Siphon

The best things in life are free. People waste so much money and effort on things that aren’t necessary.

Take drugs for instance.

Not literally, but as an example.

People seem to predominantly use drugs for two reasons: to enhance life’s good qualities or to escape its bad ones. We all want to feel the best that we can for every single waking second of our lives. Escape the monotonous cycle of the nine-to-five hour working day. Debaucherous drug and or alcohol fuelled weekends (or weekdays, I’m not judging) can be turned into opportunistic circumstances to allow oneself to feel like they’re walking on sunbeams. Or however that song goes. But with substance use and abuse comes a wide range of undesirable side effects that can be unpleasant in regards to both the body and mind. Mostly body though, because, you know, the debilitating addictive nature of drugs and whatnot.

Even though I’m fourteen and don’t know jack shit about life, I know addiction to potentially hazardous substances isn’t something I necessarily want – even if I want to stroll on the surface of the sun. Or however that song goes.

Anyway, there I am one day taking a piss (it’s relevant, I promise) and I’d been holding back what felt like a barrel of cider in my lower abdomen for nearly half a day (courtesy of a family road trip that consisted mainly of highways) and I’m spraying the contents of said metaphorical barrel all over the said literal porcelain bowl of the toilet interior like a fireman’s hose at top-pressure.

When I entered the house after getting home from the roundtrip my feet barely touched the staircase as I shot up the steps and threw myself into the bathroom, belt already being undone; zip already heading south.

Upon being freed of the barricades consisting of Denim jeans and boxers, it didn’t take more than a millisecond for a certain part of my body to register that it was now safe to release the flood gates. And then it happened.

Absolute nirvana.

I closed my eyes, exhaled a long breath and felt goosebumps ripple throughout my entire body. I cannot stress this enough: absolute sheer nirvana.

Now, I may be fourteen and not know much about sex outside of some personal hand to gland combat, but this felt better than any orgasm that I had experienced while single-handedly playing the flesh flute. While taming the wild one-eyed trouser snake. While helping put Mr. Kleenex’s kids through college. You get the point.

It was better than huffing glue out of a bag and certainly better than placing a permanent marker beneath a nostril and inhaling.

Anyway, an epiphany occurred to me – this is essentially the desired result of drug use in principle. It sounds retarded, I know. But it is, I swear. Just because I didn’t achieve the sensational release through smoking, snorting or shooting it into a vein doesn’t make it any less valid.

Anyone who says different are likely just jealous that they didn’t discover it first.

This discovery was perfectly tailored to my needs. It didn’t involve the consumption of potentially hazardous substances to achieve it (unless something went wrong with my town’s tap water) and it had none of the negative stigma of recreational drug use attached to it; what with it being a perfectly natural bodily occurrence and all. And, best of all, no harm could ever come from achieving bliss from piss.

It was perfect. My private escape from boredom that could do me no harm.

So three months or so go by and I’d been drinking like a camel near enough everyday throughout this time period; storing up as much water content as possible in my bladder to make the eventual release that was to come all the more satisfying. The more my stomach ached, the better my piss induced high would be. It was brilliant. I’d store up as much water content in my bladder as was possible during my time at school, then get home, race up the stairway to heaven and allow my body to transport me to a realm of unmapped pleasures. The ascent up the stairs became a much-anticipated pilgrimage to a sacred and wonderful place – a place where I could feel for a moment like the unified conscious of all beings throughout all time in the universe were experiencing a grand, ubiquitous transcendence together.

I’m not being dramatic, I’m being honest.

For those few months I was the most content I’d ever been. Being privy to a divine secret that no one else knew. I considered telling my friends at school about my discovery but decided against it; telling them about it seemed like it would take something away. And God forbid one of the would-be traitors take claim for the discovery.

So life was pretty good. School break eventually comes around and I take full advantage – chugging anything in my parents’ house that existed in a liquid form, eating any and all food objects with water content.

My parents were pleased with my new-found interest in fruit and vegetables. During the break I was without the problems that my school presented – bathroom breaks and whatnot.

One night, after an episode of pee induced glee, I thought I would get a head start for the next day. I guzzled half a pint of milk and drank two cans of diet-coke before falling into a deep slumber which I hoped would go smoothly and without interruption so that the release for the next day would be all the better. I awoke in the morning to intense cramps in my stomach and couldn’t have been happier. This was surely a good sign that a great release was inbound.

Upon walking into the kitchen to make myself some breakfast and drink more fluids, I found a note stuck to the fridge written by my mother informing me that her and my father had taken my younger brother to his first day of swimming lessons and they would be back around early noon. The note ended in a P.S. with my mother asking me whether I had drunk half of the newly bought pint of milk last night. Being reminded of this, I finished the remaining half with my breakfast.

