I Broke My Arm in a Bathroom Brawl and All I Got Was Jack Shit

I don’t like taking a shit in public. Don’t like it, never liked it. My father used to say things like, “Everybody shits, son. Don’t worry about it.” Which is about as useful as telling an umbrella with holes in it to stop the rain. It’s a deep-rooted flaw of mine, I know. But the fact of the matter is that I’d rather clench my cheeks in a Walmart Supercenter than to drop a turd while everyone listens. That’s my cross to bear.

I don’t enjoy telling you this—it’s goddamn embarrassing. But it’s an essential part of this story, so there you have it. 

Anyway, I’m in Mitch’s Tavern, sitting at the bar with a bottle of Budweiser that ain’t sweating half as bad as I am, trying not to let on to anyone that I’m holding in what is likely the biggest dookie of my life. My best friend, Elmer, was nursing a whiskey beside me and hitting on any woman who walked in with even half a tit. Every now and again, I swear I caught him glancing at some of the chunkier fellas, too. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, I’m just emphasizing that my pal Elmer appreciated a good booby. 

But don’t let me get sidetracked or else we’ll be here all night.

So Elmer was there drinking whiskey despite him not even liking whiskey all that much. He was a vodka cranberry sort of guy, but he wouldn’t be caught dead drinking those in a public, social setting. Every time we came around, he ordered a whiskey, neat, and he swore up and down that ladies loved a bourbon man although I had never seen him score so much as a phone number or a handshake.

Elmer and I had been friends for a long time, since we were a couple of dumb-ass kids climbing trees and playing BB tag. We were more like brothers than friends, and since we’d been so close for so long, he could tell from my quietness, from the sweat dripping down my forehead, and from the way I was white-knuckling my bottle of beer without taking a sip of it that I was on the verge of shitting my britches.

Now, Elmer didn’t have much shyness about crapping in public, or anything else really, save for drinking vodka cranberries in a place where people could see him doing it. Still, he knew better than to pressure me into going. Instead, he leaned into my ear and offered for us to leave the bar early.

“These girls are playing hard to get anyway,” he said.

“They’re always hard for you to get,” I said, shifting in my chair and silently getting right with God. I’m not so sure he was listening.

“Yeah, well,” Elmer sipped from his glass and scrunched his face like he’d just bitten into the sourest grape on the goddamn vine. “Least I can go back there and take a shit if need be. I might go sit on the commode just to spite you.”

I decided not to leave the bar lest Elmer rewrite the evening’s narrative while driving me home. Sitting there at the bar, needing to swap the DD batteries in his tit radar, he was striking out hard and he knew it better than anyone. But on the way to my house, he’d be telling a different story. There’d be a blonde in a low-cut V-neck that was laughing at his every joke and licking her lips every time he looked her way. He might’ve found The One if not for me making him leave. I couldn’t bring myself to stand in the way of true love so I downed my liquid courage, slapped Elmer on the shoulder so he’d know what I was doing and could later commend my bravery on the matter, and I shuffled off to the bathroom with my butt-cheeks tight as ever.

The bathrooms were located in the corner furthest from the bar and booth tables, which, to me, seemed as correct a place as any for them to be. This way, you only had to smell piss and shit and puke if you were putting a quarter in the jukebox or using the bathroom yourself. I thought that was a fair enough trade.

Positioned just far enough from the bathroom to keep your nose hairs from being singed off by the scent of human waste and an overabundance of bleach, there was a billiards table that five or six guys were always crowded around, no matter the day and no matter the time. On this particular evening, the group was made up of redneck assholes with bald heads and tattoos that would’ve been more subtle had they read “Kick me, I’m a Nazi.” They were laughing and cussing and spilling cheap beer on the dirty green felt.

