Someday, if I haven’t already, I’ll tell you the story of my kilometer-long diarrhea track off the back of a slow-moving onion truck on the Panamerican highway in Peru, 1971.
What the hell, since I’m sitting on the bog right now, what better time tell it?
The day before, my future father-in-law had told me indirectly through his daughter that if I didn’t leave town that very day, he’d have me put in jail. So I took a taxi with her to the outskirts of Arequipa where a crossroads gives you choices to go north along the coast to Lima (1050km), south to the Chilean border and west to the port of Ilo. With a tearful farewell she left me there. Presently a battered 5-ton Ford truck with a wooden carriage box on its chassis, typical of those parts, ground its gears in a down-shift to negotiate the turn toward Lima.
I stuck out my thumb. The truck lurched to a halt. Through the passenger side window the driver gestured that I should climb into the box. I stood on one of the double back tires to reach the lip of the box, flung my pack unseen inside and pulled myself up and over into … a sea of purple onions! This is the principle agricultural product of Arequipa, followed by garlic.
The onions were loose and piled mainly toward the front of the box. A young man, scruffy like me, with long black hair and a sparse beard, sat on his pack by the wall opposite. Greeting each other warmly, we saw immediately that our weak command of each other’s language would limit our conversation. We established our nationalities: he was Colombian. I understood that he estimated that we would be on the road to Lima for three days. And nights, as it turned out. The calculation I just did now seems about right: 15 kph, average speed.
Except for oases where rivers come down to the sea, the whole way is a searing coastal desert in two colours: yellow-grey sand and blue sky, with a glimpse of blue ocean now and then. We stopped several times a day to eat in woven-bamboo shacks; the only other diversions were the scenery, which soon became been-there-done-that, reading in small doses limited by the glare and rough road, an episode in which we took some acid I had, and the event which prompts this account.
My bum is numb and my legs are asleep so I’m moving to my desk.
I must have taken on some hostile bacteria in one of the bamboo shacks, because in the middle of day two I began to groan with excruciating stomach pains as large volumes of gas tried to push their way though my intestines. Presently, when I felt serious pressure on my anal sphincter, I put thought into Next Steps. The driver had made clear that unscheduled stops were out of the question; in our small box world there was nowhere to crap or crap into; and 15kph is too fast to jump off a vehicle while still maintaining sphincter control. The only remaining alternative to living in jeans full of shit for the next day or so was to open the back of the truck box, hang my ass out and let it go onto the highway.
The back of the box was actually two large, heavy doors that swung outwards, each secured by a pin into the floor and a rope that bound the tops of the doors together. Fortunately these could be manipulated from the inside so I made short and frantic work of getting the doors open. They yawned wide and swinging, with the highway pavement flowing away beneath them and onions bouncing off into the distance. I used the rope to tie the doors just partially open and dropping my jeans, took up a stance on the centerline of the truck, my back supported by the doors and my ass poised over the gap and the road. Un-alerted to my intentions, the Colombian watched with open-jawed fascination. I was pleased that the procession of impatient vehicles that usually followed us had passed.
We’ve all had the shits so I’ll spare you the violence of the elimination, the exquisite relief I felt, the stink, the trembling in the legs, the glistening receding pavement and the minor spatter on my calves and jeans. The story leaves the mundane when my hasty lashing of the doors abruptly gave way and I fell backwards toward the roadway. Only by great good fortune was I able to grasp a bar on the inside of one of the doors one-handed as it swung far out over the pavement. I hung there briefly, jeans about my ankles, the asphalt a blur inches beneath them. The Colombian leapt to my aid, pulling the door inwards so that I could regain the safety of the box.
I’m not sure that all of the last paragraph is true. It happened a long time ago. The story may have embellished itself spontaneously to reflect my admiration for Indiana Jones.