Around lunch time, before my family were back, the aches and pain in my lower abdomen became so intense that I could no longer refrain from delaying the glorious inevitability. I walked up the stairs with a natural pace, my stomach feeling like a volcano ready to pop.

I entered the bathroom – which had now become to me what a brothel is to a young man with more libido than logic – and I undid my belt and braced for the sweet bodily rapture that was but moments away.

Upon standing in front of the toilet for close to five minutes or so and not passing a drop, I knew something was wrong. I got nervous that I wasn’t pissing and that didn’t help matters any because I’m a person who can’t piss when they’re nervous. For whatever reason, when I’m nervous, my urethra might as well be sealed together with superglue and staples.

And so it was that no matter how much I willed myself to, I couldn’t piss. I stood in front of the toilet for I think five more minutes and produced nothing. At this point my stomach felt as though it was going to haemorrhage and burst open. I was sweating profusely from pain and rising panic.

I pulled up my boxers and jeans - leaving my belt undone – and I staggered out of the bathroom, every footstep making my lower abdomen – which at this point felt like it was full of magma – ache to the point where it became almost impossible to walk normally.

In addition to feeling like John Hurt during the chest burster scene from Alien, my sweat drenched head also began to throb like a heart under strain.

It was pretty much the opposite of nirvana.

I walked – or waddled – to my bedroom, grabbed my laptop and started searching for reasons as to why it felt like I was pregnant with a boulder that was perpetually enlarging.

After a few minutes of search and deduction, I realised I was probably experiencing symptoms of water intoxication. Also known as water poisoning; or hyperhydration.

What immediately grabbed my attention was that this particular condition is fatal. I was essentially dying because I couldn’t urinate.

So much for my little private delight being risk free. This was to be accidental suicide by piss.

At this point my panic was at an all-time high – my limbs now felt weak in addition to my seething headache and my stomach housing its growing boulder.

In my panic I called emergency services and informed them that I was dying because I couldn’t pee.

No, this isn’t a prank call; please help me.

The lady on the phone said an ambulance would be there soon and that I should stay on the line. At this point I think I probably looked like a junkie going through the peak of a detox – skin as pale as snow with a shiny layer of sweat coating my body like clingfilm.

While I sat cradling my stomach the phone slid from my hand, falling to the floor. I was certain that bending over to pick it up would have caused me to collapse. I made one attempt to reach for it but unfortunately my arm came in about three feet too short.

From the dropped phone the lady’s voice was barely audible – asking questions that I couldn’t really hear or process due to my brain feeling like it was being crushed from all angles by industrial strength machinery. I sat for a little while more cradling my stomach, willing myself to piss at the expense of my jeans and bedding.

It was in this state of delirium and pain that I came up with an idea.

Using what little strength I could muster and using the walls for support, I managed to slowly drag myself towards my intended destination so that I could acquire the tools I would need for what seemed at the time an ingenious, life-saving idea.

I was pretty sure I was going to die in agonizing pain and that it would be too late by the time the ambulance arrived. I would be a corpse because I was unable to do what came naturally came to me in all previous instances of my fourteen years alive.

Getting down the staircase became a challenge to me in the same way that it is to a toddler. But, using my older, superior intellect, I lent backwards on my hands and feet and crab walked down the steps so as to not upset my stomach any further or possibly tumble and fall.

Upon coming to a safe rest at the bottom of the staircase I slowly got back on my two feet, pushing myself up from the steps with my hands and grabbing whatever was near for support when I could. From there, I made my way into the garage and a wave of cool air hit my brow, cooling it slightly which was much appreciated for the three seconds it lasted.

I made my way over to some waist high shelves and rummaged through some old boxes, desperately looking for one of the two tools that was going to save my life.

After nearly fainting due to the amount of effort needed to stand on two feet and rummaging through miscellaneous junk when your urine is killing you, I found it - a bendy clear plastic tube that was about the length of my arm when straightened out.

Upon obtaining the first tool needed for my salvation, I staggered back out of the garage, though not before taking a second to rest against the door frame.

I limped my way to the kitchen from there, using the walls in-between as my much-needed support. Once in the kitchen, I yanked upon the utensils draw and located the second and final tool that would deliver me from this betrayal of my body — a stainless-steel meat syringe.

Like I said — it seemed like a good idea at the time.

My mother had used the syringe on a turkey the previous Christmas and it seemed clean. The bendy, clear plastic tube from the garage less so – faded black smudges present at four different places on the exterior.

I looked at were to be my makeshift surgical tools and was having second thoughts. The pain in my body that seemed to be increasing by the second prompted me to go through with what, I’ll say again, seemed like a good idea at the time.

