What Shitting My Pants Taught Me About Romance

And Spreading Disease

Trigger warning: literally a story about me shitting myself lmao sorry, brief mention of eating disorder and chronic illness

Disclaimer: If you’re attracted to me and you want to stay attracted to me, maybe don’t read this. Or do. Idk.

It was a cold, dark Halloween in October, and the clocks were striking 8ish. The year was 2021.

I hadn’t been to work for a few days because some dickhead came in with a sickness bug and passed it on to me. You would’ve thought just having lived through a pandemic where we’d all been taught to wash our hands, self-isolate to avoid spreading illness at all costs and wear masks, that an adult would know not to come to work with sickness and diarrhoea. Apparently not. I was in recovery for a longstanding eating disorder (I call him Ed because it’s easier to be mad at a man than at myself), and throwing up and not being able to eat were the LAST triggers I needed.

~ Quick message to everyone: don’t go near ANYONE if you’re ill. You might cause someone with an eating disorder to throw up. You might cause someone with a chronic illness to DIE. ~

It was Halloween, and instead of the usual house party, my friends and I decided to go to the cinema for a back-to-back showing of A Nightmare on Elm Street and Scream (thank god we weren’t throwing a party). The 30th was still a bit rough, but I woke up on the 31st feeling much better and managed to eat some plain foods. So, I decided to go.

~ Quick message to everyone: You are still contagious for at least 48 hours after your symptoms subside for almost all common illnesses. I didn’t research this before going. This was irresponsible on my part. ~

Oh fuck, I should probably start by giving you a rundown of the cast before we get into it:

Me: the hot one, the gay one and technically the final girl

Dominic: the hero (my ex, who was living at my mum’s house with me. We were potentially working things out) ((we didn’t, but we’re still besties)) (((this info is relevant to the story)))

Bex: the Randy Meeks and nacho enthusiast (my sister) ((the other gay one))

Boris and Fiona (not their real names): the couple (they’re unimportant to the story)

Other friends: I actually can’t remember which of my friends went anymore because this story has become so centred around me shitting myself, but I do know there were around 9 of us

To put things in perspective, Scream is 1h 51m and A Nightmare on Elm Street is 1h 31m (the 1 min thing is weird, I can only assume Wes Craven was doing something there because he was a genius).

~ OMG, just researched and The Last House on the Left was also 1h 31m ~

In total, we’re talking 3h 20m of film watching without the ads on top. What I’m trying to say is, we were there for a while.

The feeling of being back out in the world again was comparable to breathing in the crisp ocean air on a calm, sunny day. Except, instead of sun-kissed skin and sand between my toes, my trainers were cushioned by the old, dirty carpets of Eastleigh Vue. Still, my only company for the days prior had been the toilet seat, so the smell of popcorn and sweat was a welcome one. Meeting my friends at the door, I breezed into the cinema in my comfy joggers and baggy hoodie, ready for some much-needed fun.

If only I had known.

“It’s just life. Sometimes you shit yourself.”

My friend Kate

The break between the two films was short, but Bex had just enough time to run to the front and buy some nachos before Scream started. And on the other side of the cinema, I had just enough time to run to the toilet. “I’m gonna throw up,” I said to my friends, which was code for “I’m gonna shit myself.”

But alas, I was safe. For now.

Me realising I wasn’t going to shit myself

Half an hour passed, and Bex innocently turned to me mid-film, arm extended with a plain, dipless nacho. “Want one?” She asked, and I was faced with a choice. Now, you’re probably thinking that with my near-shit experience between films, I wouldn’t have risked my life again for a nacho.

WRONG.

Of course I accepted it. All I’d eaten in three days was a bit of boiled rice. I was starving and desperate to pretend everything was fine again.

~ Quick message to everyone: don’t ignore your symptoms. You will shit your pants. ~

It was 10 minutes before the end that my insides, much like the film, were screaming at me (…cos we were watching Scream). But I managed to hold it together, rushing to the toilet on the way out.

Again, nothing.

I was fine, but I took another brief moment to curse the colleague who decided to spread their illness to me. What a LOSER.

More context: we lived in the middle of nowhere, around a 35-minute drive from the cinema. The area is so rural that the closest shop to my mum’s house is a 10-minute drive away. There are no street lights for most of the country lanes surrounding the area, and it’s all forest, so it’s impossible to see anything. Remember this for later.

