fast."

"How are we going to fix the toilet?" she asked.

"I don't know," said Peter. "Would you mind eating it?"

"Would you eat my pooh for me?" I asked her.

She gave me a face and stuck out her tongue. Peter laughed.

"You guys are mean."

I asked her, "Who's pooh would you eat?"

She thought for a second. "Kirby's!"

Turning around with a big grin on his face, Peter asked, "for a billion dollars, would you eat - my shit?"

Hunks of meat and wet batter burst out of his mouth. He rocked back, chewed-up Pogo leaking helplessly out his mouth, embarrassed and delighted at what he had said, and fell heavily to the floor. His sister shrieked in joy.

When she laughed all the lines and dimples on her face sort of bunched up like an accordion, squeezing her eyes into narrow slits. Her breath wheezed as the laughter took over, a raging, mad laughter that carried throughout the house and store.

I was laughing so hard my jaw locked and my throat kept clucking. The space in my chest ached, like my body was pressing around a vacancy, no bigger than a man's hand, and I felt as the fluid inside it sloshed around each time I laughed. But I couldn't stop.

"Eat my shit!" cried Peter from the floor.

"Eat this!" cried his sister, throwing the rest of her pogo at him. He quickly rolled and it smacked the linoleum, breaking apart. Then he lifted his heel and smashed it. His sister stopped laughing.

"I'll tell dad."

Peter struggled to pull himself up. His face, sodden with tears, peered up over the table.

Peter was big, not fat, his eyes large and dark, with an open moon-shaped face. He was the nicest person I've ever seen, with chubby cheeks and a sweet little smile. But it's his fingers that I remember best. His fingers were thick and his knuckles had dimples.

"Eat my shit" he gasped before falling back to the kitchen floor.

I'd eat the shit of Tifa Lockhart (FF7), Aerith Gainsborough (FF7), Yuffie Kisaragi (FF7) if she was a bit older, Yuna (FFX), Rikku (FFX), Lulu (FFX), any of the Love Hina girls, and basically any pretty girl in anime. I'd settle for anybody.

I would love to see Naoko Kumagai take a shit. She's a Japanese female kickboxer and I imagine her turds to be completely solid, shaped after her intestines.

And if you think shit is the same no matter whose it is, you might as well say that pussy is pussy and it doesn't matter whether it belongs a girl you love or some disgusting whore.

Some people mean it as a gesture of love, that it shows they love everything about the person. Everything, including the worst, the most "embarrassing" things they think they have to hide. It can be called obsessive and insane, but passionate things often are.

And so our hearts, by degrees, slowed to normal, and our breathing gradually became less frantic. I had sweated a lot. Sweat had dried on my forehead. I felt clammy under my clothes.

After lunch we took chips and pop down from the store's shelves and carried everything up the stairs and into Peter's room. I sat beside Peter on his bed's edge, my jacket wadded up behind me for a cushion. We played Super Smash Bros and Final Fantasy VIII and watched Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me.

Peter's sister stuck with us for a while, before Peter locked her out. Sullenly she left, sniffling ostentatiously, not approving of something in which she could not share. We ignored her. But before that she kept on handing me these Korean candies, but what I really wanted was one of those Korean gel pens that Peter always brought to school.

We never left Balamb. We took turns playing Triple Triad. We made several more trips down to the store, and I remember how we ate food not out of hunger, but for the sheer pleasure of it.

"Would you lick any part of me for any amount of money?" I asked him once, crunching up an empty Doritos bag.

"Pardon?" Peter asked, cupping his ear. "No," he said.

"Good," I said. I waited then asked, "would you lick my arm for a million dollars?"

"Yeah," Peter said, "of course I would!"

"For half a million dollars?"

He put down the controller. "Yeah."

"For two-hundred and fifty-thousand?"

"Yeah. But it'd never happen."

"What would be the lowest amount you'd lick my arm for?"

"I wouldn't lick your arm you freak," he said, laughing. He picked up his controller and unpaused the game.

"I dunno," I said in a bored tone of voice.

Peter cupped his ear, smiled hesitantly, but said nothing.

And that was that.

And that was around when I first got into masturbation. I was thirteen, on Christmas Eve. I don't remember what I was thinking but I remember rubbing my palm up and down against my dick, not gripping it, but just applying pressure. I kept on going and my knees shook and my legs got hot and I closed my fist over it.

I ran to the washroom with a huge wad of jizz in my palm, washed it off, and promised myself I'd never do that again. I swore to myself over and over I'd never do it again. But I knew I'd do it again, even before I left the bathroom.

When I first started out I used to pinch my foreskin and let go over the toilet, you know, and squeeze it all out. But I stopped doing that when my foreskin split in one part and cum started to crust over the hole.

The very first guro pic I saw was by Waita Uziga. The picture of the girl as a dinner entrée all hollowed out. I remember feeling my stomach suck into itself like a massive hunger cramp, rattling in response to the gore. I know it's crazy, but since then I've just been trying to get that same feeling again.

About a year after I went to his house Peter's family moved to Toronto. I called him a few times and we sent a couple of emails to eachother. The last time I tried to get in touch with him an old Korean lady picked up the phone and said "I don't speak English," then hung up. I lost his number a long time ago.