FRESH YARN presents: A Phantom Passing... by Matt Wyatt

FRESH YARN presents:

A Phantom Passing
By Matt Wyatt

It's Halloween. I'm nine years old. A good day for a nine-year-old. Lightened work load and lenient teachers at school. Assorted mischief after dark. Mounds upon mounds of sugary goodness. A marvelously frivolous occasion for any young boy.

Or it would be, if I weren't stuck inside the larger of the two stalls in the upper-grade boys' bathroom at Golden Elementary School, trying desperately not to shit myself.

How did I get here? That's an interesting question, bringing to mind much discourse about logic, cause and effect, and the pre-determined inevitability of our destinies. Did I imagine for a second when I awoke this morning that my day would find me here? I seriously doubt it. I mean, come on, I'm nine years old. Light years away from even the idea, to say nothing of the compulsion, of shitting my pants. Right? Right?

(It must be stated here for the record that I later learned several of my friends were shitting their pants well into high school. But that's another story. A good story, involving a dilapidated Celica, donuts in the campus quad, and a pair of khaki cargo shorts. But another story nonetheless.)

The costume was glorious. Even if I had foreseen my undoing at its hands, I might still have steeled my pre-pubescent jaw and worn it. There was a reason for the extravagance of the costume. I was nine. Nine years old meant Fourth Grade. Fourth Grade meant entry into The Upper Grades. The Upper Grades meant business. Previous costumes -- during the lower grades -- had been flimsy cloth and plastic cut-out caricatures: pirates, blue robots, pumpkins. All lovingly constructed by my mother's hands to be sure, but The Upper Grades wouldn't take that into account. The Upper Grades demanded excellence. Excuses were out of the question.

Something extraordinary was called for. My mother and I put our heads together. After careful deliberation, an idea was born; a costume was selected. I don't really remember what led us down the chosen path. Perhaps it was mostly Mom's idea. Regardless, it was brilliant, and I was behind it one hundred and ten percent.

I would be The Phantom of the Opera.

You giggle and you snort and you scoff. And I glare at you with a dark, fiery eye from underneath my deathly white half-mask. Remember, there are worse things than a shattered chandelier...

At the time, I was quite taken with Andrew Lloyd Weber's faux-operatic popstravaganza. Slinking around the kickball field as the title character held a definite allure for this lanky child who wore bright baggy MC Hammer pants and had once been sucker-punched in the soft white gut by a girl named Emily. It was a chance to be sinister. Menacing. Formidable.

Of course, we spared no expense. As with all ventures, my mother sank her tenacious fangs into the matter with a deep thirst for problem-solving. In our vision, there were three elements to l'ensemble de la Fantome: clothing, mask, and make-up.

Clothing. Pretty standard, really. Black slacks - standard Sunday school issue, no problem there. White dress shirt - see above. Black jacket - not sure, actually; the memory of that piece has meandered into oblivion, but I'm almost completely sure that one was obtained legally. Cape. Yes, cape. The costume may have gotten a little confused here. I have not bothered to check Google images for the purposes of this story. I am not entirely sure that Mr. Weber's Phantom pranced about the West End in a cape, nor that Monsieur Leroux's Phantom paddled through the underground waterways of the Opera Garnier with a cloak on his shoulders. But my Phantom had a cape. We borrowed it from a previous year's Dracula costume. And I tell you, it was bad ass.

Mask. The accessory most necessary to selling the package. I think we bought it at Tall Mouse for five bucks.

Make-up. In a rather bizarre scenario of pre-production gone rampant, the costume also featured a grotesque facial touch. Somehow our creativity got the best of us, stole our car, drove it to a costume supply store, and used my mom's checkbook to purchase a liquid scar kit. Existing at the intersection of simple chemistry genius and Ed Wood schlock, the kit involved two putty substances that one mixed to produce a gruesome, frighteningly real scar. Or a turd, depending on which way it caught the light. Smell like a turd, it most certainly did. More accurately, like someone puked up a turd, sealed it in Tupperware, forgot about it, then returned several days later and microwaved it for consumption; salmonella be damned. I'm not sure why it didn't occur to us that, irrespective of the scar's potential to win us a technical Oscar, it was to go largely without praise situated UNDERNEATH THE MASK. Yes, that's right. We applied the scar tissue to the left cheek, the same one covered by the mask. An excellent touch of psychological realism for my performance to be sure, but one that left me spending the entire day and night with a foul brown strip of putrescence glued to my face underneath a non-porous white plastic mask. This mask, I should mention, was also glued to my face. I don't know how the Phantom himself did it, but I hope the glue he used wasn't as much of a pissy bitch to rip off as the model epoxy I was slathered in.

Costuming was an ordeal in itself, but the day was just beginning. Mom dropped me off at the bus stop, and I boarded my shuttle across town. The bus ride next to my fellow juvenile masqueraders was uneventful, except that I had to hold my breath through most of it to avoid throwing up into my cape.

The day passed quickly, filled with scary word puzzles and history trivia games with Jolly Rancher prize pots. Soon it was lunchtime and we headed to the outdoor tables to consume and mingle. And although I couldn't have seen it coming then, those glossy blue rectangular tables were soon to become the site of my ordeal. My crucible. My Chernobyl.

None the wiser at the time, I sat down with my chalupa. For those of you who aren't familiar with this culinary concoction, it is a Mexican-themed dish. I say Mexican-themed, because it seemed to me more like what would be dubbed "Mexican" food if the upper Midwest suddenly became entrusted with the guardianship of Latino culture. A chalupa is a hard corn shell appropriately shaped like a trough, into which ground beef bits are placed and then asphyxiated in a thick layer of melted Monterey Jack cheese.