I was decent in Physics at school. Better at it than Biology and Chemistry. I knew that a tube placed in liquid could decrease the atmospheric pressure on its surface, pushing said liquid up and out of the other end of the tube.

No, really — it seemed like a good idea at the time.

I undid the buttons on my shirt, exposing my abdomen which was glistening with sweat. I picked up the meat syringe, held it an arms width away and stared at it as if pleading with it to take the responsibility of what was to come next out of my hands.

After a minute of procrastination and self-motivation I brought forward the syringe and aimed the steel tip of the needle above and then below my belly button, alternating between the two spots and then finally settling on below the button but aimed up slightly. I was pretty sure the bladder was around there somewhere.

I stood with both hands gripping the syringe, pointing it towards myself like a Japanese warrior ready to commit seppuku to salvage his honour. I pulled then pushed the syringe, plunging the needle into myself; arching my upper torso forward and driving it as far as it would go into my innards. I stopped pushing when the steel of the syringe came to rest just below my bellybutton, meaning there was no more length of needle to go.

After the initial pain of flesh penetration by turkey utensil had subsided and joined the cacophony of other screaming body nerves and whatnot I dared to look down and inspect the damage – there was no blood, but there was about six or seven inches of needle absent from the syringe that had been there previously.

Knowing that the next part would require fast acting, I inhaled through my nostrils and then held my breath. Then I yanked the needle out of my body – it came out a lot faster than it went in – and I felt a strange sensation, like my big intestine was being drawn out of me in an act of tug of war as I pulled the steel out of me. I exhaled sharply out my mouth.

I tossed the syringe on the counter and grabbed the plastic tube, began straightening it out as much as possible with damp hands.

Meanwhile, blood was now beginning to slowly trickle its way out of my new belly button located below the original, making its way down towards my crotch.

I inserted one end of the plastic tube in the new belly button, gritting my teeth together due to the fact that the circumference of the tube’s rim was slightly larger than that of the needle.

I admittedly had not anticipated this in my rush when gathering the tools.

Pushing the tube in my body, widening the entrance of the flesh tunnel and all proceeding inches made to my bladder previously by the needle, I knew that I was getting close to knocking on the door of unconsciousness.

Not good, to say the least.

When I believed the tube to be sufficiently deep enough, I curved the opposite end and brought it towards my face, bending my upper body towards it and meeting it in the 10 middle. I drew a deep breath and then, pressing my lips against the end of the tube, began to blow.

I blew and blew; blew until my grip slacked on the tube and I felt lightheaded.

I Blew, blew, blew.

And I bleh. Bleh. Bleh

And I hoh… hoh… hoh…

And then, just when I thought it was over, I felt something.

I felt release.

My back arched straight, goosebumps rose from the top of my pelvis and rapidly spread across and up my back. Tingles were going off like fireworks all over my body.

Nirvana.

Bliss.

Delight.

Joy.

Pleasure.

Ecstasy.

Elation.

I released my mouth from the tube, took in a couple of breaths of air, then noticed a movement in the tube – a murky substance that looked like apple juice mixed with chocolate syrup – that was slowly rising up the tube; a light layer of bubbles and froth atop it.

The substance rose up until it breached the surface and rained downwards towards the floor, showering my hand that gripped the tube in hot rivulets that felt somewhat soothing.

Watching this, feeling faint, I think I chuckled once and then collapsed to the floor.

My head against the cold kitchen tile, the substance still coming out of me and building in an expanding puddle around me, the last thing I can remember is a strange high-pitched sound getting louder and louder; seeing the colours red and blue flicker in the reflection of the living room window which was visible from where my head rested on a surface that was once cool but which was now warm, getting warmer.

I woke up in the hospital.

I was alive. (Good news).

I had a catheter inserted in my dick. (Bad news).

The hospital treated me for two weeks. I was nearly dead when the paramedics found me marinating like a pork tenderloin in a mixture of… well, you can guess.

Nowadays, I’m sober. I’m okay. Except, you know, I have a second belly button scar and piss from a tube into a plastic bag at fourteen.

My popularity at school decreased from this revelation upon returning after the break. Especially with girls. They probably think I can’t get an erection with a tube in my dick. I can but choose not to due to the pain.

I think one would agree that the unfortunate circumstance I find myself in coinciding with puberty is just unfortunate.

The staff told my parents what had happened but there’s a confidentiality surrounding the information. Probably because if the information leaked, it might inspire copycat behaviour, and a bunch of teenagers wandering around with piss bags and piss bag accessories probably isn’t a good thing.

A takeaway from my ordeal? One should exercise extra caution and be prepared for the unexpected if they desire to walk on sunshine. Or however that songs goes.