The Great Georgia Dome Shit of 1995.

My friends over at Shiterature have been full of big news lately. First, they are publishing a mini-book of Shiterature stories. The book is currently at the press and should be available soon. Also, the site is holding a contest for the best shit stories. Details on both matters are at the web site (linked above and on the sidebar), where you will also find details of Shiterature co-author Jane “Screaming Flea” Gari’s upcoming “Shiterature” stand-up.

Inspired by the Shiterature gals, I tried my hand at putting down a vile-yet-funny story. It’s a tough balancing act and my hats are off to Jane and Heidi for pulling it off. My own shit story is too long to qualify for the contest, so I am sharing it here in hopes that if you like the humor here (gross as it is), you’ll check out the Shiterature site for more of the same.

It goes without saying that some names in the story below have been changed. You know who you are.

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The consensus among those who give such matters due consideration was that Mike Greene represented a valid, tangible argument for the presence of extraterrestrials, as well as the possibility that said extraterrestrials might indeed take regular jaunts across the galaxy to abduct and probe various members of the human species and, in their hurry to get back home for a steaming bowl of Glop’nak, might also leave some of their probing apparati festering in the colon of an unsuspecting victim.

Those making such pronouncements included family members, fellow Boy Scouts, ex-girlfriends, badly maligned dogs (who never did anything so foul in all their lives, up to and including the consumption of cat shit), college roommates, students of Mr. Greene, fellow faculty members, his spouse, his child, WalMart shoppers and a large section of unwary sports fans trying to enjoy a game between Georgia Southern and Middle Tennessee State at the Georgia Dome in September of 1995.

I was there and witnessed the entire sordid event.

I was taking a weekend away from work to see my alma mater play football in the Dome, which was a real treat for a smaller college. It would also be a chance to see my college roommate Calvin and his wife, Anna. Mike, who I knew from Georgia Southern, had been Calvin’s roommate before me, and was there with his wife Sidney. Generally, the men sat together at sporting events and actually paid attention to the game while the women pretended they were in one or the other’s living room and were being occasionally disturbed by the noise of the television. Everyone passed an agreeable time this way.

I don’t want to get ahead of myself, though.

Even before the Georgia Dome trip, when the “Abduction Theory” (as it came to be known) was still nascent, the stories of Mike Greene’s lower intestinal exploits were nearly legend. Passed down in the oral traditions of The Odyssey, these tales circulated strongly around the campus dorms at Georgia Southern, fanned by the natural disposition of men of all ages to relate tales of the most gag-inducing smells they have ever inhaled or emitted. Mike Greene’s epic flatulence and egregious shits held a cult status even among connoisseurs of the vulgarities of college life.

Rumor had it that Mike had once shat an apocalyptic turd soup in one of the notoriously tiny shitters in Sanford Hall. The six-by-six crapper housed a toilet and a shower in a space so small that even amorous coeds searching for a soapy sexual encounter were forced to copulate with one hand on the commode. Hoping to avoid being bathed in the reek of his own filth, Mike flushed and closed the door to the tiny loo while he washed up at the sink, which was just outside the toilet-shower closet. He then left for class and afterwards home for the weekend. Calvin was spending the weekend with his girlfriend and did not return to the apartment until Sunday. Needing desperately to take a piss, he opened the bathroom door.

He then promptly gagged.

Not even two full days diminished the post-flush wallop of Mike’s toxic bowel movement.

These were the pervasive tales of Mike Greene’s rotting insides. Glade and Odor Eaters flailed uselessly against the olfactory onslaught of Mike’s rotting bum. Classes were dismissed early to escape the repugnant mists emanating from within an otherwise unremarkable man. The legend grew, and as legends often do, the stories sometimes became transposed, misattributed and tweaked. At the University of Georgia in Athens, tales of a vengeful undergrad who ate only broccoli and boiled eggs surfaced.

According to the legend, this student had been paired with twenty-seven roommates in three years. None of them could stand the smell, even when rubbing Drakkar Noir directly onto the upper lip. When traced back, the story apparently originated with a former suitemate of Mike and Calvin’s, who had friends down from UGA one weekend to visit. Mike had been to El Sombrero, the local Mexican restaurant, and was expelling fajita-driven wind shits in the night. The two Bulldogs returned to Athens with the story of the Olympian gas. A legend was born.

None of this, however, compared to the Great Georgia Dome Shit, which actually began as the Great Georgia Dome Fart.

Since the two small schools involved in the football game couldn’t possibly supply enough fans to fill all the seats, there was space to spare, even at the 40-yard line. The women sat in one row while the men got comfortable in the seats behind them. Georgia Southern took a quick and commanding lead. By halftime, spirits were high. We marched to the concession stand for halftime refreshment with victory on our minds. No one ordered anything out of the ordinary—it was the typical selection of hot dogs, sodas, nachos and candy for our sporting feast. The cuisine didn’t seem to have any abnormal effects on the rest of us, but for Mike, it was the catalyst for a lower intestinal catastrophe.

This returns us to the Abduction Theory.

