The Legend of Chapman and the Statue of Molly Malone

I pissed my pants the other day. A lot. It wasn’t a dribble here or a trickle there, either. I’m talking about a full-on, soaked from crotch to ankles kind of accident. And it all happened so quickly, too. Except the peeing part. That seemed to last for hours before it finally stopped.

Ever since the beginning of the year, I have developed a certain urinary urgency. Before this whole ALS thing, I could make it through an entire teaching day without ever once feeling the need to take a leak. But now, that’s a completely different story. I’ve learned from experience that when nature calls, I don’t have a whole lot of time to respond with an answer. If I don’t make it to the restroom within minutes of the initial alarm bell ringing out, I increase my chances of having an unfortunate incident almost exponentially.

Take the other day, for example. As I was riding home from school in the family CRV with Fehmeen, I noticed around halfway there that I had to go pee. I figured, hey, I just went a few hours ago, I’ll be fine until we get home. And I was fine until I got to the bathroom. As I stood there trying to take down the zipper on my boot-cut jeans, I started to think about, and subsequently feel, how badly I had to go. I tried to take hold of the zipper again but the forefinger and thumb on my right hand could not complete the required task.

It’s not like I hadn’t prepared for this exact situation, either. For weeks, Fehmeen had been threading thin, plastic, computer cord zip ties through the hole in the top of the zipper on all the pants I wear with any degree of frequency. She then created an index finger sized loop with the plastic tie to aid me in the process of raising and lowering an otherwise nearly impossible to grasp tiny metal zipper. I had used this tool for a few months with nary a messy mishap.

But for some reason, on that particular day and at that particular time, I could not make that zipper go down. The more I tried, the weaker my fingers got. As the seconds ticked by, I began to panic more and more. All I could think about was peeing in my pants and about how embarrassing that would be. I tried to unzip again but to no avail. I was sweating now and doing my own (can’t move much because I have ALS) version of the pee pee dance as I focused every last iota of my mental energy into the solitary thought of “Don’t pee, don’t pee, don’t pee.”

In a flash of brilliance, I decided to change tactics. Rather than fight this seemingly impossible battle with the zipper, why don’t I try to undo my belt and unbutton my button and then unzip the zipper. Well, I got the belt off but I hit a major snag with the button. Unbuttoning a button on a pair of pants is about a million times more strenuous for me than unzipping a zipper. Perhaps I forgot to mention that I was wearing Bad Idea Jeans at the time. (Google it if you want).

As soon as I came to the conclusion about the futility of my efforts, I just let go. All the stress, all the panic, all the wasted muscle straining, everything, was released the moment I just let go. And it wasn’t like I tried to stop and salvage anything from this experience. The relief was so pure, so comforting, and so warm (eww) that I probably couldn’t have stopped peeing if I tried. As I stood there in my suddenly darker blue jeans, I thought to myself, “When was the last time I really pissed my pants this badly?”

About ten years ago, I used to go to O’Neill’s Irish Pub in San Mateo every Wednesday night. A group of us would meet there around seven, order hamburgers from Jeffrey’s next door, and put away a few pints of Guinness or Sierra Nevada or Bodington and wait for Quiz Night to begin at nine. For the uninitiated, Quiz Night (also known as Pub Quiz) is essentially a team trivia contest that takes place in a pub or a bar. In this particular case, Liam, the quiz master, was contracted by O’Neill’s to be the emcee of a weekly, seven round trivia contest.

The Quiz was open to anyone who wished to participate and in order to sweeten the pot (and to guarantee attendance), the owner of the pub, Eoin O’Neill, announced that the team that had accumulated the most points at the end of ten weeks of competition would be rewarded with an amazing grand prize: flight and bed and breakfast accommodations for four to Dublin, Ireland for a week.

Teams, big and small, came from near and far to compete in O’Neill’s trivia contest. Our team, comprised of Matt Berry (sports, politics, history), Mike Beusch (movies, James Bond, everything really), Andy Grass (general knowledge), Lee Howarth (all things European), Andy Smith (drank a lot of Sierra), and me (music, technology, general knowledge) competed valiantly for the first nine weeks but ultimately trailed in the overall standings. I don’t know how it happened during week ten, but our ragtag team of trivia misfits pulled off the mother of all comebacks and we were rewarded with the (nearly) all expenses paid trip. We celebrated our victory and once all the hoopla died down, we began to plan for our voyage.

Our actual intercontinental vacation, however, got off to a somewhat inauspicious start. Upon arriving at our bed and breakfast, the four of us (Grass and Lee graciously bowed out) were informed by a rather polite and cordial gentleman named Pat that our reservations at his establishment were apparently never made on our (Eoin’s) end. Being too early to call back to the US, Pat suggested we spend a few hours in the local pub (okay, twist our arms) and he would put in a call to our booking agent as soon as they opened for the day. Approximately two hours and several pints later, Pat explained what he was able to do for us: being booked solid at his place for the next two days, he took it upon himself to find us lodging at another b and b until space opened up at his place. And then he drove us there. I’d always heard about the hospitality of the Irish, but this was ridiculous. Thank you again, Pat.

Now that our living arrangements for the week were squared away, we were able to focus our collective attention on what we came to this beautiful country to do: check out the sights and drink some beer. We toured the city, we toured the country, but mainly we toured the pubs. No sooner did we exit one pub than Andy, who earned the nickname Captain Steamy on this trip, would exclaim in his signature high pitched bellow, “Dude, let’s get a pint!” And we did. Every single time. Without a doubt, I drank more beer in one week in Ireland than I ever drank either before or after the trip in my entire life. I do have to admit, though, that you have not had the perfect pint until you’ve had a glass of Guinness at the end of the Guinness factory tour at St James’ Gate in Dublin. It’s truly the nectar of the Gods tapped directly from the source.

