Sex and Bacon (10 page)

I fried and ate bacon for two and a half hours in a back-and-forth ballet among range, countertop, and table. My feet slid along the floor noiselessly—I was grease-skating in my socks, gliding like a swan. With every breath I inhaled slippery clouds of bacon fat, transformed into a smoky haze by the alchemy of my cast-iron skillet and the heat of my stove-top. I was in the fat and the fat was in me, all over me, deep in my creases like a tender lover. Inner had become outer. It was all the same. It was glorious and sinful, a gluttonous greasy rampage, a disaster, a glistening salty triumph.

The BQ was technically reached at three pounds (uncooked weight), but I made sure to eat the remaining pound in the package just to ensure the accuracy of my results. I didn’t want to be mistaken—to
think
that I’d reached the BQ, only to realize an hour later that I’d been premature. I had to be
sure
. The last pound of bacon was deliberate and labored, but at long last I finished cooking and devouring the entire family-size four-pound package. I folded the greasy plastic wrapping into quarters and discarded it into my kitchen garbage can, replacing the lid with a sense of completion and purpose. I was done. I had finally had Enough Bacon.

I AM SOMETIMES IRRATIONALLY CERTAIN THAT I HAVE
A tapeworm. Or some other form of intestinal parasite —I’m not picky.

By
sometimes
I mean
frequently
, if by
frequently
you understand that I mean my colonic hyperconsciousness is a gentle, unceasing drone in the background of my own specific mental soundtrack—sometimes nearly inaudible and sometimes thunderous—but always
there
, constantly pulsing in counterpoint to the tidal thump and slide of my own heartbeat.
¹
I am obsessed with the idea that my body might be the unwitting host for colonies of alien life, flourishing without my knowledge in some dark intestinal nook or cranny. I can’t stop thinking about what I would do if I learned I was infected. My first inclination would be to drink something caustic, like lye. Sure, I’d die, but at least the worms would too! I’d die
clean
, by God!

Let me back up.

About ten years ago I dated a woman who was employed as a Colonic Irrigationist
²
at an alternative health center.

Her job was pretty much exactly what her title implied: She spent the day putting plastic tubes up people’s asses and sluicing out their lower intestines with various quantities of sodium balanced warm water, with the aim of loosening any impacted feces stuck to the sides of their intestinal walls like the calcium scales that clog hard-water plumbing. Sometimes those shit deposits were benign, but other times they contained parasites—bugs and worms that got into her clients’ bodies via undercooked fish or meat, or by too-intimate contact with their infected pets’ waste. Fancy, spidery parasites could be obtained through adventurous eating during travel in certain developing countries, though some were absorbed through the skin during hiking or wading through brackish water. But ordinarily—barring foreign travel—most people just had worms. Plain, ordinary, everyday worms.

“Like dogs and cats,” my girlfriend informed me earnestly. “They usually look like grains of white rice.”

That knowledge did not add to my comfort (or to my previously uncomplicated enjoyment of rice). So many Americans walking around with worm eggs and tapeworms in their lower intestines, munching away happily on Big Macs and Frappuccinos, shedding portions of their unwanted guests’ bodies in their own healthy turds! How could you live with yourself, knowing you were infected? Worse, how could you live
not knowing?
You’d think you were clean—you could shower, wear fresh underwear, floss, and eat organic produce—but all along, underneath all the health and wholesomeness, your guts would be
curdling with worms
. You would be
diseased inside
. It was straight out of a David Lynch movie, hideous and inexplicable—the literal worm in the bud.
³

Frankly, my girlfriend’s job gave me the screaming meemies. I couldn’t believe how casually she referred to her “clients,”knowing what she did with them. I have a hard time looking people in the eye when meeting them, and I can barely bring myself to shake hands. But here my girlfriend was shoving a tube into their guts and politely removing their impacted shit! Sure, I danced for assholes—but she actually
washed
them. I was squeamish about hand-to-hand contact, but she was gloving up and swabbing out people’s rectums. It was unthinkable.

So of course I became obsessed. I pestered my poor girlfriend for professional details unmercifully.

If she didn’t give me enough detail in an attempt to preserve the privacy and dignity of her clients, I’d angrily demand painstaking specifics.
How long was the tapeworm? Was It still alive?
Was it wiggling on the way out?
She’d roll her eyes and sigh, but like the health professional she was, she always answered my questions matter-of-factly—simply, but with an mstructorly eye toward practical detail. I imagined her bedside manner to be soothing and brisk: pretty much exactly what you’d want from a stranger to whom you’re entrusting the care and comfort of your ass. I tried not to giggle when she said things like “fecal mass” and “rectal straining.”

The main part of the job was irrigating her customers’ colons, but the
other
part of the job—my girlfriend patiently informed me during one of my SS-style interrogation sessions—’was explaining what dietary issues were evident from the shit rinsed away during the irrigation process. In other words, my girlfriend looked at her clients’ shit and
interpreted
it for them, like Rorschach blotches or chicken innards. She was like a wine steward—except instead of describing the bouquet, weight, and color of a particular vintage, she discerned telling gradations in the quality and mass of her customers’ impactedwaste, teasing out meaning from varying shades and certain textural subtleties.

This drove me wild. “You mean you’re sitting there
as they’re shitting
—I mean, getting
rinded
—and you’re talking about the actual shit with them? Like, you’re pointing out specific details
as the shit comes out of their bodies?”
I admit I was out of control. But curiosity was like a fever, and the small portions of information allotted to me by my long-suffering girlfriend only inflamed my desire to know more about people with enough money to subcontract their own rectal hygiene.

“Okay look,” my girlfriend finally said. “Here’s what happens. The client undresses and lies on his or her side. I come in and discuss their concerns about their session and answer any questions they may have at that point.”