Luckily, I wasn’t driving; Dominic was.

We headed back to the car park, said our goodbyes, and we were on our way home. Music up, spirits high, slightly tired because it was late on a Sunday and we had work the next day (I believe it was around 1am, but it could’ve been later).

Life was good.

I was feeling ok for the majority of the drive home, but as we headed down the A road, a mere 5 minutes from the house, my stomach started to cramp up. “I’m gonna be sick!” I screamed at Dominic. This time, it wasn’t code for anything; I genuinely thought I was going to be sick. “We’re almost home. Can you make it?” he replied, speeding up.

Nope.

He swerved (safely) onto a grassy bank at the side of the road, swinging open his door and running to the other side of the car to assist me. As my door flew open, I knew I’d made a huge mistake.

I wasn’t throwing up.

I was shitting myself.

By the time I’d managed to pull down my trousers, my shit was already on my clothes and down the side of Dominic’s car. Poor Dom, he loved his Honda Civic.

He gripped onto my armpits and held me out of the car door as the most explosive diarrhoea exited my body in his direction.

I should mention that the worst part of all of this is that having diarrhoea and sickness is actually more painful than it is inconvenient. The stomach cramps were almost unbearable, and I was crying from the intermittent sharpness shooting through my body.

Instead of being annoyed, Dominic held onto me like a child and got me through it. He grabbed a plastic bag from the boot of his car for me to sit on and helped me clean myself up with some covid masks he had lying around in the car.

Now, I don’t condone this, but the masks were in a pile on the floor, completely covered in my shit, and we could barely see. Instead of messily picking them up when we had nothing to clean our hands with, we agreed to leave them in a neat pile and come back to clean them up as soon as it was light outside. I need to reiterate that we were only a few minutes from home, so we knew we’d be able to clean them up easily in the morning.

After wiping and abandoning the masks, Dominic got us both back in the car and drove half a mile down the road to our front door.

More context: my mum’s next-door neighbour is an 80-year-old woman. Her 50-year-old son lives with her (let’s call him Jim). Jim smokes weed, but his mum doesn’t know he smokes weed, so he often sneaks out of the house to smoke in the car. The road has designated street parking. Below is a diagram of how this looks.

I’m sure you can see where this is going.

We pulled up in front of the house, me trouser-less and weeping, Dominic strategically mapping out the next stage of our ‘get Abs inside and cleaned up’ plan, and who do I lock eyes with? Fucking Jim smoking a joint.

I actually find it pretty funny when telling this story to imagine what Jim was thinking in this moment. So, the next part of this story will be told from the entirely imagined POV of Jim:

It was 1am, and Mum finally went to bed after insisting we play Scrabble for the 40th time this week. I hadn’t been out in a few hours, and I was starting to get pissed off with how late my nightly smoke was getting. “Watch Eastenders with me!” “Help me clean the kitchen!” “I can’t find my glasses!” God, mums are so annoying. I wish I could move out, but I’m just a 50-year-old man. It’s so unfair!

Anyway, Mum unleashed me from her clasp, and I headed straight to the car with my baccy tin and a grinder. The only thing worse than having to sneak out would be my mum catching me in the act. I wouldn’t want her to think I’m a loser, so I smoke weed in the car at 1am to be sure she doesn’t.

I had just lit up and taken a few drags when I saw a car pull up in front of me. It was Dominic, the neighbour’s ex-boyfriend, parallel parking towards me in his white Honda Civic. Now they’re gonna catch me smoking weed, I thought. I gave a wave of acknowledgement. I didn’t worry too much because I knew they also smoked weed, I just hoped they didn’t say anything to Mum.

In the passenger seat was Abs. They looked like they’d been crying. Probably went on a drive to have a fight or something. I don’t know. We locked eyes, urgh, awkward, so I went back to smoking my joint, taking deep inhales so I could get back inside as quickly as possible. Dominic left the car, slamming the door shut. Yep, definitely had an argument. Abs stayed put, meaning it was just the two of us. I was in the middle of searching desperately for something else to look at when I noticed Abs had no trousers on.

What the fuck? I thought. I was pretty baked at this point, but they definitely had no trousers on. I think? No. I was definitely 100% sure they had no trousers on. I kept smoking, trying not to look but becoming desperately unaware of my actions. Were they thinking I was being a creep? I wasn’t, genuinely, I just wanted to know why they were sitting trouser-less in the car opposite me.