Given its dubious nature, I would love to blame everything on the chalupa. But the feeling snuck up on me only a few bites in, so I do not think we can, in good faith, hold that chalupa culpable. The feeling was standard biological issue. And issue some biology is exactly what I needed to do. Having a movement or pinching a loaf (depending on your current social vernacular) shouldn't be a daunting prospect, even to an elementary school student. Certainly not to an Upper Grader. The state provides facilities, and students are encouraged to take advantage of them. I knew my costume would require some precision on the approach (wouldn't do to have doody on the cape), but I was feeling pretty confident as I got up and headed to the bathroom.

At this point, I imagine you've deduced correctly that we've been building a recipe for farce. However, an extra baggie of chocolate gold coins to you if you can guess the key ingredient. Think carefully. Go back and reread if you need to. You might want to split the page in two sections and jot down some notes. Ok, time's up. Got your answer? Oops, nope, I'm sorry. But that's ok; I didn't see it coming either.

The black slacks. I said earlier "no problem there." I lied. There was a big problem.

I couldn't get them off.

The pants were a couple of years old and probably an inch or two tight. The button was a little tricky, and I'd had some difficulties getting it undone for the occasional Sunday school pee break in the past. But, difficulties. Minor snags, pardon the pun, in procedure. After a little fancy finger play, the button always popped free. This was not minor. This was a toilet SNAFU. This was nuclear.

I couldn't get my fucking pants off and I had to poop.

Alright. Hold on here. No reason to panic. Unable to negotiate the button's release, I calmly exited the stall and returned to the lunch table. No problem. I would simply just wait it out. Surely the Phantom suffered through worse all those hours pining after that lovely chorus girl. I hoped the urge would pass.

Sitting there staring at my now cold chalupa, with the sickly-sweet scent of fake scar/turd held in my nose by the mask, I quickly realized the situation was dire. The urge did not pass; the urge to pass increased ten-fold every minute.

Starting to sweat and pale, I returned to the bathroom. I locked the stall behind me. I fumbled with the button again. I wrestled with it. I coaxed. I cajoled. I begged and pleaded. I wrung my hands and fought another urge, the urge to cry. My lower lip quivered.

Looking back on myself now, the story seems as ludicrous to me as I'm sure it does to you. Why didn't I just rip the pants? Find some scissors? Find a teacher? Or a yard monitor? I must plead the "if I only knew then what I know now" defense. I was a smart young kid. Unfortunately, a smart child is an analytical child. And analytical children often get themselves lost so deeply in their own critical examination of a situation that it's more difficult to get out than it was to start with. Couple that with a shy child afraid of failure and mistakes that brand one a social pariah, and you can imagine the possible disastrous consequences I envisioned. Somehow the thought of going to see a teacher and telling her I couldn't unbutton my own pants was infinitely more terrifying than any possible scenario that might result from just staying in the bathroom, pacing and trying to hold my cheeks together.

It amuses me now to think about how I might have handled the situation if I had my current confident ability to assert and articulate myself. Oddly enough, as a defense mechanism to cope with my quaking childhood state, I developed a pretty darn self-righteous streak over the years, as those who have ever witnessed me haggle over the price of an incorrect cable bill or parking garage ticket will attest to. If, as a nine-year-old, I had been able to articulate myself in such a manner, I would have certainly found the nearest yard monitor, and handled the situation something like this:

"Excuse me, yard monitor? Yes, hello. I'm sorry; I don't know your name. Cheryl? Oh yes, I see it right there on your name tag. Listen, Cheryl, do you mind if I talk to you for a moment? No? Excellent. Actually, can we sit down at that empty lunch table over there? The thing is, I'm in a rather odd predicament, and I want to make sure we're on the same page. Great. Hey, are you hungry? You work so hard, standing out there with just your whistle every lunch period. Can I get you a muffin or something? I have some dimes in my backpack. Alright, then. Maybe next time. Cheryl, I don't see any wisdom in skirting the issue here, so I'm just going to come right out and say it. I can't unbutton my pants. Ridiculous, isn't it? I know! You'd think I, an Upper Grader, could at least handle that. But really, my nimble little fingers are failing me and I'm at the end of my rope here. I gave it my best. And to be honest with you Cheryl, I'm feeling a little restless in the bowel department, if you know what I mean. Right. I know this is a bit embarrassing, but you're an adult here; I'm sure you've seen worse. So, if you could just reach down and provide me with some assistance, I'll be off to the restroom to relieve myself and we'll call it a day. Would you be so kind? Oh, excellent. Excellent. Cheryl, you are fantastic."

But it didn't happen like that. I couldn't bring myself to tell anyone, and so after many more agonizing minutes pacing back and forth in that tiny yellow stall, it finally happened. I shat myself. A nine-year-old dressed smartly as the darkly heroic Phantom of the Opera. An Upper Grader. I let it go, and it was not pretty. It was worse than expected.

I was past the point of no return.

I won't go into details about the rest of the day. It was something of a blur, and it would just be a bunch of poop and fart jokes anyway (not that I don't love those...). I will just simply say that I made it through the school day, on the bus across town, and back home without anyone finding out. There were some suspicious noses with good olfactory senses throughout the day, but other than that no one was the wiser.

At home, I broke down crying, nauseous from the makeup and the guilt, and told my mom. She helped me clean up. She was an absolute hero about it. There are many things they don't tell you when you bring a newborn home, and I'm pretty sure one of them is that one day nine years later you may be attending to your sniffling shit-logged little Phantom. We found another pair of black slacks, and I went out trick-or-treating a few hours later. I had a blast.

I'm not sure if the Phantom ever lurked around the catacombs of l'Opera with poopy pants. I do know he was something of a loner, paranoid and wary of strangers. Maybe he would have handled the problem just like I did. Maybe that's why he was down there in the first place.