by Mamrie Hart
There’s a joke in the South that goes:
How do you get a southern girl to suck your dick?
How?
Dip it in ranch.
Followed by a high five and those two dudes going back to playing Halo.
But me? I’ve always hated ranch. However, if the only peanut sauce left in Bali was on someone’s ding-a-ling? Well . . . then I’d have me a new boyfriend.
While I’ve been an on-and-off vegetarian and vegan since the ripe age of nine, this trip was during the few years I fell off the conscientious wagon. In Bali most of my meals consisted of chicken satay and peanut sauce with a side of white rice with peanut sauce followed by some more fucking peanut sauce. I couldn’t get enough.
It wasn’t till about day three that I noticed all that peanut sauce that was coming in was not going out. Nothing was coming out, in fact. My butt should’ve been pumping out peanut sauce like one of those machines at Whole Foods that let you grind your own peanut butter, but alas, it was not.
I tried old faithful: coffee. Lucky for me, Balinese coffee is super potent. They brew it as dense as tar over there, so a couple of cups of that, and I was sure to be sittin’ pretty. I jumped in headfirst. I probably had four cups of coffee in this serene, small back garden of a coffee shop. I caffeinated so hard that, I swear to God, I could feel my eyebrows growing. But I still didn’t have to go. I take that back. I did have to go, in the sense that I needed to leave that fucking garden immediately. I had reached full-on panic attack caffeine levels and found myself in my own Requiem for a Dream but with fewer butt-to-butt dildos.
(Although, come to think of it, a couple of dildos probably would have helped the situation. Dammit, be-hindsight is always twenty-twenty.)
After a few days of not going, wearing a bikini was just straight-up embarrassing. Or, I guess, more embarrassing than usual.
I was more clogged than Bigfoot’s shower drain, so I decided that I needed to take a more radical approach. Since I was in Bali and needed some medical attention, I decided to do what the Balinese do when they are constipated. And I knew just where to go.
The year I went to Bali was the same year the book Eat, Pray, Love, by Elizabeth Gilbert, came out. In case you haven’t read it, the book follows the author’s journey as she finds happiness through the food in Italy, meditation in India, and then love in Bali. If you haven’t read this quintessential lady book, do it now.
In the book, Gilbert becomes friends with a woman named Wayan, who owns a Balinese healing center in the mountain town of Ubud. While Wayan helps her with her messed-up knee, the two become lifelong friends. I had to meet Wayan for myself. Why?
A. Because I had just finished reading the book and thought it would be cool to meet this character in real life.
B. Because I was backed up further than a subway line when someone falls on the tracks, and I thought maybe she could help!
I had a plan but I needed travel buddies. Going to Wayan wasn’t like walking a couple of blocks to go to a drugstore. This place was three hours away, and in a country where I’m pretty sure I saw a macaque driving a Vespa.
“Jillian. Erika. Pack your bags because first thing tomorrow morning we are taking a car to Ubud!”
They looked at me, dumbfounded.
“Come on, guys! Ubud is the cultural center of Bali. We need to get up there and experience the art and music that makes this majestic country.”
“Is it gonna help your butt?” Erika asked.
“Hopefully.”
“Let’s do this!”
We all attempted a three-way high five, which never works. Just like in a normal three-way, you are always left unsatisfied and someone gets accidentally slapped in the face.
The next morning we hired a driver to take us up into the mountains. I was ready to nip this thing in th’Ubud! We had no idea where to find Wayan’s shop, but as soon as we started to ask a local, he rolled his eyes and pointed. Apparently, I wasn’t the first person to seek her out because of the book.
I decided that I would not fangirl out. I was going to play it cool like, “Hi, table for three . . . Wait a second. Are you Wayan from Eat, Pray, Love? Well, I’ll be! It’s Wayan from Eat, Pray Love, girls! And to think, we almost just went to the Olive Garden. What are the chances?!”