One of them was a big fucker. He had to have been six-four or six-five and he was built like a goddamn ocean liner. The veins in his neck were so thick, they looked more like snakes slithering beneath his skin, migrating toward his brain. He was wearing a short-sleeve camouflage shirt and camouflage pants to match it. I wondered if he was going hunting after the game of pool was finished, or if he was planning to sneak up on a deer and stick it with his pecker. You never can tell with guys like that.

He was lining up his shot when I rushed by, the gopher popping its head out of the hole if you catch my drift. His arm drew back and hit me in my shoulder, knocking me off balance hard enough to give that turd some breathing room. The cue ball went wide to the left and damn near jumped off the table. I knew he hadn’t hit anything even before he opened his mouth, but that didn’t stop him from telling me about it.

In his big, bad voice that sounded like a guard dog with its spiky collar a notch too tight, he said, “Would you watch where the fuck you’re going, cockstain?”

“Sorry,” I said, checking to make sure no shit was running down the leg of my pants. “All that camo, I didn’t see you standing there.”

“You being fuckin’ smart with me?” he pointed his pool stick in my direction. I decided that my head would make for an easier target than the cue ball had been, so I played it cool.

“Nah, man. I’m just trying to use the bathroom. Unless y’all want to be stepping in mud, I better hop to it.”

I didn’t wait around for a response or the snapping of a pool stick across my skull, I just put my head down and hustled into the bathroom. It was empty, which I was grateful for, but between the stench of bleach-soaked death and the way my shoes clung to the floor with every step and made a sound like two strips of Velcro being pulled apart, I was finding it hard to be positive about my current situation.

There were three urinals lined against the wall and a single stall that was about the size of a box of saltine crackers tucked in the corner. I reckon only one in four people needs to take a shit at any given time. The toilet was grimy and yellow, and the plastic seat was cracked in such a way that it was sure to scrape the fuzz off the left side of your ass if you weren’t careful. There were none of those disposable paper toilet seat covers to put down but I was all out of options and eager to get this experience over with, so I lowered my ass onto the seat and nearly shed a tear about it.

My cellphone was long-deceased so I was forced to use the graffiti on the bathroom stall as reading material. I might as well have had an issue of Penthouse in my lap. The wall was littered with all manner of sleaze about women who would suck your dick if you bought them enough drinks, those of them who were okay with it if you wanted to poke their rear end, and there were even pictures of lopsided breasts drawn in black marker. I made a mental note to keep Elmer out of there or else the floor would get stickier. It was disgusting and it somehow made me feel sicker than the yellow toilet seat, though admittedly not by much.

I tore my eyes away from the sleazy stall and focused on the task at hand. I’ll spare you the details, but I was already feeling better and was starting to look forward to ordering another beer and enjoying the rest of the evening. Seeing as how I’m only a marginally better person than the guys who’d been covering the bathroom stall in misogynistic filth, I was thinking maybe I’d even put Elmer’s bourbon theory to the test.

I did what I had to do and thought that the worst of this mess was behind me, that I’d conquered the proverbial dragon, but boy was I wrong. About the time that I finished wiping—the jagged crack in the seat made that especially pleasant, let me tell you—and was about to flush the toilet, the universe corrected my positive attitude quick, fast, and in a hurry.

The bathroom door swung open, the hinges begging to be put out of their misery, and that sound was followed by heavy footsteps that were at odds with the piss-coated floor. I could tell from the shiny bald head steadily rising above the stall like the moon over a mountaintop that it was the big fella who’d wanted to whoop my ass from one end of Mitch’s Tavern to the other, and there I was trapped in the stall with him right on the other side of it. This was it. I’d finally opened my mouth to the wrong person and I was about to pay the everlasting price for it.

I held my breath and waited for him to kick the stall open and commence to shoving my head in my own shit, maybe even twist me up into a little knot and flush me like the turd that I was. I’d been in a few fights throughout my life, but I can’t lie and say that I’d won any of them. That limited experience didn’t bode well for me since this fucker was large enough to yank my arms off my body and swing them at my cranium like a messed-up game of tee-ball. To tell it to you straight, I didn’t like my chances.