Before I had any more time to worry, Dominic was coming back down the path towards the car carrying a plastic bag and… wipes? At this point, I had no idea what was going on. I watched as Dominic headed to Abs’ side of the car and, as if I wasn’t sitting there watching them, they started messing around with the wipes, Dom’s body shielding Abs as he threw something into the carrier bag and handed them what looked like a pair of joggers.

My joint was almost finished, but I couldn’t go back inside until I knew what was happening. A few more minutes passed, and Abs finally exited the car, no longer trouser-less, holding a carrier bag containing what I assume were the trousers they left the house in.

Ahhh, they must’ve shit themselves, I thought, rolling the window up and heading back inside. Either that, or I was extremely stoned. I guess I’ll never know.

Hello, Abs again. My mum woke up when Dominic was fumbling around looking for a plastic bag, so when we finally headed inside, I was met by laughter and lots of care. My sister famously thinks people shitting themselves is the height of comedy, so obviously my mum had immediately texted the family group chat to alert everyone. What followed that evening was uneventful. A shower, lots of shame and tears, and a long, restful sleep.

The next morning, Dominic and I headed out early to clean up my shit. I’m not going to do another diagram, but as I mentioned earlier, these country lanes are completely surrounded by forest. Any houses along this road are tucked away neatly behind a long gated driveway and lots of trees. We pulled over to the spot where it all went down, and with a gasp, we realised I hadn’t shit on some random bank at the side of the road after all.

I had shit on someone’s gated driveway.

I know this is very LinkedIn of me, but the thing about this entire experience was that, yes, I did shit myself, but also, I learned so much about the type of partner I want to be with.

Dominic and I were high school sweethearts who were and still are not right for each other (AT ALL), but that night really proved to me that I can be loved by someone who not only doesn’t get angry at me when I shit all over their car, but someone who remains calm in a crisis, takes care of me without a word, and showers me off while simultaneously reassuring me that I’m ok.

True romance isn’t just the dates, the flowers, and the poetry; it’s the low moments where they have to be the one to wipe your tears (or arse).

It also taught me that spreading illness is no joke. Realistically, my having to throw up while recovering from an eating disorder was incredibly difficult for me, but it wasn’t anywhere near as bad as if someone chronically ill had caught it.

My best friend has Long Covid, a chronic illness preventing her from living her life as she once did. She caught Covid in June 2022, and her symptoms never went away. She spends most of her life wearing a mask, she can’t eat inside public places, and she can’t be around people if they have any symptoms of illness.

She caught it because one of her housemates didn’t warn her that they were unwell, and the consequence of that is that this year will be my friend’s fourth year living with a chronic illness.

The most common symptoms of long COVID include:

feeling extremely tired (fatigue)
shortness of breath
joint pain and aching muscles
problems with your memory and concentration, also called brain fog

Over the past two years, I’ve seen her struggle with friends and family who refuse to include her in things because, to them, it’s more inconvenient to sit outside than it is nice to have her there. People often try to debunk her illness or tell her she’s imagining it, and she lives in fear that someone is going to lie about being ill because they don’t believe her.

Chronic illness is NOT A JOKE. If she catches something, she’s bed bound and risks becoming even more ill, or worse, death. This is not dramatic, it’s fact. A lot of chronic illnesses are invisible, and so it’s easy to forget they exist.

Most people avoid being around their heavily pregnant family or elderly grandparents when they’re unwell, but they don’t tend to consider wearing a mask or staying away from the general public until they feel better. The world is filled with chronically ill people who could be at serious risk, so before you go into work, please consider the impact you might have on someone else’s life.

It’s already cunty (not in the gay way, in the you’re a literal cunt way) enough to make someone shit their pants, but threatening someone’s life is a whole other danger.

I’m not trying to suggest I’m better than you. I went to the cinema not knowing I was still contagious because I didn’t bother researching it. I just want you to consider staying home, wearing a mask, using hand gel, and looking after those with invisible (and visible) illnesses.

Yes, I manipulated you into reading information on Long Covid by telling you my shitting story. I think it was a fair trade.

Thanks for reading <3 love you xoxo

P.S. I’m trying to become a writer! If you like my writing, please consider becoming a paid subscriber OR donating to this link. No presh :)