Excerpts
From “Prologue”
Stacey was stunned. Of course, I’d seen it all before. The topic usually cropped up during the first date, sometimes the second. They all reacted the same way.
“Let me get this straight,” she said. “You’ve never been to France?”
“No.”
“Never?” she asked.
“Not even once.”
“And you majored in French?”
“Oui, c’est vrais.”“
“But you have been overseas, right? You just never made it to France?”
“Uh … no.”
“How is that possible?”
I shrugged. “I guess it was just never the right time.”
It was a lame, silly explanation. It also wasn’t true.
I didn’t want to deceive her, but the truth was a long, complicated story. Too revealing for first-date give-and-take. She might understand why I hadn’t yet explored the world … or she might not. I didn’t plan on finding out. I enjoyed her company, but I already suspected that another date was not in the cards. She seemed a little too adventurous.
“What a waste.” She wasn’t angry—more like disgusted. “Do you have any idea what you’re missing?”
Now that was a stupid question. If I’d never been there, how could I?
If Stacey had any idea how much more I was missing in my life, she’d be horrified.
It didn’t seem like the right time to disclose that even though I’d lived there for the better part of a decade, I seldom ventured out to explore other neighborhoods in San Francisco. In fact, I never left my safe little universe in the Marina District unless I had to. Why risk it? Consequently I had made myself a full-fledged regular at a handful of neighborhood eateries on Chestnut Street. None were more than six or seven blocks from my apartment.
Here at Café Marimba, the atmosphere was funky, and the margaritas strong. This casually hip Mexican joint was the centerpiece of my first-date ritual. I wasn’t much for surprises. When I found something that worked, I tended to stick with it. The only risk here was the waiter blowing my cover. This was my third first date that week.
Stacey couldn’t let it go. “But you do want to see the world, don’t you? I mean, someday?”
I looked up from my margarita. “Of course I want to. And someday, yes, I will.”
That part was true. I had dreamed of international travel for years. In fact, that was a big reason I decided to study French in the first place. Most of my classmates followed the well-beaten path from college to commercial banking. Not me.
Like my banking-bound buddies, I majored in economics. But I also pursued French as a second major. The details of my plan were a bit fuzzy, but I would one day enjoy a wildly successful career in international business.
So how had I ended up here, more than a decade after college, unmarried and an overseas virgin with a passport still waiting for its first stamp?
The story began thirteen years earlier—ironically with one surprisingly powerful cup of French Roast coffee. From that moment on, my life would never be the same.
From “Hell on Wheels”
I remember being excited about my first day. Dressed in my navy-blue suit, red tie, and well-shined loafers, I fit right in with the other fifteen financial types waiting for the 30X on Chestnut Street.
After feeding my crisp one-dollar bill into the fare slot, I staked out a standing position near the rear door of the nearly filled coach. I felt as if I had mistakenly walked into a photo shoot for a J. Crew or a Brooks Brothers catalog. While everybody looked all-American, this group of young, well-dressed, and mostly white commuters was far from what I’d call a representative slice of America. At each of the remaining five stops along Chestnut Street, an endless stream of these perfect-looking, Stepford commuters piled in.
After picking up its final passenger, our bus began the one-mile express leg of our trip downtown. Within three or four minutes, I figured, I would be walking into my new office for my first day of work.
Twenty minutes later, and less than a half-mile from my downtown destination, rush-hour traffic had trapped us inside the Broadway tunnel. People began to glance down at their Rolex watches and impatiently tap their Gucci-clad feet. The yuppies were growing restless.
Traffic showed no signs of moving, but my bowels were beginning to. Knowing that they’d already performed admirably this morning provided little comfort. As the legal disclaimer that appears in mutual fund advertisements says, past performance is no guarantee of future performance.
From “Dam!”
My new job would subject me to a biweekly barrage of commuting traffic, airport security lines, runway gridlock, connecting flights, and office buildings that had only a one-in-three chance of having unlocked toilets. Any one of these threats carried the potential to send my bowels into instantaneous revolt. Taken together, the whole was far greater than the sum of my anxieties. Unless I wanted to live every other week in absolute terror, I needed to be proactive. I needed to go on offense.
Years later, I would look back and recognize this moment as one of many times when the wise course of action would have been to visit a doctor. Back then, however, I’d convinced myself I was the only person on the face of the earth with this peculiar combination of mental and physical issues. Even if I wanted to, how would I begin to explain my unusual-not to mention embarrassing-symptoms? And who exactly would I explain them to? A primary-care physician? A psychiatrist? A proctologist? No thanks.
So instead, applying a modicum of intrinsic male logic, I crafted a solution that was as ingenious as it was straightforward. To keep my gastrointestinal tract from spilling its contents all over my life, I would head down to the store, pick up some supplies, and build a dam.
Imodium was a product I’d heard of but had not yet tried. “Maximum Strength!” the label exclaimed. Also printed in a billboard-sized font for the entire world to see was “Anti-Diarrheal.” And just in case that didn’t quite spell things out, an additional line of oversized copy offered further clarification: “Controls the symptoms of diarrhea.”
Well, nobody could mistake what this stuff was for. Like a condom, Imodium has but one use. The mere possession of this product announces to one and all, “Hey, keep your distance, and nobody gets hurt.”
From “Web of Deceit”
“My rental car won’t start,” I had explained to my prospect’s voice mailbox as I cruised down a remote rural road an hour earlier. Only when I realized I was still twenty minutes away and there were no roadside services in sight had my bowels decided to spring into action, intent on sabotaging my morning.
Even though I had an extra pair of identically matching suit pants in the pocket of my computer bag-I’d recently started buying two pairs for each suit precisely because I anticipated these types of worst-case scenarios-I couldn’t bring myself to keep the appointment. I had to turn around.
“Dead battery,” my message had continued. “I’m going to have to reschedule with you next time I’m in town. I apologize for the inconvenience.”
The next time I’m in town. Yeah, right. Like I had any intention of coming back. Getting from San Francisco to Tucumcari, New Mexico, a tiny city along I-40 halfway in between Albuquerque and Amarillo, was no easy feat. It took two flights and a couple of hours of driving. It was also not cheap. LPM had spent several thousand dollars for me to travel all this way to cancel a meeting. To my disgust, I’d been doing a lot of this lately.
The drive back to the Comfort Inn gave me plenty of time to beat myself up. Had I forgotten everything I’d learned in college? It wasn’t like Washington and Lee simply had an honor system. The place was built on the honor system, with each student swearing to live by a simple code: “I will not to lie, cheat, or steal.” It was a way of life that I took seriously and subscribed to willingly. It was a standard I’d expected to hold myself to long after graduation. Who had I become?
Back in my hotel room, I accepted that the damage had been done. Since I’d already cleared my schedule for the morning, I figured I might as well put the time to good use by trying to make sure this kind of thing would never happen again. Four more colonic sessions with Sophie hadn’t led to any noticeable improvement. It was time for drastic measures. This clean-cut boy-next-door from the East Coast suburbs decided to try something even more unorthodox than hydrocolonic therapy.