My cheeks felt hot. “
Like?”
I demanded.

My girlfriend held up her hand. “Just standard stuff! Like if they’re curious about the procedure, or if it’s their first time and they’re nervous! ‘ She glared at me. “You know, this is my
job
. I take it seriously, even if you don’t. I
help
people, you know?”

“Yes! Yes! I know! Please,
please
, go on!”

I was transfixed—ravenous for the information she was doling out with infuriating slowness. At the same time, I knew that pressuring her too much would break the bank and I’d go home busted. Some slot machines you shake hard, and others you barely even jostle. My girlfriend was a jostler—if I harassed her too much, she’d lock. I had to let her relay information at her own pace with only the gentlest of nudges. I took a deep breath, held it, and released it in an audible
whoosh
.

“I know you help people, baby,” I said. I reminded myself not to say
shit
again—it was
fecal material
. I’d known better. I’d just gotten excited.

“All right.” She waited an excruciating eternity—
Get to the parasites! For the love of God, get to the worms
—then sighed heavily. “You’re such a toddler. What’s next—finger-painting with your own doody?”

“Maybe,” I said. “No! I mean, I’m just really interested in your work, honey.” I held my breath. “Sweetheart? Yourwork? It’s important, and stuff?”

“Well, It
is
important,” she said. “A lot of people walk around with
five to ten pounds
of impacted feces clogging up their intestines! Not to mention, a lot of people —even nice, clean people with good eating habits—have parasites! They feel tired and run-down all the time, and they don’t know why, but it’s
shit
and
bugs
in their bodies, stealing their energy and making them feel bloated, constipated, and ill.”

I bit my lip. “That sounds really . . . um . . .”
Sick. RevoltingFilthy
. “. . . unbalanced. Like, um, metabolically” I had no idea what I was talking about, but
metabolically unbalanced
had to be better than any of the other words that came to mind.

My girlfriend warmed to her subject. “Okay, so we talk and I answer any questions they have. Then I gently insert a tube inside them that delivers body-temperature water slowly until their lower intestine is filled. Then I reverse the flow and the water—and waste—drains out into a large machine with a glass panel on the front, so I can monitor the waste coming out. Then I do that a bunch more times until the waste water is mostly clear.” She glared at me. “
Okay?
”

I nodded. I tried ESP.
Tapeworms!
I mentally commanded.

“If they have any parasites, I can see them as the waste drains away. The tube is clear and so is the glass panel on the irrigation machine, so I can observe what’s being shed.”

Jackpot.

“Do you tell them?” I croaked. “If they have them?”

“Of course I do,” she replied tartly. “Why else would I be looking at their feces? For fun? They need to know what’s in their own bodies and how to be more healthful! “ She looked at me and spoke with an air of grave authority. “For a lot of people, it’s really healing.”

She was touchy, but my girlfriend’s disinclination to talk about her professional life was understandable. Nobody wants to be treated as a curiosity not even people who spend forty hours a week power washing shit out of other people’s assholes. After all, I was working as an adult entertainer—I knew all about being treated like a specimen by people seeking titillating first-person -work stories. I had to tread carefully.

Three sevens, baby. Come on
.

“What’s the grossest thing you’ve ever seen drain out of someone’s—” I was going to say
ass. No!No! Caution! “
—um, body?”

My girlfriend answered wearily. “An entire floret of broccoli,” she said.

I was a little let down. “A broccoli?” I repeated.

“Yeah, an entire floret. A big one. It was just wedged in there, undigested and whole.”

“Oh . . .” I had to admit I had been expecting something more sinister—maybe a condom, or something made of metal. A broccoli floret wasn’t that gross—it wasn’t even that surprising. I was disappointed.

“But the thing was, I asked the client When he last ate broccoli. And he said he hated it and didn’t eat it often. The last time he’d had it was a year ago, at a friend’s wedding. It had just been sitting in there since then, rotting and causing cramping and gas.”

“Dude, he had a year-old
broccoli
up in there?” I gasped.

“Yeah,” she said. “Oh, and he had tapeworms, too. Big flat ones. One was wrapped around the floret, actually. It was alive. It was convulsing, flexing, and whipping around—almost as if it kne’w it was being dislodged and was mad about it.”

She paused, choosing her words -ith care. “I’m guessing it was probably several feet long. The broccoli-and-worm mass almost didn’t fit through the tube —I was worried I’d have to extract it manually somehow. I wasn’t sure what to do. But eventually part of the worm broke off, then the rest of the mass fit through. Both parts were still alive though—those worms are really hardy! You can see how they’d survive in someone’s intestines really well, just breaking apart and multiplying and growing bigger and longer, the longer you have them.” She shrugged. “I mean, if you don’t get them out.”

I felt hot and dizzy. The payoff had been worth it, all right, but now that I was considering the image of a broccoli floret wrapped in a living, flexing tapeworm like a scallop in a strip of bacon, I wondered if I was going to faint. How did my girlfriend ever eat her lunch four hours into her shift, knowing that after her meal she’d be coming back to another series of shit and worm plugged intestines? How did she ever eat
anything?

My girlfriend looked at me sharply. “That’s where /come in, you know. It’s a really necessary service we provide.”

I forced myself to stop thinking about parasite-laden shit. I had to. If I didn’t, I knew I’d faint and my girlfriend would feel used. I’d reached the pinnacle of grossness for the day—rotten, worm-infested broccoli—which, if you thought about it, was pretty foul after all. Broccoli had never been my favorite vegetable anyway. I wondered how I’d feel the next time I saw it in my girlfriend’s stir-fry. I imagined staring down at my plate at the wok-tossed floret—then pictured it wrapped in a long strip of onion.