Originally published in Verbicide issue #24

After I’d been at AHCC for about nine months I got piss tested. What happened was I was in bed happily dreaming around four in the morning, and the door slammed open and a cop shined a flashlight in my eyes.

“Mr. Butcher,” he said. “Report to the day room for a UA.”

So I stumbled down there and they thrust a form into my hands that said all sorts of bullshit, mainly that I was agreeing to what was about to happen. I signed the stupid thing and then they took me into a very, very small bathroom behind the shift office. I was told to strip naked and then all of my cracks and crevasses were searched. There were two cops present. One of them gave me a small jar and stood in the corner. The other cop stood by the door. I stood at the toilet with my ding-dong hanging there, forlornly. Nothing happened.

I’ve never been really comfortable pissing in front of other people. I’m not sure why. I’ve heard it described as a psychological condition, “blushing kidneys,” or “shy bladder,” I don’t know. So I stood there, in silence, straining to piss into this cup. No dice. One of the cops looked at his watch and said, “15 minutes.” That meant I only had 15 minutes left in which to provide a pee pee sample. I huffed and puffed, damn near gave myself a hernia. A few dribbles of piss fell into the cup. I heaved and strained some more but that was all I could come up with. The cops told me that wasn’t enough. I went back to bed.

The upshot of all that was that I got written up for FAILURE TO PROVIDE A URINE SAMPLE. Result: 20 days loss of good time and 10 custody points. If I lost another 10 custody points I’d lose my MEDIUM designation and get sent behind the walls at Walla Walla. Not a good prospect. Walla Walla is the Animal Factory of Washington State. I’d been there for about three months in early ’97 but I had been housed at the medium security pods, which were much less dangerous than the CLOSED Custody tiers.

So when the next piss test was sprung on me I quickly guzzled a tall cup of coffee before hitting the dayroom. There were about 10 other cons there waiting to go through the routine, and while I was filling out my consent form I felt an alarming gurgle in my guts, an ominous rumbling. It grew worse and worse and I just knew I was going to get the shits. I went to the fat bitch cop in the day room and told her, “Look, I have to take a crap.”

“We will make sure you get your UA first and then you can go back to your cell and defecate.”

That wasn’t exactly what I had in mind, but before I could protest, the two male cops escorted me into the bathroom. By this time my guts were rumbling like a volcano and it was all I could do to keep my asshole clenched shut while I undressed. Once I was naked and standing in front of the toilet I told the cop near the door that I had to shit. He gave me a little cup and said, “Just fill this cup and then you can go take a shit.”

“It doesn’t work that way,” I said. “The same muscles that allow me to piss control my ability to shit.”

“Well, I’m not having you shit in here and then have me stand around and smell it while we test everybody else.”

And at that point my guts gurgled; it sounded like Godzilla and I knew it was a count down to Brown River.

“Look,” I said. “Either I can sit down here and crap or I can crap all over myself, either way I’m going to shit in about 10 seconds, what would you prefer?”

He made a face and waved at me, “Christ, go ahead!”

I barely sat down before the floodgate opened. My god, what a stink! With a nasty chug my asshole opened up and a stream of putrid brown turds flopped out. The cop in the corner recoiled, cursing. “Oh, Jesus Christ!” He waved his hands futilely.

I gave another grunt. Another jet of rancid doo-doo shot out and splashed into the water. I didn’t flush. The cop at the door had his hand over his mouth and was waving the door, using it like a giant fan, trying in vain to sweep some of the stink away. I shifted and let loose a third time. It was like raw sewage pouring out my butt, followed by a few spiny peanuts. AAAAhhhh! The cop in the corner frantically dug a book of matches out of his pants and started lighting them and tossing them in the sink. I took the cup and pissed into it halfway, then stopped and held it up.

“Is this enough?” I asked innocently.

The cop in the corner, hand clasped across his nose and mouth managed to gasp out, “Fill it up a bit more if you can.”

I filled it up, then twisted the cap on and handed it to the cop in the corner. Then I very slowly and leisurely wiped myself.

The cop at the door was practically retching.

“For god’s sake, flush the fuckin’ toilet!”

I unrolled some more toilet paper, wiped again gingerly, then flushed.
The cops tossed me my clothes. “Hurry up and get dressed!”

Very slowly I dressed.

“Jesus, there must be something wrong with you for a stink that bad to come out of you!”

They propped the door open and went to get the next lucky convict. As I was walking away towards the day room, I heard the next con balk at entering the bathroom, “Holy shit! I ain’t going in there!”

“C’mon Chavez, let’s get this over with, quick,” said the guard by the door. “We don’t wanna have to smell this any more than you do!”

People the next day asked me if I was embarrassed to have to shit in front of the cops, but it didn’t bother me any more than having to piss in front of them, and several guys thought what I’d done was very funny.

“Serves them fuckin’ pigs right, having to smell your shit for an hour!”

I was rather amused myself.
—
Raegan Butcher is the author of Stone Hotel: Poems From Prison and Rusty String Quartet. He lives in the Pacific Northwest, and has regularly contributed fiction and poetry to Verbicide since 2003. His new limited edition CD, Pale & Skinny 1986 – 1992, is now available from Scissor Press.