No, “wiping my ass” isn’t slang for buying drugs or sexing models. I can forgive you for thinking that, since I'm incredibly in tune with the kids of today. I'm hip with their Avril Lavignes and their Tracy Chapmans and their enormous, superfluously-pocketed pants.

No, what follows is a possibly far-too-accurate documentation of events that involve bum-wiping. Sensitive readers and those of you eating something are strongly advised to not read the following, which involves my ass in pretty much every paragraph.

On with the show, this is itttttt!

I was in a government building applying for a passport when the call to action came. Some calls to action you can clench and ignore. You're forcing your excretus back up your intestines by doing so, of course--and since that doesn’t sound remotely healthy, I don’t recommend it.

Having said that, there are times in anyone’s life –at a board meeting, giving birth to a child, negotiating terrorist surrender during a hijacked bus scare – that clenching is the only sensible option. Given most hospitals’ propensity for mix-ups, going number two during a difficult childbirth could result in you driving a shirt-and-pants-wearing dump to childcare while your offspring floats in a maternity ward toilet somewhere.

Other times, though, the choice is entirely out of your hands. The President of NASA could be offering you a billion dollars to navigate sex with the Olsen twins in a space station; it doesn't matter. Sometimes your bowels just tell you—they don’t ask--that they need to lose excess baggage or make an emergency landing. Over a toilet, in your pants in a crowded elevator--where you want to drop the payload is in your hands. The only variable not up for discussion is when, because that's now. Drop what you’re doing and find porcelain.

This is where I found myself while filling out passport applications. Not overly eager to messily shit myself in a government building (it might be illegal for all I know), I dropped what I was doing and immediately hunted a bathroom while awkwardly crab-walking.

Luckily for me, the seventh unmarked hallway I searched had a "MEN" sign on it. Barring it being the entrance to an exclusive males-only after-hours club—and were they in for an surprise if it was—I’d hit paydirt.

I’ll graciously spare you the uncomfortable details (you're welcome). Suffice it to say, though: mission accomplished. No complications in obtaining the primary objective; in fact, it easily ranked in the top twenty (those of you who know what I mean know what I mean here). The only kink occurred when I went to grab some toilet paper, and of course found none.

I’m told there are stages of overcoming alcohol addiction; denial, anger, eventually acceptance. There are also stages to realizing you don’t have toilet paper at a time when its presence would be most crucial—though in remembering the incident, I don’t recall “acceptance” anywhere in there. Shock, of course (“No toilet paper? But I need that! For reasons I’d rather not go into!”); tailed quickly by feelings of intense betrayal towards the custodian (“Who has time to check TP stock when I’m out behind a Kimco bin smoking this enormous ass-cocking joint?”). Then, of course, shame (“I have shit all over my ass, and I’m powerless to take action”); rounded out by blind desperate panic (“I must conduct reconnaissance”).

Hiking up my pants with deliberate care and waddling like a constipated penguin, I moved to the only other stall on the premises; pulled my pants down again; prepared myself for the ass-wiping of a lifetime; then reached over to the TP dispenser to find it, also, empty.

Entering the next stage of toilet paper withdrawal symptoms, I spent a good two minutes mentally cursing the janitor, who for the purposes of my esteem I imagined to be both retarded and miserable, burdened with twelve children and cursing his debts as he walks across the street, only to be pummeled mercilessly by the grill of my car and backed over repeatedly.

I once again hiked up my pants and penguin-waddled out of the stall, checking for paper towel dispensers next to the sinks and finding wall-mounted hand-drying units. A quick search uncovered only a wadded-up piece of paper towel under the sinks, which—considering the bathroom only supplied hand-drying machines—had to have been brought into the public bathroom by a third party, used for whatever purpose someone might bring their own hand towels into a bathroom for, then left indiscriminately in a sopping-wet mass.

I’ll be honest: it wasn’t an easy decision. Ultimately, though, I decided that applying anything to my own body that was currently wet and clinging to the floor of a public bathroom probably wasn’t getting me any cleaner. Cursing the janitor one more time, I penguin-walked awkwardly into the outside world, my butt-cheeks full of unwiped ass-mess and rubbing against each other with a greasy quickness I wanted over and done with as soon as possible.

I ambled into the food court and discovered just how far industry has come to ensuring regular people never come into contact with paper in any way. Remember when bathrooms actually had paper towel dispensers? When food courts had napkin dispensers? I'm as much a Greenpeace activist as the next guy, but let's be frank—when you’re walking around with an assful of unwiped unpleasantness, fuck fucking trees in their stupid treeholes. I would have gladly burned a rain forest filled with hippies for a half-roll of generic brand one-ply.

I ambled up to a Chinese restaurant and asked if I might have some napkins, praying the cashier wouldn’t ask me why. The cashier winced visibly, as if I’d grabbed her palm and cut it. She looked under the register with pained deliberation for a good minute before producing a single napkin, with the weight and consistency of a grocery bill.

“Could I have more?” I asked, aware that you can buy a box of napkins from a wholesaler for about forty cents, making my request for three more napkins a net loss to her restaurant of about two-ninths of a penny. Though I realized how irrational it was, the actions of this one woman were making me forever hate the Chinese as a race.

She considered my request for a longish while while I busied myself letting shit harden on my ass. Finally, with a magnanimous flourish, she produced a second check-sized napkin, giving me a look that hoped to impress upon me the magnitude of my request.

“Could I have more?” I asked.

“No more,” She replied. “Not free.” I had reached the limit of her generosity, it seemed. Collecting my meager bounty, I ambled penguin-like back to the bathrooms with my two napkins, hoping to get the job done.

Of course not. Even in optimal conditions, I’ve simply got more ass than two air-thin pieces of napkin can accommodate. Several minutes of walking and jostling had aggravated the matter to a crisis of half-roll proportions.

“I could really use more napkins,” I found myself saying to the woman a minute later.

“No more napkins!” she said, putting her foot down. “What you need them for?”

“I, uh, made a mess in the bathroom,” I said. I wasn't lying in a technical sense; though I left out the fact that I’d twice brought the mess out to the food court since making it.

“You call janitor! That not our job!” she advised.

“I hate you,” I said, meaning it.

Further exploration of the food court turned up several wadded-up napkins near plates of half-finished meals (yoink); a carelessly unguarded stack of four napkins near the register of a deli about to close (also yoink); and a Toronto Star newspaper (worst-case-scenario yoink, and it's not like it didn't deserve what it potentially had coming to it).

Five minutes later, the job was done; I’d rubbed myself raw to compensate for my momentary unpleasantness, leaving me with the feeling like I’d been fucked in the ass by pro wrestlers. But at least I was once again clean. I walked triumphantly back to the passport office and filled out several forms, confident that at the very least, this would be the worst thing to happen to me all day.

This theory was shot to shrapnel not a half hour later, when I mistook a bowl of potpourri for upscale Chex Mix and ate what I thought was an interesting-looking corn chip; but since I’ve already exceeded my humiliation quotient for the day, I’ll leave that for another time.