As cool as Dublin was during the daylight hours, things really got hopping in the evening. The streets teemed with young people looking to get their swerve on and the pubs were jam-packed with revelers actually getting said swerve on. When the pubs would shut down for the night, people would gather in the closest after hours club to continue the party until the sun came up.

Personally, I have never really been all too comfortable in the night club social scene. Either a product of my own insecurities or one too many dance floor rejections or a serious lack of game, I would typically count the minutes until my departure upon my arrival at a bumping disco.

But for some unknown reason, my usual socially introverted attitude changed one night out in Dublin. Perhaps it was the right combination of Guinness and Budweiser (named import of the year that year, wow). Maybe it was the fact that we started out at a small pub, mingled a bit, left for a slightly more happening bar, mingled a bit more, left for a ‘get your hand stamped at the door’ club, and stayed until closing. But whatever the reason, I was en fuego that night; I was socializing and talking to girls and having the time of my life.

When the club closed down for the night, my friends and I walked/stumbled through the streets of Dublin in search of an open convenience store in order to satiate our intense desire for sandwiches and crisps. Feeling a bit lightheaded and somewhat inebriated, I told Matt and Steamy to carry on in the crowded store without me and that I would be waiting for them outside when they were done. They took my order and vanished into the corner shop.

I leaned against the wall of an adjoining business for a few minutes watching the waves of people drunk walk by me (apparently lots of clubs had shut their doors for the evening around that time). It wasn’t until I heard the sound of someone heaving up their dinner that I realized I desperately needed to take a piss. I strategized in my mind what I should do. Since there were no public toilets anywhere in sight and there was no chance that I could find a club or restaurant open at that time that would allow me to use their water closet, I opted for the only sensible choice that I could think of at the time: I would piss in a darkened alley.

Now, if I could only find a darkened alley. No matter what street I walked on or turned down, I encountered endless hordes of humanity. Finding a deserted street in Dublin at 2:00 am that night was the equivalent of finding a four leaf clover in a field in the County Cork. The harder I searched for a quiet spot, the greater the urge to urinate a bladder full of beer. I began to walk faster and I found myself lowering my personal standard for privacy. At this point, a doorway would do.

But the people kept coming and going and I suddenly found myself at the point of no return. I stopped walking and wheeled around to face the window of a consignment furniture store and attempted to unbutton my fly (I wore 501s at the time). As fast as my drunken fingers were that night, the loss of control to hold in my piss was that much faster. The guy that didn’t want to be seen urinating in public was now pissing in his pants. It felt so good to finally be pissing, it took me a few seconds to rouse myself from the warm (eww) reverie I was experiencing and unbutton my pants and properly water the cement at the base of the window of the used wooden table and chair shop. To my horror, I heard several people call out to me to stop pissing in public.

When I finally finished emptying my beer-swollen bladder, I took a look at myself in the reflection of the shop window. From my now slightly less buzzed vantage point, it appeared to me that the soaked-in urine on my pants created the illusion that I was wearing chaps. Not the kind of chaps made from leather and fringe, mind you, these special chaps were crafted from the pee of me; piss chaps, if you will.

A feeling of self-consciousness suddenly overcame me because I knew that I had to brave the streaming rivers of inebriated humanity in order to find the friends I left back at the all-night corner shop. I acted quickly and removed the long-sleeved shirt I was wearing over a t-shirt and tied it backwards around my waist. I then slowly slogged my way through the streets of the city, retracing my steps back to the place where I last saw Matt and Steamy.

Unfortunately, after fifteen minutes of fruitless searching, I gave up looking for them. Exhausted from the spent adrenaline rush, I stopped right where I was and sat down on the curb next to a woman pushing a cart. It took me a moment to realize that I’d seen this woman earlier in the day. It was the statue of Molly Malone that we’d seen on our bus tour of Dublin that afternoon.

Before I had a chance to ponder exactly what she was statue-worthy for, I heard my name being called from the street. Steamy and Matt had found me. I explained to them how I ended up wearing piss chaps and we began to devise a way back to our b and b. We tried to hire a cab but they had a strict twenty pound soiling charge posted in the rear seat of the vehicle. The driver sped off when I asked him if we got a discount if I was already soiled before I entered the cab. In the end, we decided to walk the two miles back home, chafing be damned.

As I compare these two seemingly embarrassing incidents of my recent adult past, I realize that there is no reason to be ashamed. In reflection, I think back to something I learned my freshman year in college as a pledge of the Sigma Chi fraternity. Simply stated, piss happens, and more importantly, piss washes off. I personally take those statements to mean that no matter what goes wrong in life, pick yourself up from the ground, dust yourself off, and get back in the game. In my specific case, it meant living with and liking the nickname Chapman after I told all my friends about my public soiling in Dublin. It meant graciously accepting Molly Malone postcards from friends that have visited Ireland. It also meant having no qualms about publicly disclosing both deeply personal episodes in such a public forum as a blog.

At this stage in my life, I have no secrets to hide. I have no situations to be ashamed of nor do I have any reason to be scared of judgment. I love the life I am living, I’m proud of the life I have lived, and I am privileged to continue to live my life in both the near and far future, warts and all. As I sign off and press the save and publish buttons on this massively long missive, I would like to quote the Grateful Dead song He’s Gone and know that the words of Robert Hunter are apropos to this and many instances like it: “Nothing left to do but smile, smile, smile.”

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