Shitman Lives!

Yesterday's crapper-blip by Ceridwen brought up a memory that me feel all warm and fuzzy. It was her quote from Byron that was the magic touch, making me realize that I have been part of a tradition that's probably as old as the species and springs from the soil of our beings.

The picture shows the twin outhouse that stands behind the caretaker's workshop at Woodlands Cemetery, where I have gathered many blips. It's the only outhouse I know of around here and it's funny for being a twin. A huge percentage of the houses in this area come in pairs and are called "Victorian twins" --I live in one.

When I was a young man 26 years ago, I did a year of study in Rome, Italy among about 120 American students who were mostly in the Fine Arts. There were also photographers and architects and folks from all over the Humanities. I was in Classical Studies.

In the university's building on the Tiber, the student restrooms were on the second floor and consisted of a row of tiny room with only a toilet bowl in each. They were not toilet stalls, but actual rooms with plaster walls and wooden doors. Outside them was a row of sinks. This was my first time living outside the US and I had never seen bathrooms like this. One of the little rooms had a small round window that looked out to a wide street. The paint was of a pale beige color.

In the Fall semester, the freshly-painted crapper walls began to gather graffiti, including an occasional scribble from me, but there was nothing even slightly unusual. I think it was in mid-December, just before the holiday recess, that I was inspired. Everyone reading this knows that it feels good to have a good crap. It's something we're all taught to leave unsaid, and it's simply too familiar and mundane a fact to discuss unless there are special circumstances involved. Those to be forgiven for speaking of it are usually in the healing professions.

Please notice that I make no mention of excrement. The short poems I penned onto those little walls were about the experience to shit, and not about shit, the unloaded material.

The poems were in blank verse, always written with a black ball point pen and in all capital letters, but in a small size. They were usually about five or six lines long and probably never more than a dozen. I made no copies of them and as far as I know, no one else did either. I signed each one like this: --SHITMAN

I wrote about the profound physical joy, the mortal relief we feel in those precise moments when our bodies have just finished cleaning every room and putting out the trash on garbage day. People --I never knew who --started replying. It became a regularized thing, and I would compose the day's missive on paper and copy it out on the wall, but I'd destroy the paper copy. I had a girlfriend and a regular social life and I wanted no one to know that I was the author, even by accident. No one did.

Someone took the correspondence to another level and drew oversized pictures of veggies on the walls with captions, signing as "The Fruit & Food Guy." A few times people started wandering into discussions of foeces and I'd scold them. I'd say that the feelings and reflections I was sharing existed only because we wanted to be rid of that stuff, and if we were to focus on shit the noun, it would make no more sense than packing it back into our butts. Once someone wrote in the voice of a poodle and said that their owner made them feel bad by watching the dog defecate. I was supportive; firmly pro-privacy. No matter what they wrote, I always made a response, even if very brief.

I never overheard anyone mentioning Shitman in the course of my days. Only in the toilet rooms did anyone acknowledge me, but there in my realm I was the rock star. One art student made a project in one of the little rooms, glueing various found objects onto the walls and ceiling. Other students wrote in the same stall, asking what I thought of the artwork, and again I declined comment because it was not about that primitive, thrilling rush of relief that we know each day. To lend my pen to anything else would seem profane, or pedestrian at best. I would write about the meaning of human existence at the moment when that which lives expels that which is dead. I didn't have time for some wise guy asking me if I could recommend the right fertilizer.

When the end of the term drew near, my readers became very interested in knowing my identity, and they'd ask again and again on the painted walls. One woman asked to marry me. I said that it could only be a lousy marriage because we would have to meet in dreary public toilets. The moment of shitting is something we experience alone. What her mind clings to when every live atom sparkles inside of her, only she can know.

After the school year ended, I and four friends worked on a farm in Umbria in exchange for lodging, food, and weekend excursions. One evening as we ate supper in the old stone house I asked them if they had wondered who Shitman is. All four had theories and certainly had wondered. When I proudly pointed my thumbs toward my face, they laughed wildly and hardly stopped laughing about it for days. The gal I was dating declared, "I can't believe I've been sleeping with Shitman!" I replied, "Yes, and you even fooled around with Shitman in the bathroom once." Her face went to a deeper red.

I knew a few people who studied in the following few years and in the same building. My pen had made indentations in the paint, and the new paint did not obliterate my poems completely. Long months after I had made my farewell flush, my verses were read by eyes into which I had never looked.

My last little poem in Rome ended with this:

GOODBYE, AND SHIT WELL!
--SHITMAN