I didn’t do so much as twitch until I heard the piss hitting the urinal. I’d never been so grossed out and relieved at the same time. Worse than that, he was clearing his throat and spitting loogies while he whizzed, and every time he spat, his stream of dark, nearly-brown urine dribbled onto the floor and sat there like a mud puddle waiting for a bird. I thought, “This here is the most disgusting man on the goddamn planet,” and right on cue, he cut a fart so loud that my tinnitus started acting up. It stank, too. There I was squatting over top of my own shit and it didn’t smell half as bad as that fart.

“Jesus Christ,” the words escaped my lips like thieves busting out of the clink. It was as if the smell of that fart had moved through me like the spirit of the Lord and caused me to start speaking in tongues. There was no doubt about it now. I was fixing to be a dead man. Maybe this was God’s way of calling me home.

I could tell by the way that his bald head cocked in my direction that he’d heard me. There was no more use in remaining quiet and still. I wiped my ass as well as one can hope to do under such extreme duress, then I made sure to flush the toilet so that my face wouldn’t end up on the inside of a turd. He finished pissing and shook a few more drops of that tobacco-spit urine on the floor, then he hocked one more loogie for good measure and poked his head over the stall to get a look at the man he was about to kill.

I must have appeared to him like a frightened possum in the corner of the bathroom stall, but something washed over me in that moment. Be it pride or sheer idiocy, the thought of cowering to a butt-ugly skinhead wearing head-to-toe camouflage indoors suddenly made me more nauseous than that brown pond of piss. I knew this man was going to kill me and hang my taxidermied head on his living room wall, but I damn sure wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of letting him walk all over me. He was going to have to earn it.

In one quick motion, I cupped my hands and submerged them in the grimy toilet and flung water into his face. I wished I hadn’t flushed. The big bastard started blinking rapidly and stumbling backwards, shouting the whole time, “You got that shit water in my fuckin’ eye! You’re dead!”

I knew that if he kept hollering like that, it was only a matter of time before his fellow Kluxers would rush into the bathroom and gang up on me, so I flung open the stall door and smashed my elbow into his teeth to shut him up. It felt more like striking a boulder, which is pretty much what his head reminded me of. A strike that hard was sure to draw blood, but if he felt it all, he didn’t let on. Instead, he snarled like the vicious guard dog that he was and grabbed me by the wrist, his hands swallowing mine whole. He twisted my arm behind my back like he wanted me to cry uncle and he kept on twisting until my arm snapped like a common twig. It was my turn to scream.

He kept hold of my arm and drove me forward until my mouth was pressed up against the wall and I could taste how goddamn sour it was. He was still shouting about the toilet water in his eye, and thinking back on it now, I’m surprised by that. This here was a guy who looked like he washed his face in the commode every morning before work, who pissed on the floor and spat and ripped ass unlike anything I’d ever seen, and he was all worked up about a tiny splash of toilet juice. It wasn’t in line with his character.

Flames shot through my arm and up my neck. I knew that my arm was broken and useless, but I had to try to do something or else I was dead meat. Not really thinking it through, I stomped on his foot with as much force as I could muster, but it was less than effective because of the boots he was wearing. He had a laugh about that—the king of the bar room toying with his food. He didn’t laugh nearly as hard when I brought my other elbow around and slammed it into his ear. It was a good shot and it stunned him enough for me to get my broken arm loose. Before I could celebrate, though, he was coming at me again, grabbing me by the collar of my shirt and trying to wrap me in a headlock. I stomped on him again, this time coming down hard on the side of his ankle. I heard the familiar crunch of a broken bone as his ankle folded over. The guard dog yelped and went down to one knee.