We got to her little shop, and sure enough, Wayan seated us herself. One of the things Gilbert would always do in the book is go to Wayan’s healing center for a Vitamin Lunch, which consists of small portions of superhealthy foods and juices. Each dish is labeled with a small laminated postcard, and then Wayan explains the health benefits of each. She presented us with a lovely platter and the cards:
Grilled coconut: rheumatism
Tomato chutney: healthy gums
Tempeh satay: strong bones
Bean sprouts: strengthens muscles, fights infertility
Water spinach: healthy blood, fights insomnia
Fresh papaya: healthy digestion
Digestion? What is this mythical digestion you speak of? I’ll pa-PAY-ya for a second helping! I thought to myself. We finished lunch, which was clean and tasty (but severely lacking in peanut sauce), and then came time for the body reading. It’s basically like a palm reading, but instead of a Romanian woman straight out of My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding telling you your future, Wayan gives you an overview of your health.
She started by picking up my friend Jillian’s hand. After examining it for a while, Wayan concluded that Jillian has heartburn and should get more calcium. Erika was up next and her palm apparently said she should cool it with her intake of red meat and eggs, and also that she would have two children. Then came the moment of truth. She lifted my hand and studied it intensely. She was looking at it so closely, I got paranoid that I hadn’t washed my hands last time I went to the bathroom and she was going to call me out for it. Three straight minutes went by in complete silence. My thoughts got increasingly frantic. Do I need more calcium? Is she going to diagnose me with giving too many hand jobs? Oh shit, do I have a week to live? Speak to me, Wayan! For the love of God, I only have a week to live! SAY SOMETHING, DAMMIT!
She finally released my hand, looked up at me with her sweet face, and said, “Your mind is in the middle. You’re not that smart, and not that stupid.”
And with that, she sashayed away.
B’scuse me?! I hadn’t been that pissed and confused at a Wayan since I saw White Chicks. What kind of shit was that? I tried rationalizing what she had said. Oh . . . mind is in the middle. She’s trying to say I’m a very balanced and rationally thinking person. That’s not that bad, I guess. Who am I kidding? Wayan basically called me an idiot to my face while taking my money! I blamed it on the constipation. Perhaps she couldn’t tell how many kids I was going to have or what dietary changes I should make because my body was so messed up. She couldn’t read my palm because the creases were practically filled with shit, like the spine of an uncleaned shrimp!
Things were getting to the point of serious discomfort, and it was time to take my medicine back west. I’m talking laxatives. Being in a different country, and not being familiar with their medicine brands, I eased in. A couple on day six. A handful on day seven. By day eight, I was downing laxatives like it was 1987 and I couldn’t fit into my prom dress. Finally, on day nine, I took the maximum amount your body can handle in a day. I washed those suckers down with the strongest Balinese coffee I could find.
Still nothing. That is, until six o’clock the next morning. The urgency woke me from my sleep, and my legally blind ass stumbled to the bathroom. The timing was perfect. All my friends were asleep so it meant that no one would be waiting for the bathroom or, worse, hear me testing the strength of Bali’s plumbing system. After about fifteen minutes of me losing my shit (literally), a light knock came at the door.
“Hey, Mame. The car is going to be here in ten minutes.”
Did I imagine that? Was I hallucinating from the sheer ecstasy of finally taking a shit? I’ve never taken Ecstasy before but I imagine the sensation I felt was similar. I was halfway to pulling out glow sticks and dancing to “Sandstorm” when I realized it was the very real voice of Jillian.
“I’ll be right out.” Followed by my ass sounding like a semiautomatic being fired down a garbage disposal.
Apparently, while I was manically gobbling Balinese Ex-Laxes the night before (which I like to think were called Bowel-and-Ease*), I had forgotten that we had an early start the next morning. Because we were going WHITE-WATER RAFTING.
I thought to myself, Which of these idiots planned a white-water rafting trip knowing good and well I haven’t pooped in over a—ohhhhh. It was me. I had planned it assuming my issue would have cleared up. My mind was definitely in the middle. Touché, Wayan. Touché.
