Piss Up a Rope

The following is a "short short" (less than 1000 words) I wrote for my Fiction Writing 2 class. Enjoy.

My alarm went off at seven-thirty a.m., like any other work day. I hadn’t even been able to close my eyes once during the night, which I guess wasn’t surprising considering that I hadn’t peed in seventy-six hours. Holding it in was just one of those things for me, I guess. A lark. Now I’m sure you want to say to me, “God damn, Jack, how did you deal with the pain?”
And my reply?
“Well, first off, it hurts even more than you think it does. It feels like King Kong is playing pattycake with your balls. But pain is part of life, man. Hell, I’d say it is life. Real, physical pain is the strongest feeling you’ll ever have. Sometimes you just have to sit back and say, ‘Man, this is fucking intense.’”

The previous evening was nothing if not intense. I cried, I moaned, I whimpered. I didn’t once let a drop spill into my underwear. I’m not a masochist, it wasn’t a sexual thing, I just got a kick out of my own audacity. But as soon as my iHome began playing “As Long As You Love Me” that fateful morning, I knew I’d gone too far.

I first attempted to swing my legs out of bed and walk to the toilet. I crumpled to the ground, unable to concentrate my muscles on standing. The metaphor I find most apt to describe my pain is the image of my kidneys surrounded on either side by two magnets, magnets compelled together by God. Yet even with the earth’s natural forces trying with all their might to compress my bladder system into nothingness, my body held out. I almost wished that it wouldn’t. I hoped for a sudden explosion, some cataclysmic lower-body event that would signal the end of my pain. Face down on the floor, I managed to unbutton my pants and take out my penis. I braced myself for the feeling of sweet warmth on my leg. But nothing came out. It was as if my urine, having crouched at the end of my penis for so long, waiting for that reassuring cold flush, had turned away with a resigned sigh and retreated back to its smoky lair. A flash of understanding gripped me and I knew I would only be able to relieve myself in front of a toilet. Oh, mental blocks, how you torment me!

Had I been in a mental state more active than ‘semi-conscious’, I would have regretted ever letting my mother convince me to put an extra addition on my house. She said it would clear up the main living space for guests while keeping my “private areas” secluded. (She had of course, referred to my living quarters as “private areas” ever since she walked in on fourteen-year-old me simulating anal sex with a blow-up Antonio Banderas doll. What can I say, I was curious.) The unfortunate thing about this floor plan at the present moment was that it left the nearest bathroom some seventy-five feet from where I was currently lying motionless on the carpet. Normally, I would have relished the challenge, but everything was starting to go black.

One burst of energy was all I thought I could muster.

Out of sheer willpower, I managed to prop myself into a standing position, using my desk as support. Propelling myself from the desk as if I were about to swim laps, I dashed out of my bedroom, taking a hard left after the doorway. Yet as I stumbled down the hall, I heard a very clear sound, impossibly full, not even loud really, just omnipresent. It was something like the retort of a starter’s pistol. I began to pee all over myself. It was terribly unpleasant. As it turned out, the damage to my kidneys had already been done. It was not the sort of end to my life I’d ever envisioned, but at least I was a shoo-in for the Darwin Awards.