Salmonella dub

There is a song by the band Cream, released in 1967, called Take it Back. It is one of the clearest descriptions of fear and anguish at the idea of militarism, and a reaction to the arbitrariness of the draft - a lottery of death. The song talks about the need to stay at home at take loads of intravenous drugs and fuck the fuck out of one's girlfriend, instead of suffer a cruel pointless horrendous death.

Its a good song. "I got this need, the need to stay alive". I understand. "I want to stay here and sleep in my own bed, need all your loving, long blonde hair". I also have this need, although my preferences are other people's beds, and red hair.

There are many motivations on the human psyche: to avoid conflict, to make love. And, dear reader, I've had my share of fear and loathing and arbitrary horror, which I shall relate now...

The other night I went out to dinner with a fabulous redhead. Redheads are awesome. I like them - I may have mentioned this. This one is particularly fine, and I will call her Siobhan. Since that's her fucking name. Anyway, I had planned to take Siobhan out for a really nice dinner at this new French restaurant in town. I know the chef. Who is incongruously called "Paul". I think he's Lebanese. He's usually pretty good at the whole cooking thing - he's got a gold star from a French tyre maker to prove it. He told me that the scallops would be real good.

So. I get Siobhan. We go to the restaurant. I ordered the scallops. Siobhan goes escargot. We ordered some really nice peppery red wine, and commenced to chow down.

I scarfed my scallops, which are served one on a bed of avocado and crushed artichoke, the other on a slice of black pudding. After a second glass of the fantastic merlot (of which I can't for the life of me remember the name - bastard!), my guts starts to growl like an angry maelstrom of retribution.

I excuse myself:

"Excuse me a moment, Siobhan."

I find the dunny, thinking to take a quick slash, and dislodge this aggressive fart. One thunderous flatulation, and I can get back to the merlot.

So I get my cock out and start pissing. And shit myself in an extravagant, rancid apocalypse of partially digested mollusc and fried pigs blood. I stood there in the echoing aftermath, shocked for a moment, trying to undo the horror with a kind of reverse peristaltic anal puckering, to no avail. I could feel the shit cooling on my arse cheeks.

Quell horreur.

I stripped off, and examined the contents of my Calvins, seated on the toilet. There was a good half pint of evil brown colloid, fizzing and flocculating in my underwear. It was hellish. Already about 100, 120 seconds have passed. Enough to be zipping back up, and washing my hands looking for the peppermint and aloe vera hand refresher and linen hand towel. I'm seconds away from a timely re-arrival at the table. Any second now I should be asking: "How were the snails?"

Instead I'm contemplating the disaster in my pants. What would MacGuyver do? A hastily contrived linen nappy? Never mind that. What would Jesus do? Probably make some archangels sort it out. Never mind that bastard: what would Obama do?

There is no stimulus package will fix this disaster. No, we bloody well can not, my good man - the shit has irrevocably "gone down", as they say in Illinois. Yea, though I shall walk through the valley of the shadow of shite, I shall fear no evil. No - I'm doomed, the night is ruined, I'm humiliated and will never see this succulent redhead again.

Despondently, I take off the infected Calvins and chuck them in the basket for the used linen hand towels, where they land heavily. Christ knows what Paul's dry cleaner will make of that. Or him, when he gets his laundry back. It serves the motherfucker right for poisoning me. I wipe away the worst of the cataclysmic colonic discharge, feeling right up to my backbone chasing the vestiges of evil smelling, effervescent waste. I even check the tails of my exquisitely expensive shirt for non-trademarked patterns. I scrutinise my trousers for the telltale Rorschach of anal leakage. I wash my hands in expensive peppermint and aloe vera lotion. Mmmm, moisturising... I carefully arrange the linen hand towel over the unspeakable menace below. I regard myself in the mirror - I am Jack's disgusted relief.

Clean, I return. Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more. Onwards, Christian soldiers.

"How were the snails?"

Later that night there was a soft moan of appreciation as I gently bit the soft skin of her neck, and slid a hand along her yielding thigh. She gasped gently in surprise as she discovered I was, in fact, a member of her majesty's commando service, ready at a moments notice.

In the morning, while Siobhan was making the coffee, I lay there, still bilious, thinking about the terror of those few minutes in Paul's rest room. "I scare easily. Take that thing right out of here." I can still hear Clapton's guitar and the mocking of the harmonica.

So I get home. Walking through the door I text Siobhan: "blah blah, nice time... see you again soon, blah blah".

My flatmate is inconsolable. She is collapsed in her bed moaning.

"What's wrong?"

"Ooooh, my stomach! I'm dying."

Snap.

I remember everything now.

Lunch. The flatmate cooked a late lunch. I go to the kitchen. Everything is still there. There is a single miserable chicken breast, uncooked, but still in its package, festering gently on the bench. The other three had formed part of a rather bland stir fry. There is general detritus nearby. Some mushrooms, some of those fucking bean sprout things. I fucking hate bean sprout things.

"How longs this chicken been here?"

"I dunno. Since we got back from shopping."

WHAT?

She'd been shopping the night before last. I'd picked her and the groceries up from Sainsburys on the way home from the White Horse, and then gone back out with some of the guys from work.

The vector became clear. I'd been poisoned by my flatmate. Paul was innocent, acquitted by a novus actus interveniens. The flatmate was suffering the same intestinal Armageddon as me because we'd both eaten the fucking chicken which had developed bioweapons grade storm-trooper e.coli after sitting on the kitchen bench for almost sixteen hours.

Today's reason I hate my flatmate. Not only is she incapable of doing up the lid on the toothpaste; not only does she insist on putting her toothbrush in the same beaker as mine in the bathroom, where the bristles can touch; she cannot even unpack her own fucking shopping, and put the chicken in the fridge. What kind of fucktard doesn't know about chicken? You put that shit right the fuck away, safe in the fridge where it can't decompose into life threatening filth.

Now I'm in this position: Siobhan thinks I'm a kind of predator that refuses to wear pants, on the basis that they inhibit the cock's pendulous motion. I don't mind that at all. Paul, on the other hand, thinks someone in his clientèle, possibly that fucker in the Hawes and Curtis shirt with the gold cuff links, is so depraved that he will shit himself - in a Michelin starred restaurant, no less - will brazenly sit right there at the table with a glass of red wine in his hand, and shit right into his Calvins, and after luxuriating in its warmth for a few moments will take that shroud of turding, and drop it amongst napkins each worth at least as much as a ramekin of his creme brulee.

And I do love Paul's creme brulee. I'll never be able to spoon a single spoonful of that delicious, creamy, brown sugar encrusted alchemy into my face ever again, and for that I hate my flatmate.