If you’re a totally well-adjusted person who accepts the fact that human beings have to poop, even on a first date, because Hey, people gotta poop, this article isn’t for you. This article is for everyone else: Those who would sooner die than let it be known by a love interest that they need to drop a load.
This article is for the girl on that Tinder date in Bristol who, after she pooped and clogged up the toilet, panicked, plucked the log out of the toilet, wrapped it in toilet paper and chucked it out the window. Unfortunately, said log actually just went into a gap between two windows and got stuck, where it would ostensibly live and smell forever (i.e., reveal her total craziness). So she confessed to her date, then tried to rescue the poop by crawling in between the two windows. Ultimately, she got stuck, firefighters were called her, the window was damaged and she made internet history as the most sympathetic person on earth.
A comment on a guide for men on how to deal with clogging up your girlfriend’s toilet proves men have the same issue. “Actually, a real man would just hold it till he got home or found a public toilet,” commenter Jared writes. “Until you are at the point in your relationship where you both can rip a fart in front of each other and laugh about it, you best not think about fouling up her bathroom with your nasty fast food diet pooh smell.”
I agree: Pooping onsite is a level three relationship intimacy milestone alongside meeting someone’s parents. In that spirit, we salute the Poop Girl, who’s given us all a valuable lesson in what not to do on a first Tinder date. In fact, we can all learn from the cautionary tale that is her poop story.
Here are the only options, as I see it, when you have to poop on a date at someone else’s house, and holding it isn’t an option:
Flee
Pretend you forgot something in your car. Pretend you need a personal item from a nearby drugstore. Pretend you need to step outside and take a call, even, but hoof it to the nearest public bathroom and get the situation handled. This, of course, doesn’t work if you’re not mobile, or the area isn’t walkable. And it doesn’t mean you have to end the date—unless you think the pooping is going to be an all-night poop situation.
Extreme option: The somewhere else you go could just be outside, but — and you can’t fuck this up — it should be very dark and very private. Getting caught pooping outside in public is crazier than tossing your poop out the window.
This is an immutable fact.
Just Poop
Flush first and make sure the toilet is working. From there, you can consult any number of guides for how to poop at someone’s house you’re dating so they don’t know you pooped—from timing it until after they’ve used the bathroom, to waiting for them to go flip the laundry, to creating a raft of toilet paper for your poop to land silently on. Other tricks: Run water (doesn’t work); hum or sing (doesn’t work); play music loudly (works, but is annoying).
Let’s say, though, you clog the toilet up anyway.
Luckily, you’ve still got a few options.
Toss It Out A ‘Real’ Window
The Poop Girl’s idea was actually genius, but if you’re going to toss poop out a window, make sure that window is a window, and not some trick window poop trap. Also, aim well. Dropping poop on someone’s head isn’t the outcome you’re looking for. And when flinging poop, always do so with the ultimate stealth.
Unclog the Toilet
If there’s a plunger, obviously try using it first. Do so “quickly, repetitively, with strong force.” If that doesn’t work, your next best bet is to lube up the bowl and force the water through. You can do this by first turning off the water to the toilet (a knob behind the bowl), squirting a healthy amount of shampoo in the bowl and using hot water from the tap to fill it up so the poo breaks down and forces through. (Unfortunately, you need a gallon of water and 15 minutes for this strategy).
Also, if you happen to have a mop and a plastic bag — what are the odds? — you can make a makeshift plunger by wrapping the mop in the plastic bag and sticking that sucker into the bowl hole. Similarly, other people claim you can just use the toilet brush wrapped in plastic. Finally, you could use a wire hanger, unraveled, as a makeshift auger to try to force it all down.
Confess
Here it comes, your worst nightmare: You and the person you’ve been trying to impress all night will now look at your poop together, sooner than you wanted (which, we know, was never). And that sucks. But as much as you’re the person with the weird poop thing in the first place, no one should actually be weird about poop because we all do it. So laugh about it and deal with it.
Whatever you do, though, don’t follow this advice to “throw bleach in your mind’s eye or move on,” as in, break up with the person.
If you would actually dump someone over a dump, you’re the dump.
Tracy Moore
Tracy Moore is a staff writer at MEL. She covers all the soft sciences like psychology, sex, relationships and parenting, but since this is a men’s magazine, occasionally the hard ones. Formerly at Jezebel.