Now I had to live with the consequences. You know how people talk about “breaking the seal” when they start drinking? How you can hold your pee as long as you want, but once you finally take a leak, you are going to have to pee every fifteen minutes? Well, I didn’t just break the seal on my ass. The seal had all but joined the witness protection program at this point.
Despite feeling like I could sit on the toilet for the better part of 2007, I sucked it up and joined my friends in the car. It was a miserable trip. I felt like I needed to give birth and the doctor was telling me to hold it in. After 120 grueling minutes, we arrived at the white-water rafting place. As soon as we pulled up, I peeled out of the car in search of a bathroom.
When I finally found it with my heat-seeking missile of a butthole, there was a twenty-person line. Not even just a normal line. Apparently, the lacrosse team of some American college had decided to come to Bali and all use that bathroom that day. There it was. One toilet and two dozen beautiful college athletes before me. It was like I had accidently stumbled into the premise of a very specific fetish movie. I couldn’t do it. The thought of a gaggle of Abercrombie & Fitch models listening to me as I uncorked eight days of evil was too much, so I joined my group and suited up.
Here we are earlier in our trip about to attend a small village’s Full Moon Festival. We had made friends with a local named Mangde (pictured), and his sisters dressed us up in their traditional garb. I put on a smile but, Lord knows, I was super uncomfortable with my own full moon . . . my butt.
We hit the river with a bang. Literally. It was the last month of the dry season in Bali and the water level was super low. This posed two problems. One, this whole excursion was going to take a lot longer than we had expected, and two, the river was gonna be bumpy. As soon as the raft hit the water, I felt like I was being punched in the colon.
I asked our instructor about how long the trip would be. He confidently and politely replied, “Boom boom.”
Yes, boom boom. No, he wasn’t speaking in Black Eyed Peas lyrics. This was how he guided us. “Boom boom” roughly translated to “Hold on to your tits, girls, we’re about to hit a boulder.” I didn’t want to be a negative Nancy and ruin the experience for my friends, so after about a half hour of almost boom-booming in my shorts, I decided to take action.
I dug deep into my river experience of tubing and began instructing everyone on our raft. I yelled at them to paddle right! I yelled at them to paddle left! I yelled at them because I was about to defecate in a rubber boat! The urgency of my bowels transformed me into an Olympic coxswain.*
The guide couldn’t tell me how far away from the end we were, but he didn’t need to. My ass could tell. Have you ever watched someone on the beach with a metal detector? The closer it gets to metal, the more intense the beeping becomes. That was my ass getting closer to a bathroom.
We finally reached the end of the river and I straight-up Usain Bolted to the bathroom. I won’t go into detail about the wonders of what occurred in those following five minutes. (A girl’s got to keep a little mystery, right? Said me, never.) But I can say that shit was orgasmic. If I’d had a cigarette I would have immediately lit it, then high-fived myself. When I had fully deflated and regained composure, I strutted out of that bathroom like a boy after his first blow job. Part of me expected people to be applauding and lifting me up on their shoulders. Although that still would have been a risky move, considering the situation.
Once I got over the hump of the dump, my body went back to regularly scheduled digestion. I felt like a human! I could eat without being in pain again! I could actually get drunk again! (Apparently, when you have a Sizzler buffet’s worth of food just waiting to exit your body, it’s hard to catch a buzz.) Finally, I could enjoy Bali without feeling terrible. All I wanted to do that last week was be beachside in a bikini, piña colada in hand. But just to be safe, I threw in a shit-ton of coffee to keep things on track.
So, what have we learned from this chapter? For starters, there are no refunds upon purchase of this book. Second, I seriously missed my calling as a competitive white-water rafter. But there is more than that. I like to think of my constipation as a sort of metaphor for traveling. When you are in a new place and your normal routine changes, you’ve got to adapt to your surroundings.
You’ve got to go with the flow, and if that flow is blocked, try anything.
Except butt sex with James.