How it happened is unclear, but Mike’s twin brother Chris (who has never been afflicted by the type of repugnancy his womb-mate bears) suggests that the kidnapping happened sometime before puberty. The foul excrement and flatulence began about the time the boys began sprouting body hair, and given the nature of the theory, this would indicate abduction somewhere around age seven.

As the experts describe it, the theoretical anal probe would have been conducted in the manner of so many other redneck-on-the-dissecting-table ventures. The great difference would be that when Xyxltharfghta (pronounced “Dave”) finished up the procedure, he left part of his equipment inside the abducted boy as surgeons the universe over are wont to do. The instrument in question wouldn’t be anything intricate or expensive by the standards of the alien race, but on Earth it would be unidentifiable and undetectable, composed of elements omitted by humanity’s gallant attempt at a periodic table.

Over the years, the mystery element would begin to degrade. Given its location in Mike Greene’s bowels, it would sour all matter—solid, liquid or aerosol—it came in contact with. It is one of only a handful of logical explanations for why five human beings can consume the same food, yet one of them can turn that food into something horrible and repugnant.

As the game entered the second half, Middle Tennessee State mounted a furious comeback. Our relaxed postures became more alert and our pulses quickened. In Mike Greene’s stomach, stress conspired with poorly-produced stadium food and an alien element to ferment a torrent of anal atrocities that, if weaponized, would be instantly banned by the Geneva conventions and deemed Unholy by jihadists.

Mike farted in the fourth quarter, a sad, lame precursor to what would come later but an eye-watering event in its own right.

I smelled it first. It had the tart aggressiveness of an old shoe dipped in vinegar and the finish of sixty-year old mushrooms. I’ll smell that scent in my nightmares and likely beyond the grave.

“Oh you rotten dick!” I muttered.

Calvin had moved to the front row to sit with Anna and didn’t wait to spot the old, familiar roommate smell after hearing my swearing. He took immediate, instinctive defensive action, pulling his shirt over his nose. Anna did not wait to follow suit, having been through several bouts of Devil Anus during her association with Mike.

Only Sidney, Mike’s wife, was apparently immune. They love is blind. I don’t know what the olfactory equivalent of “blind” is, but love is that, too. She simply turned in her seat and barked her husband’s name.

“Mike Greene!”

“What?” her husband asked with a shrug. “I can’t help it.”

In 1995, the Georgia Dome was the largest indoor sporting venue in North America. Its machinery processes air at a rate incomprehensible by all but a few air-conditioning veterans. The constant temperature, humidity and air quality inside the dome is a testament to human engineering.

Yet as we watched, the scent of the Great Georgia Dome Fart shrugged off man’s attempt to filter or reduce it. It wafted upward, row after row. It inflicted itself upon hundreds of fans. Wives blamed husbands. Husbands blamed children. Friends turned on one another. One guy checked the bottom of his shoes. Another guy looked proud. He had probably just farted and thought the masterpiece belonged to him.

From our vantage point, we could see the incredible ass blast’s radius expand. Not even Sidney could stifle a laugh as people actually left their seats. Someone pleaded with an usher to find out what was wrong. Paramedics descended the stairs looking for signs of someone in distress (or decomposing). The fart travelled at least ten rows up before the incredible industrial strength of the Georgia Dome’s air conditioners got the best of it.

In the end, we were sad to see it go.

As the lingering bouquet dissipated, Georgia Southern again wrested control of the game away from their opponents. The game was winding toward an inevitable conclusion when Mike warned us that the show had only begun.

“Guys, we gotta leave,” he said. “Now.”

Pregnant women standing in a puddle of their broken water don’t get a response like we gave Mike. We were gathered up and moving toward the concourse with the speed and precision of a military drill team.

“I gotta shit now,” Mike said. We veered toward a concourse bathroom. Mike went in while we waited outside. We were not the only fans filing out and heading for home. Plenty of men were going into the bathroom for a pre-drive piss to evacuate the last beer of the game.

It wasn’t long before they started coming out as soon as they got in. Those unfortunate souls already in the bathroom when Mike arrived soon began to hustle out, trailing the stench inside behind them. Within five minutes, the entire concourse smelled like a dead leper rolled in Thai food. Mike emerged acting as if he, too, was offended by the smell, but the gleam in his eye said he was proud of his opus, The Great Georgia Dome Shit of 1995.

“Guess what? The toilet won’t flush.”

We hurried away before we could be detained and questioned.

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Six years later, I was working as a sports writer and covering high school football playoff games in the Georgia Dome. The toilet in the press box shitter stopped up and the odor was vile. Two members of the Dome’s janitorial staff hurried to contain the mess and had everything worked out by the end of the game I was covering.

As I left to interview the players and coaches, I heard the older of the two maintenance men telling the other:

“That was nothing. A few years back we had a game between two colleges, and there was a stopped up toilet on one of the concourses. Three guys threw up and one quit on the spot before we got that motherfucker unclogged.”

Proof of life among the stars, I thought. We are not alone.

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Please, please—if you made it this far and are still chuckling, visit the Shiterature website now!