The "Thousand Meter Shitter"
Once upon a time, I was a young army lieutenant attached to an artillery battalion. We often found ourselves out in the woods for weeks performing endless training exercises with the cannons. (Our motto: shoot, move, communicate!) We moved around a lot! One or our favorite firing points was in a huge, sprawling meadow bordered by pine trees. For reasons, which I've never been able to figure out, the army, in its infinite wisdom, installed a massive cinder-block latrine in the middle of the meadow. It must have been 50 feet long and could accommodated 30-40 troops at a time....all this out in the middle of nowhere.

We typically installed the cannons against the tree line and would fire over this latrine to the impact area miles away. Many times during the day, a 'cease fire' would be called and all eyes would turn to see some lonely soldier, toilet paper in hand, making the long, hard trip across the distance to the latrine, usually with clenched buttocks. In short time, the latrine affectionately came to be known as the "thousand meter shitter".

At dusk one evening it was my turn to make the trek. The guns went silent and off I went, weapon, rucksack, and t-paper in hand. The 'facilities' consisted of 4 platforms covered with plywood out of which jagged holes had been cut with a saw. The holes were just smaller than your ass (so you wouldn't fall through) and positioned so that if every hole were occupied, the soldiers would literally be sitting "cheek-to-cheek". And did I mention the smell? Bad. Really fucking bad.

Anyway, no sooner had I 'dropped trou' when I heard the door slam and saw boots rounding the corner. Up stepped this grizzly, old noncom. He must have been about 60 years old. Out of all the open holes in the latrine to select from, where does he choose to park his ass? Right next to mine, of course. He dropped his fatigues to the floor and the next thing I know his hoary, gnarly, hairy arse is rubbing up against my thigh.

Being young and shy, I immediately forgot all about taking a dump. In fact, you wouldn't have been able to insert a sewing needle through my sphincter.

"How you doin' LT?", he grumbled. He then proceeded to light a smoke and get down to business. Let me tell you, I feel uncomfortable having a conversation while I'm shitting even if the other party is on the other side of a locked bathroom door. It was excruciating! And he wouldn't shut up, either. I didn't want to be rude, so I just kept my mouth shut and nodded a lot hoping he'd finish and toddle off.

Suddenly, in the middle of a sentence, his faced screwed up and turned red. He lifted a cheek, and I could sense he was about to punch out some ungodly, fetid turd. Then, his face relaxed. But, he held up his hand as if to say "shush...wait". About 5 seconds later we both heard the huge 'KER-SPLASH' of that monster hitting the viscous goo some 50 feet below. A big smile lit up his face. That was it for me. I hoisted my battle skivvies and without another word shot out of that stank hole and sprinted back to the battery area.

I guess I'm a big homo. I turned in my papers and resigned my commission 2 months later.
(blindspot, Thu 6 May 2004, 18:32, Reply)