Bellassai - Everything is awful: and other observations

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Copyright 2017 by Matt Bellassai

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Keywords Press Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

Certain names and characteristics have been changed.

First Keywords Press /Atria Books hardcover edition October 2017

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Interior design by Suet Chong

Jacket design by Chelsea McGuckin

Jacket photography by Koury Angelo

ISBN 978-1-5011-6649-5

ISBN 978-1-5011-6651-8 (ebook)

For my family.

I blame them for everything.

I was six years old when I last peed my pants.

I say this not to bragalthough making it over twenty years without pissing my pants is actually quite an accomplishment, to be perfectly honestbut to bare my shame.

I was at my best friend Kennys house after school, drinking juice boxes and waging war with toy soldiers. You know, six-year-old stuff. As our battle wore on, my body slowly devolved into the cross-legged dance of the six-year-old in distress, writhing to console the mounting pressure of my bladder. As my soldiers fell in the heat of battle, I crept painfully closer to my limit.

I was dressed in my finest outfit for a school assembly earlier that day, some hideous combination of red, black, and white my mother thought was stylish in 1996. In retrospect, that outfit probably deserved to be pissed on. You cant put a budding homosexual in an ill-conceived pattern and expect him not to urinate all over it. Regardless, there I was, standing in front of the toilet (Id managed, at least, to make it to the bathroom), furiously struggling with the buttons of my fancy six-year-old pants. And yes, my mother chose not only a hideous pattern, but dress pants with buttons instead of a zipper, yet another choice that begged for this very outcome. Id held my composure for as long as I could.

My hands helplessly fumbling at the buttons, I finally succumbed to sweet relief, soaking the plush rug beneath my feet, along with my socks, underwear, and those wretched pants, still buckled around my waist. Some days, when I'm standing in front of a toilet, I can still feel that rug beneath my feet, a moist phantom of my earliest humiliation.

I spent the next twenty minutes silently brooding in that bathroom. They were black pants, after all. Maybe I could get away with acting like this hadnt happened. All I needed to do was spend the next two to three hours in damp agony, and as long as nobody looked too closely or inhaled too deeply, I could escape undetected.

But I spent too long plotting this out, and Kennys mom knocked on the door.

Is everything all right in there? (A question that someone only asks when everything is not all right in there.)

I confessed to the accident, and opened the door in surrender. I thought for a moment maybe shed stick my nose in it, the way my own mother used to stick our dogs nose in his pee when he pissed where he wasnt supposed to. But she took the carpet from beneath me and handed me a pair of Kennys old shorts to wear for the rest of our playdate, my very own scarlet letter so that all could bear witness to my shame.

That evening, I left Kennys house in those shame shorts, carrying my own clothes in a plastic bag, with my head held high, just as Hester walked with her letter before me.

I couldnt help but think that I somehow deserved what happened.

Earlier that day, my schoolmates and I were eating lunch in our classroom. The gymnasium wed normally eat in was closed for the assembly, so we were eating at our desks instead, which felt intoxicating, like we were doing something forbidden. Everybody was already hopped up on assembly energy, but now we were especially animated, fidgeting in our seats, screaming across the room, tossing bits of food when the teacher turned her back.

Austin was the boy who sat behind me, a huge lug of a kid, nearly twice as tall as the rest of us and almost twice as thick. If this were a fairy tale, Austin would be the ogre child wed all run from when he emerged from his swamp. And Id feel bad about that comparison, but Austin was kind of an asshole, one of those boys who was friendly only until someone better came along, so I treated him with similar respect.

We were drinking from our cartons of milk, those tiny paper boxes that are nearly impossible to open, made of that kind of thin cardboard that gets immediately soggy after the first few sips. Austin was halfway through a long sip when I turned around and made a funny facemy repertoire of humor in first grade was limited to gurgling noises, knock-knock jokes, and funny facesand he choked back a mouthful of spittle and milk with a furious scowl.

Dont! he screamed with genuine anger. These are my nice pants! I cant ruin them!

This made me laugh even harder.

Each time hed pick up his carton, Id turn around with my fingers halfway up my nose, my cheeks puffed out, and my eyes crossed, and Austin would cry back, Stop! If I get milk on my pants, my moms gonna kill me!

It went on like this for ten minutes, back and forth, attracting a small audience around us eagerly waiting to see if Austin would ever finish his milk. Until finally, I waited for him to take the largest possible gulp. I turned around at just the right moment with just the right combination of fingers stuffed into the right combination of face holes. Austin lurched forward for a moment to try to stop himself from reacting. And then, all at once, a violent stream of milk exploded from his nose, all down his sweater, and pooled momentarily in his pants before seeping into the fabric.

The audience around us erupted in screams of laughter, and Austins own outburst turned from a milky chortle to anguish as he stomped away from us, wailing in protest.

There are a few lessons to draw here, the first of which, of course, is that children are terrible human beings, and I was certainly no exception. (Though, in my defense, Austin grew up to be an even bigger dick, and once said, Im fat, but at least Im not fat and gay like Matt Bellassai, so I dont regret ruining his dumb pants, and if I could, Id go back, do it all again, and then smash his stupid face into that puddle of snotty lap milk before it seeped onto his tiny ogre dick.)