Issue #10/65, May 20 - June 3, 1999  

by Mark Ames

I had no other choice. I'd shamed myself not only in front of Taibbi and General Lebed, but before the blinding cameras of CNN, there for the entire world to view. First, I stood humbly by the net like some badminton boy during their epic match. Then, in the basement of General Lebed's Death Dacha, I fled from his friendly offer for a game of billiards, pointing straight at Taibbi and backing off. "He'll do it!" I blurted out.

The problem is that badminton isn't my bag, baby. Neither is billiards. Most games aren't: Taibbi beat me in a game of squash not long ago--playing literally left-handed, because he'd broken his right hand in a street fight we'd got into in Manhattan's Lower East Side. I'd like to brag that I kicked the guy's ass, but Matt returned to Moscow, and facts are facts: Matt broke his hand breaking the guy's nose. My contribution was a few penalty kicks on the bastard's skull after Taibbi took him to the ground. My steel-toed Red Wing electrician's boots came in handy. But after I wore out my right quad, I took the side of the victim's chiben girlfriend against Matt, playing Roundeye out to save her victimized boyfriend.

Not only did I morally flee like a bitch from a game of billiards, leaving Taibbi to man the front, but worst of all... HE BEAT HIM!

That was too much. I had to do something big. Something brave. Something to salvage my rep as a man. So I did it.

After the General, his bodyguard, and his Lebedjuugen leader Nikolai Azimov (who whistled the melody to "I'm a barbie girl/In a barbie world" all night) escorted everyone out and up the stairwell to the dining room, I slipped into a back room and hid. Then found the bathroom. It was a two-room bathroom, with a door separating the toilet from the sink. While it was new and clean, I wouldn't say it was exactly modern. More like Finnish. Woodsy, clean, functional.

I closed both doors, pulled down my pants and underwear, and planted my ass on the sparkling-clean toilet seat. The toilet polo match was set to begin. It was going to be a tough one to pull off. Like a bratty child, my sphincter had refused to cooperate with me for over two days after landing in Krasnoyarsk. I figured that about six digested meals were waiting at the gates, held at bay by the armed riot guards in my rectum. I let out some of the lead gas, hoping that, like a starting gun, the shit would dutifully race out and I'd be off to a running start. It didn't.

I regrouped. This was going to be tougher than I'd thought, but there was no turning back. I grunted and strained. And grunted again. I kneaded my stomach. This time, a starter-gun fart exploded, and a something poked its little head out. I switched strategies, didn't push, letting instead the natural motions of the bowels push the first one out. And then I heard it, that magical sound, "Dwoonk!" No less inspiring than the swish of a perfect 3-pointer, or the crack of a 500-foot home run.

I felt cocky, pushed, kneaded, and within thirty seconds, scored again. I was so psyched and confident of victory that I snapped a series of photos. Not quite as dramatic as those of Taibbi squaring off against the General on the badminton court, but getting there. After the photo op time-out, I returned to the field, but I seemed to have lost my edge. Nothing much happened for another minute. I headed into the proverbial halftime locker room holding onto a hard-fought lead, taping up the wounded, going over my mistakes. I looked between my legs. It was pretty unimpressive: one looked like a primitive tool from some Stone Age archeological dig, the other like a small bell. I'd peaked. After that, it was all downhill. I felt the pressure of six very greasy, awful meals pushing as one mass against what I imagine to be an intestinal chamber or canal lock, but I couldn't release it. I pushed, grunted, but realized that I'd pop a hem, an injury that could lay me up for four to six weeks. I couldn't afford that.

That's when I heard Taibbi. "Mark? You okay? What happened to you?"

I realized my time was up. I gave it one last push, which proved to be a mistake. It was one of those X-Pand-O globules that got separated from the mother-blob. I jumped up and wiped, afraid that the hidden camera inevitably filming me would somehow burst through the wall and the General's voice would tell me to freeze or else. The second wipe seemed to reveal more leftovers than the first. The third more than the second. In the world of toilet polo, that means only one thing: Game Over. I'd lost. The General had outfoxed me.

I spent the next few minutes wiping, or rather, "licking my wounds" in the terminology of toilet sports, pressed the gold-plated toilet flush button, zipped up, and walked out. Matt was proud. And when I walked upstairs to dine with the General, I detected in his upraised eyebrow a newfound respect for me.

And that was the best victory of all.