On Sunday, I spent most of the day laying around in bed, recovering.  Then my buddy Jeremy asked me to join him for dinner at our favorite Mexican place, Festival Mexicano in the Lower East Side.  Ever hungry because of my weight problem, I agreed to join him.

I’ve written before about Festival Mexicano.  It is one of those delightful places that sacrifices things like following health code guidelines and hiring exterminators for the sake of providing excellent and authentic Mexican food at reasonable prices.  Read: eat at your own risk.

And though whenever I eat there I need to be taken home in one of those special cabs that have a toilet in them, I had never experienced much greater gastrointestinal distress than immediately having to poop as soon as I put my fork down.  But as someone who has a lifetime of experience with an excitable colon, this does not phase me much and this mild discomfort is worth it for their delicious food.

Jeremy and I started with our standard appetizers, the bean quesadilla and the beef (picadillo) nachos.  However when the order arrived, the waitress dropped off the bean quesadilla and the bean nachos.  I hate sending back food at restaurants (dealbreaker for me, ladies: be a bitch to waitstaff and/or send back food), but I love those beef nachos – and we already had the bean quesadilla!  Since whenever Jeremy and I go on our little "dates" he invariably plays the role of woman/bottom, it was up to me to do something about this mistake.  I very nicely called our Mexican waitress over to our table the next time she passed and very nicely explained that we ordered the beef nachos, not the bean nachos.

For whatever reason, she did not take this well.  She looked at her pad, looked at the nachos, then looked at me.  We had a mini (four seconds?) staring contest before she looked back at the nachos and angrily picked them up and walked back into the kitchen.   

She never said anything during our little stand-off - probably because of the language barrier – but she sure was shooting me daggers; little, pointy Mexican daggers that were probably lifted off the back of a truck.  I didn’t know what I did to deserve this; I was totally nice about the whole thing and apologized profusely, even though she was the one who made the mistake.  Maybe she was having a bad day.  Maybe she thought I was being sarcastic.  Maybe she was upset about the oppression in her home country of Mexico (or some other Mexico-type country).  Whatever.  I just wanted my fucking beef nachos.    

My fucking beef nachos were shortly plopped onto our table.  You could tell by looking at them they the beef had been inserted under the layer of cheese, rather than a new order of nachos created. (The nachos at Festival look kinda like these, and it was plainly clear that the cheese on each individual chip was lifted and the beef inserted underneath.)  Understandable, I suppose, since I don’t like to waste food, but this seriously affected the quality of the nachos, which sucked.  Still, that did not stop Jeremy and I from devouring them before moving on to our chicken burritos.

Our plan after dinner was to go to Circuit City in Union Square so that I could make one my Rash Hungover Purchases: a 42" inch plasma television.  Actually, this purchase was somewhat thought out, since I had researched TVs and had been thinking about buying a plasma for some time.  However, I could not pull the trigger until I was hungover enough to believe I was a millionaire.

(Of all the traits I could have inherited from my father – cigarette-eating, tattoo-getting, punching people in the jaw when they’re not looking, etc – I got his carefree attitude towards money.  Growing up, my dad’s motto was, "What good is money if you can’t spend it."  Maybe this is why we were on food stamps.  Whoops.)

After we finished the meal, I felt that old familiar urge - Festival’s Revenge, we shall call it – and had to poop.  But I rode out the storm; I stood up, walked around, and felt better.  I could have pooed in the bathroom at the restaurant, but not even I could make that happen.  The only place grosser than the restaurant that serves you food that gives you the shits is the bathroom in the the restaurant that serves you food that gives you the shits.

Feeling better, Jeremy and I hailed a cab and started off toward Union Square.  In the cab…things fell apart.

My face became flushed and I could feel beads of sweat developing on my forehead.  My stomach churned, groaned, tightened.  I sat nearly doubled over and grew short of breath.  I needed to find a bathroom immediately.  This was no normal Festival’s Revenge.  The poo cometh. 

As Jeremy cringed in horror and sat as far away from me in the cab as possible, I redirected the cabbie from the Circuit City on the south side of Union Square to the Barnes & Noble on the north side.  I know that Barnes & Noble and its bathroom very well.  It would more than suffice.

I threw money at the cabbie and told Jeremy I’d call him when I was done and raced up the escalator.  I thought the bathroom was on the second floor but when I reached it, saw that it was now women’s only and men’s room was now on the third floor.  Up the escalator, stomach and buttocks clenched, I went.

When I closed the door to the bathroom stall, my pants barely hit my ankles before the first blast came.  "Blast" is the most appropriate word that comes to mind; it was like shooting a pump action shotgun out of my heinie.  It was sharp, sudden; had I not been in so much pain, I might have applauded its sheer force.  Before I could properly appreciate the power of my bowel movement, the second blast came.  I can say with certainly that this blast lifted me off the toilet seat – perhaps only two or three inches, but my body was definitely airborne.  Crashing back down on the toilet seat, the third blast came, though it was not strong enough to be called a blast in itself.  Rather, this was the remaining refuse jarred loose from my colon, seeping out of my heinie like water out of a drainage pipe.  I heard someone using a urinal say, "Wow."  Yeah.  Pretty much. 

It was over in seconds, but it felt like much longer.  I sat on the toilet seat, head lolling to the side, breathing heavily, sweat dripping from my forehead down my face, trying to get control of myself.  I suddenly had a surge of great respect for my ancestors.  I cried a little.             

Once I regained my strength, post-poo I felt great.  I rejoined Jeremy on the first floor of the book store, invigorated.  We left the store and walked across the square to the Circuit City to pick up my new TV.

But it was not meant to be.  We arrived at the store at 8:04pm.  It had closed at 8pm.  My poo cost me the opportunity to get my dream TV.  Not your ordinary Festival’s Revenge.

Little did I know that this was just the beginning.  I went to bed at midnight but woke up only a few hours later to experience one of those unique "throwing up while shitting" scenarios known as the gargoyle.  Repeat.  Repeat.  I actually called in sick on Monday because I didn’t think it would be a wise move to sit at my desk with my ass on a trash can.  The 24 hours after that meal at Festival was 24 of the most trying and physically difficult hours of my life. 

Now, I don’t like to throw around the word "assassination attempt" freely, but I believe an attempt on my life was made by the staff of Festival Mexicano. 

[And not just my life - Jeremy also called in sick on Monday, suffering from similar ailments (leading many of our friends to suggest we spent the day fooling around, which, certainly, would have been nice, but not when I was feeling so poopy).]  

Needless to say, this will seriously affect my relationship with Festival Mexicano.  I love that place (still can’t use past tense) and it will be very difficult for me to not eat there.  But, difficult as it may be, I have to take a stand.  I was almost murdered, for Christ’s sake!  And yes, "death by nacho beef" is probably the way I want to go, but I have at least two good years left in me.  That Festival Mexicano tried to rob me of those two remaining good years, well, that really gets my goat (which, incidentally, I think they also serve at Festival).  So that’s it – no more Festival Mexicano.  It just has to be that way.

(At least for the next two weeks.  C’mon – everyone deserves a second chance.)