I got my technical training in bowel irrigation from working in a hospital and a nursing home after graduating from college with a degree in English Lit. First I was an orderly on a men’s emergency ward at a state hospital. There were raving guys on drug overdoses here, guys patched up with gunshot and stab wounds, others unconscious from car accident trauma, and men without insurance generally, including oldsters on respirators and young anal retentive druggies who hadn’t shat in weeks or longer. By the time the doctor or nurse got around to ordering an enema, the stool of some was white as chalk and as hard. I’d load them up with two bags full of warm, soapy water, and the broth would come out clean, their crap was so indissoluble. One mid-aged man told me, ‘I haven’t shit in two months, man. It feels like a statue inside me and hurts like hell when I try to go.’ When I told the nurse it wouldn’t move, she nodded her head and told me they’d probably have to put the man to sleep and pull it out by hand. Sometimes I’d joke and say an impacted guy just needed a bigger butthole, but the nurse seldom even smiled.

        Another of my duties was to give enemas to guys getting prepped for surgery. If they were young or at least ambulatory we’d go to the bathroom together, so they’d be near the toilet and spared having to try to hit a bedpan. In the toilet they’d get down on all fours to receive the nozzle. This was the situation with the first enema I gave. An orderly of ten years’ experience showed me the ropes, and filled up a man who knelt doggy-style on the floor. When the hose came out, the man started releasing right away, and almost sprayed me with a jet of water. I jumped out of harm’s way just in time. The career orderly laughed like it was the funniest thing he’d seen in days. Perhaps it was.

         My next subject was a young transvestite who wore lipstick and red nail polish and told me he was planning to have himself surgically altered to a woman. His doctor was a Jap who smiled and winked at me when he saw the glossy red nails, and then told me to administer an enema that morning. The tranny simpered and pouted and when the doctor left took the enema bag out of my hands and headed to the men’s, saying he’d do it himself, he did all the time anyway. That was fine by me and I let him. On the hospital ward I also learned to do 30 rectal temps in fifteen minutes by moving down the two lines of beds with a bucket of thermometers and a tube of petroleum jelly on a cart. I also learned to insert a rubber device like the neck of a balloon into a man’s ass so he could pass gas all night or day without blowing his anus to bits. I kept listening for a trumpet sound to issue from this thing, but never heard a note.

        I quit the hospital because I couldn’t stand the rotating shifts, and for a while I went jobless. Unable to find anything else with my education and background, and getting desperate, I took a job as an attendant in a nursing home. Here I broadened my ano-rectal capabilities, and frequently assisted the nurses’ aids in enema giving. One attractive young aid I worked with was quite cheerful about doing her rounds with Fleets bottles. While her elderly patient, man or woman, lay on their belly in bed with their legs spread, she squeezed in the contents of the plastic container and interestedly await the results. For her it was like playing a slot machine, I supposed, and always knowing you’d hit the jackpot. She never took her eyes off the wrinkled portal as it delivered the payload. The human body, I decided, didn’t embarrass her in the least. Once I got an erection in front of her, with my white attendant pants on of course, and she just kept talking to me while eyeing it. She was discussing a douche she had just given to a female resident, and was holding her thumbs and forefingers together in an O-shape, saying, ‘She has a hole this big.’ Neither of us mentioned my state of arousal until the next day, when I asked her out. She turned me down, saying with a laugh, ‘I’ve seen enough of you already.’ Well I tried.

        At the nursing home I also learned the effects of cascara, a powerful laxative the charge nurse administered orally on a given day to all the residents who weren’t on record as having eliminated recently. Within an hour each and every one would spill out a bedpan full or more, which the aids and I had to keep emptying and replacing. I also became acquainted with a pretty nurse who enlisted me to help her ‘dig for gold,’ as she put it, in a certain female resident’s backside. The woman’s stool, like the guys’ in the hospital, was hard as porcelain. While I held the woman in a bent-over position, the cute nurse dug into her butt wearing a rubber glove, extracting hard fragments. The woman kept screaming ‘Oh my god!’ as the finger kept working inside her. I didn’t enjoy this task in the least, nor the nurse it seemed, but I imagined the woman enjoyed it even less than we did.

          I lasted about six weeks at the nursing home, then quit in angst and disgust. With my paltry savings, I drove my rusted car from the Midwest to Florida, hoping to see new career vistas open up, if that was the right expression. I didn’t, and in short order was turned down as a college tutor, a proofreader, an ad taker for a newspaper, an air filtration system salesman, and a gardener. Completely down and disoriented by failure, I prepared to apply for a job I had seen advertised in the want ads at a place not far from the apartment I stayed in, the Southern Colonics Institute. According to the ad, this establishment needed technicians, and since I had no choice, I prepared myself carefully to become one.

          The first question I asked myself was, What does an enema technician look like? I had never seen one. I could have course gone in to apply in my hospital and nursing home whites, and that probably would have been sufficient. But since I was two steps away from living out of my car, I wanted to be sure of success. I decided first off that a serious enema tech needed a good tan, so I stayed out by the pool at my apartment complex and roasted myself in the hot sun until I was a deep brown color. Since I wasn’t working, I had plenty of time to achieve the proper, rich shade. I also frosted my hair and starched it so that it stood up on my head like a white wave breaking on the shore of my forehead. Then I put on a white shirt, so bright it hurt to look at it, tight black pants, and shoes with corrugated rubber soles two inches thick. This, I decided, was the way an enema-giving man announces his flair for the job.

         I got the job, so my appearance mustn’t have hurt. The man who hired me, Mr. Bennett, said the clientele of the institute was largely of two types, retirees who had bowel trouble and needed assistance eliminating, and younger recreational types who enjoyed clean, well-toned bowels as part of their fashionable lifestyle. I would conceivably work with both types, he said, but I would start with men who preferred to have another man cater to their colons. He didn’t think I’d mind that, he added, staring at my hair. I would also gain expertise with the various refreshing irrigants such as jasmine solution and rosewater, that were used at Southern Colonics to promote fresh intestines, as well as with the patented bags and tubing that were designed for complete flow control as well as for comfort. I said that with my experience I felt I could bring something of value to the establishment, and Mr. Bennett said he was confident that within a short time I’d be performing colonic masterpieces.  

          I watched another tech, who also had a fabulous tan and hair bleached by the sun, proving I’d got that right. He gave a smooth enema to an elderly party with great satisfaction on all sides. I then announced I felt I knew the ropes, and they allowed me to tackle a party solo. This was a Mr. Burns, whose enormous hairy back and buttocks I encountered in Suite C. He had just finished showering and was lying on his huge gut, waiting for a two-quart injection of our best enema-quality chardonnay. When I came into the room, he turned to look at me and said, ‘There’s a big guy ready to come out, hurry!’ I don’t know what came over me, but I stuck the tubing up his rump, opened the valve to full, and excused myself. I then went out, got in my car, and watched the Colonics Institute shrink in my rearview.

            It was time, I decided, to kick the asses out of my life. I kept driving until I found a fast food place with a sign out, and put in my application. On account of my good looks, they hired me on the spot.