On account of all the martial arts movies I’ve seen, and maybe a little too because of the pain-fueled adrenaline I was experiencing, I thought now was as good a time as ever to try one of those spinning roundhouse kicks that Bruce Lee or Jean-Claude Van Damme might do if they were in a similar situation. One of those to the side of the head would certainly be enough to lay him out, no matter how fucking big he was. The only problem with that logic was that I’d never once in my life attempted a spinning roundhouse kick, so not only did I miss his mountainous dome entirely, I tumbled over and cracked my own against the bathroom sink.

I laid there embarrassed, questioning not only that decision but every single one of them that had led me to this moment in my life. I’d made a metric shit-ton of mistakes during my time on this floating rock, but going against my code and using a public bathroom ranked up there with the worst of them. If I could’ve changed one single thing about my past, I’d have gone on home with Elmer when he’d offered me an out and stayed far away from this horrible place where I was surely going to die. I only felt worse being there on the floor, the filthy tiles sticking to my clothes like couch lint on a lost piece of hard candy. If Big-Head made it to his feet before me, I wasn’t even sure I’d be able to stand up and defend myself. The bathroom had me and it wasn’t letting go.

The ceiling light flickered above me and from that light an angel began its descent from Heaven to call me a dumbass and express God’s disappointment in me.

“You broke my fuckin’ ankle,” the angel grunted, pulling me up by the collar so that it could look me in the eye before smiting me.

“I’m sorry, Angel,” I said. “I didn’t mean nothing by it.”

Despite The Bible’s long-winded thoughts on forgiveness, the hideous angel punched me in the nose so hard, my schnoz scratched an itch in the back of my brain. It hit me again and I tasted blood on my lips. I vowed right then and there to never again attend church, not even for a funeral, even if it was my own. I’d wait outside in the casket, arms crossed in defiance of these hypocrites.

I closed my eyes and decided that whatever was going to happen was going to happen. I refused to watch one more second of this ugly bastard beating the hell out of me. I was prepared for another blow to the face, for the sickening squelch of a fist busting through my skull like a cantaloupe, but when the thwap! finally came and I crashed to the floor, I hadn’t felt a thing. I wondered if that was what death felt like, if it was painless after all. I pictured myself there, a corpse stuck to the bathroom floor for all of eternity, drunk peckerwoods standing on my belly to wash their hands in the sink—assuming they washed their hands in the first place.

“Hey,” a voice called through the dark veil. “You’re not dead, are you?”

I opened my eyes and saw Elmer standing over top of the angel. He was holding a cue ball with an artistic splash of red on it. The angel was face-down, its tongue hanging out of its mouth, unrolled across the filthy floor like a red carpet on a skin-flick’s opening night. It growled at us like a tiger that was about to chew our asses up, only its eyelids were shut. I realized it wasn’t growling at all; it was snoring. Elmer had knocked the thing out cold.

“Jesus,” Elmer said, helping me to my feet. “What in the great blue fuck happened here?”

“Shh,” I said. “The angel is sleeping.”

“The angel? Christ, how hard did he hit you?”

Somewhere in the depths of my hazy memory, I recalled my failed roundhouse kick.

“Pretty hard,” I said. “Broke my arm, too.”

“Shit,” Elmer said. “We better get you to the hospital.”

“He’s got friends out there,” I warned.

“Ain’t nobody out there but Mitch and a couple of babes who walked in right before I came to check on you. His friends left a little while ago, I heard this fella say he’d catch up with them later. I reckon he had to catch up on some sleep first.”

“Reckon so,” I said, hooking my good arm around Elmer’s neck and walking out of there. If there’s one thing I still know for certain in this life, it’s that Elmer will be there to catch me when I fall. Or, at the very least, scrape me off of a piss-stained bathroom floor after I’ve already hit the ground.

“Elmer,” I said, “You want to grab a drink before we go to the hospital? I can tell those women how you knocked this big fucker out to save your best friend’s life. Hell, we can even bring them back here to show them the proof.”

“You think they’d go for that?” he asked.

“Worth a shot,” I said.

He thought it over.

“Hell, that arm’s already broken anyway. Let’s go.”