PUT THE SEAT DOWN: An Ode to the Commode

You're Too Old to Spend the Rest of Your Life on the Couch: Let's Adventure!

Photo by Edoardo Busti on Unsplash

On men, bladders and winter adventures

Kerrie and I weren’t in love, but we were in lust. Enough so that when he found a high-country A-frame cabin for rent in Evergreen, in the mountains just west of Denver, I joined him.

Said cabin was a three-season hunting cabin, never intended for deep winter use. The rent, however, was what attracted Kerrie. It was cheap.

For good reason.

The place was spare: a single upstairs bedroom, a single potbellied stove in the center which inhaled wood, and a tiny bathroom on the main floor. That bathroom had the best view in the house: a huge single-pane glass window floor to ceiling that looked right into the woods.

No insulation.

No Internet either. This was back in 1988, the year I returned from four years overseas. At the time I had no means of transporation, so I would be in that tiny cabin all day every day. I didn’t realize what idyllic mountain living was going to look like.

Anything but idyllic, but I digress.

I’ve always been a leaky vessel, and have always had to pee at night. To do so meant traipsing down rickety narrow stairs, past the stove to the toilet, which was damned cold because, well, nine thousand feet up and winter.

One particularly brutal cold night our stove had run its course, of course. The house was slowly becoming a deep freezer. With a full bladder, I snuck out of the warm bed, stumbled my way to the loo and sat down.

And fell all the way in.

Kerrie had left the seat up, natch. That wasn’t all.

The sub-zero temperatures had frozen the water in the toilet into an ice skating rink.

It was damned near dry-ice cold.

My ass froze against it immediately, making it impossible to get back up without serious injury to said ass.

So there I was, jammies jammed around my ankles, butt cheeks frozen against the solid ice in the toilet.

AND a full bladder.

All I could do was laugh.

Between gulps of air and guffaws, I hollered

KERRIE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

multiple times. Finally the (strictly temporary) lust of my life stumbled downstairs to see what the hell all the yelling was about.

Sleepily he registered what was going on. Without a word he left, located a hair dryer, then laid on the bath mat to point the hair dryer at the porcelain throne.

Nice idea, Sparky, but we’ll burn the hair dryer out before anything melts.

After a while, as I waited patiently with my frozen ass and bulging bladder for the hair dryer to produce results, he fell asleep.

I swear that man could sleep naked in a blizzard with a grizzly bear munching on his gizzard.

It was his snoring that alerted me to the fact that the hair dryer’s heat was pointed in no specific direction, and certainly not in any direction to free my frozen ass.

This so tickled me that I laughed even harder.

And peed myself.

The blessed warmth gathered at my butt, and in seconds did the trick. With a great sucking sound that would have done John Carpenter’s The Thing proud, I pulled my frozen cheeks up and off the ice rink that was the toilet bowl water.

And kicked Kerrie to get him to go back to bed.

This experience put a lid on my lust.

I moved out shortly thereafter.

Warning to women in love with mountain men: glue the down the lid.

Let’s play.

Photo by Jakob Owens on Unsplash

I hope this story tickled you, as it tickled me to retell it. It’s absolutely true which makes it even better. If you had fun, please consider

If you know someone who is thinking about cohabiting in the high country with a mountain man, please consider

Either way, let’s laugh.