Don't Poo on the Houseboat

By Kevin Gibson
July 6, 2009

Holiday weekends were made for revelry. And valuable lessons. I was fortunate enough to be invited to Patoka Lake to join some friends and acquaintances on a houseboat and, looking to put some of my often unsavory reality behind me, I skipped town on Friday, July 3.

I couldn’t have been happier to find a group of friendly people awaiting me, along with plenty of sun, food, adult beverages and lake water. Lots of lake water.

My friend Shannon, when she first met me at the dock, noted that when the guys leave the boat and come down to the dock to make an “ice run,” that really meant they were going to the public restroom to make poo. That was the one recurring rule I kept hearing: Don’t make poo on the houseboat. When you’ve got 25 or so people sharing a space that confined, making poo is inconsiderate. Fair enough. I pledged to save my poo for a later time.

Thirty-seven beers (I didn’t count, but that’s what it felt like), countless bites of dip and chips, one cheeseburger, one hot dog, two helpings of Shannon’s chicken dish and god knows what else I ingested that day later, and I had to poo. Badly. But no one was going to the dock at midnight. So I decided to hold it. Not a big deal, right?

The next day, though, I found I was not alone in my desire to poo. So much so that apparently a couple of people couldn’t maintain. It was a miracle that I did. But by the time my friends Brad, Amanda and I made our way to the dock that next morning, I had figured out that holding such things inside your body is not a healthy thing to do. When you think about it, well, your body probably wants it OUT of there for a good reason.

I proceeded to be sick all day, and I think now it was because I avoided making poo on the houseboat. And I did so only to have someone else break the code. The owner of the boat, a wonderfully friendly guy who goes by the nickname Monkey Boy (I am not making this up), noted the next afternoon that, “If you gotta go, you gotta go. I’d rather someone (poo) on the houseboat than (poo) in their pants.”

Or hold a toxic substance in their body for so long that it makes them sick. OK, duly noted. Thank you, Monkey Boy.

Another classic occurrence whenever I go on excursions like this with my friends is that someone always seems to get hurt. My friend Rob is especially famous for taking tumbles, even though I feel I’m far more clumsy than he is. I’m not sure what it is, but that poor guy gets bloody all the time when we’re having fun in situations like that. Now, thinking back to the time in Nashville when he bashed his elbow and bled for hours, it could have been because he AND our friend Jeremy were trying to take piggy-back rides on Brad’s back. At the same time.

Maybe this is why I’m usually not the one to get hurt. I enjoy being a spectator of such things, but I rarely participate.

Well, when I first got to the boat, I decided to swim out to the floating trampoline, like an idiot. Hey, I just wanted to get wet. But I slipped on the side of the boat and went awkwardly into the drink, narrowly missing busting my head open. Hey, I was SOBER at this point. Like I said, I’m just clumsy.

But despite walking around on slippery floors all night and much of the next day, I never slipped again. Neither did Rob. NO ONE did – it was amazing, especially considering the amount of alcohol that was consumed. We could have blown up a small town with the juice we put into us.

Unfortunately, the rain came on Saturday, and since I was still sick as a dog from the overindulging and not pooing, I decided to hit the road. I bade my farewells to everyone, including the woman I slept next to but didn’t officially meet until the next day. It’s true – I was lounging on the roof of the houseboat after most everyone had gone to bed, watching some not-so-bright strangers try to pitch a tent, when Monkey Boy came up from below decks (I always wanted to type that phrase: "Monkey Boy came up from below decks") and said, “I have room in a bed for ONE person!”, I leapt at the chance to sleep in an actual bed, so he led me downstairs and pointed me to a fold-out with two sleeping women and a tiny space on one edge.

I thanked him, and he warned me that the woman I’d be sleeping next to was a snuggler. He was right. I had no idea who she was, but I didn’t care. But she had really soft hands, so that was good.

Anyway, I walked past her the next afternoon not long before I left, and she said, “Are you the guy I slept with last night?”

I said, “Apparently.”

“Nice to meet you,” she said. Likewise, I’m sure.

I sat down next to Rob and told him I just met the person I slept with the previous night. He said, “What? What happened? Who did you sleep with?”

Nothing to see here. Just a lot of sleeping and no pooing.

Well, when it was time to leave, Jeremy was nice enough to take me back to the dock in the little runabout boat attached to the houseboat convoy in the cove where we were anchored, so I loaded my cooler and my bag up and secured them. When we got back to the dock, he secured the front of the boat, and I put my stuff on the dock.

He said, “Go ahead, I got it.”

So I stepped up ever so gently … and my weight shifted the boat just enough that my right foot slipped. And into the drink I went – but not all the way. I had my cell phone in my pocket, along with my wallet and keys, and I was NOT going to lose them. So I slammed into the dock and held on for dear life with my right arm, while pulling the boat toward me with my left arm and leg. Slowly I raised myself up and crawled onto the dock, right leg dripping wet and my shoe sloshing comically. I had gone in to within about an inch of my cell phone. Saved.

Jeremy made sure I was OK – and then he laughed. Hysterically. He literally had to kneel down at one point. He laughed like I’ve seen few people laugh in my life; at that moment, he was a maniacal clown on a bender with a personality disorder. And I have no doubt that as soon as he returned to the houseboat, he told everyone what he had just seen. As I walked away, I heard him still laughing. “I hate you,” I assured him. Bastard.

It wasn’t until the next morning that I noticed the bruise. Walked into the bathroom, looked into the mirror and BAM. There it was. It was … well, absolutely horrifying to behold. And yet, somehow, it was a work of art. (See a photo of it here … but view at your own risk.)

A friend who saw it the next day said I should get a tattoo artist to replicate it for me permanently.

“I may not have to,” I replied.

I think the moral to the story is that you might as well just poo. And always introduce yourself before you crawl into bed with someone.

Oh, and the other moral is don’t laugh at Rob the next time he falls down -- bad karma always comes back to haunt you. Jeremy will find out. Bastard.

E-mail me. And please pass the toilet paper.