Quickshots: Terrible Flying Experiences
While blockage when I travel somewhere is always a pain, sometimes trying to actually get there is the worst. For whatever reason, homegirl right here has got some bad luck when it comes to traveling. I’m not talking that child’s play of having a flight delayed by three hours or the Chili’s Too being out of skillet queso. I’m talking travel hiccups that are EXTREME(ly annoying).
Here are my top three most awful stories.
1. Baltimore
People have issues. And 99 percent of them can be traced to something that happened in their childhood. My issues with flying are no different. I flew all the time as a kid and loved it. I was even a member of the Delta Air Lines Fantastic Flyer program. This basically meant that I got to meet the pilots and get a wings pin as I boarded every flight. They also sent me their knockoff version of Highlights magazine every few months and a birthday card. Delta even had a mascot. It was a lion named Dusty, and the way they styled his mane and stuck him in a bomber jacket, well . . . I’m not gonna lie. I thought Dusty was hawt.*
But my love affair with flying came crashing down. Not literally! Oh dear God. Not literally. Thank God. Everyone reading needs to put down this book and knock on wood. Then pick it back up and order another copy. My flight was fine, but my mind-set was forever changed.
Check this out. I was nine years old and had been living in North Carolina for only a year. But my mom, being the amazing parent she is, let my sister and me fly to see our friend Kara back in New Jersey. It was awesome. I know a lot of people might think, Wait a sec, you and your sister flew by yourselves at such a young age? We did! In fact, we were old pros at it. By the time I was eight years old, I knew that if I had a layover in Atlanta that was more than forty minutes, I could easily get to Terminal A and get a Sbarro without being late to board my flight in Terminal C. Sometimes they would require a stewardess to take us from point A to point B, which, looking back, must’ve sucked for the stewardess. They’ve been listening to assholes complain about how cold the plane is for six hours and just when they think they’re free, they’ve gotta take two preteens to their next gate. I always felt embarrassed when they had to attempt to make conversation with us. You know that the majority of conversation they had were:
Where you headed off to?
Then some pathetic kid with a runny nose says, I’m going to visit my dad.
That will be fun! Do you have anything cool planned while you’re there?
The kid wipes his nose with his hand. Not really. We’ll probably just talk about my feelings since the divorce and hang out in his tiny stu
dio apartment. My mom says he’s a deadbeat who couldn’t find a job if it hit him in the—
Well, here’s your terminal!
My sister LOVED talking to stewardesses. Annie couldn’t wait to be a grown-up (the fact that she started smoking at thirteen proved this), and so she basked in the presence of these glorious, put-together ladies.
Here Annie and I are playing the classic children’s game “Aerobics Instructors.” As you can see, Annie looks stylish and ready to flirt while I love working out in turtlenecks.
But it was this flight back from NJ that the stewardess–unattended minor situation got weird. The flight was only an hour and a half long, but to a child, an hour and a half feels like eighteen days. Annie and I were sitting there with our little packets of peanuts and plastic cups of Coca-Cola (my peanuts dumped into the Coke, obvs) when the turbulence kicked in. This is before my extreme awareness and fear of mortality made every bit of turbulence feel like a speed bump on the road to death. The plane was being tossed around like a beanbag in a game of Cornhole, while Annie and I were smiling from ear to ear, making tiny “woo” noises. We were acting like we were on a Tilt-a-Whirl. Meanwhile there was probably some poor woman three rows back bargaining with God and doing her rosary beads.
The captain came on the PA system. “Folks, as you can see I’ve had to leave on the Fasten Seat Belt sign because we are experiencing some very rough air. There seems to be a pretty significant electrical storm happening below us and, sorry to let you know, we have been advised to make an emergency landing in Baltimore.”
Do what, now? Emergency landing? Furthermore . . . Baltimore? I looked at my older sister for comfort. She was busy doing that weird cross-over-your-chest thing like I’d seen Winona Ryder do in Mermaids when she wanted to be a nun. We managed to land without me shitting my pants, but then there was a whole new scary element. We, nine- and eleven-year-old girls, were stuck in Baltimore for God knew how long.
