Your Wish is My Command

If the story that follows disgusts you, you can thank my sainted sister, who requested it.

In May of 2003, I finally did what I had been threatening to do on and off for seven years.  I graduated from college with the second most worthless degree of all time–a BFA in Music Dance Theatre.  (The first, of course, being a degree in art history.)  As part of the graduation requirements, all graduating seniors were required to participate in a senior showcase.  It was, in essence, a 30-45 minute show that allowed the graduating students to show off their newly acquired skills and audition for theatre agents.  2003 was the first year that the university had ever attempted such a thing, and so the process had been long, arduous, and often annoying.  The biggest problem with putting together what was essentially a variety show for a bunch of graduating musical theatre students was that you had to spend time around a bunch of musical theatre students. 

For those who don’t know about theatre students, let me give you a little primer.  There are four rules you must keep in mind about actors:

1. They’re crazy 
2. They’re LOUD
3. They’re emotional train wrecks–all of them.
4. They always need to be center of attention

At my school, these prerequisites to being in the MDT program were also heightened by an intense sense of competition and judgementalism that make the Pharisees of old look downright accepting.  Everyone wanted to be the star of the show, everyone wanted to be noticed, and everyone wanted to be signed by an agent so they could go directly from college to Broadway and be famous actors and actresses.  So, we spent two full semesters, five hours a week, picking material, rehearsing it, and trying to weave it together in a clever, but not overly theatrical manner.

I don’t have an objective enough remembrance of that time to determine if the show we created was any good or not.  Knowing what I know now about theatre, my guess is no, it probably wasn’t very good, even though we thought that the world would be stupid not to hire each and every one of us (except maybe two or three people who were only there for pity’s sake.  I told you.  Judgmental.)  I can tell you this, however.  These were people we had known since we started the program together.  These were people we had been in the same classes with for years.  These were people we had rehearsed with in shows and done projects with for class.  These were people who drove us crazy.  And now we were all thrown together.

The day after graduation, I along with the other seventeen actors and our chaperones, documentary crew, and other assorted hangers on, hopped on a plane to New York.  We left at the butt-crack of dawn on a Sunday morning.  With a loud group of theater performers, sleeping on a plane is next to impossible.  So, some of us chatted away, a few of the boys flitted to the back of the plane to flirt with the male flight attendant, and I tried, unsuccessfully to read my book.  We got to New York and checked into the hotel–a Days Inn that, if memory serves me correctly, was on 8th Avenue in Manhattan.

I had never been to New York before.  I know some people just feel alive in the city.  For me, New York was not pleasant.  The hotel, which cost us an arm and a leg, was dirty and run down.  Despite being on the 14th floor, the sounds of the street were so cacophonous and raucous  that sleep was an impossibility.  And, to make matters worse, I was sharing a hotel room with three other men: one I didn’t care for, one I loathed, and one toward whom I was rather indifferent.  We had to shared queen-sized beds, something I’m not used to.  The air conditioner was “less-effective.”  It stank, it was noisy, and a had to sleep in the same bed with another man I hardly knew.  Not the best experience I’ve ever had, I have to say.

The next morning, the real whirlwind started.  We got up, had a dance class, had some free time to run around the city, then we had to get ready for our first showcase.  It bombed.  Well, that’s not fair.  It went fine.  There just wasn’t anyone there.  I think the showcase drew one, maybe two, agents.  We left the “theatre” (I use that term loosely.  It was more like a room that could seat 20) somewhat dejected.  Tuesday, same story.  Class, city time, prepare for the show.  This time, NO agents came.  It was awesome.  Wednesday was Broadway day.  I caught the matinee of Urinetown and the evening show of Thoroughly Modern Millie.  Then we had dinner at a Thai restaurant.  Thursday, I walked about 15 miles trying to find a pair of tap shoes because I wanted to go to the open call auditions of Millie, but hadn’t brought my shoes along.  Found the shoes, took the train to Chelsea, and sat around for three hours until they told us there was no way we would get into the auditions because we weren’t members of Equity, the actor’s union.  We did some more sight seeing, visited Ground Zero, went on a couple of tours of some of the Broadway theaters, then it was back to the hotel.

During this time, I was riding an emotional roller coaster.  I hated New York, I loved New York.  I wanted to be an actor, I never wanted to do theatre again.  I was surrounded by people who I loved, but who were driving me crazy.  It was like going to an extended family reunion, putting everyone on speed, and then asking them to share a hotel room for a week.  My bedmate snored, my other roommates talked late into the night, or came in at ungodly hours.  I was lucky to get three or four hours of sleep a night.  Then during the day, I was running all over creation, trying to find my way around, scared that I would get raped in some alley and end up as a “ripped from the headlines” inspiration for an episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.  It was flat-out exhausting.

After our short New York jaunt, the church (who owns the university) asked our group if we would be willing to fly to Washington DC to perform for a special open house that was being held for international diplomats by the church.  For a proselytizing church, good relationships with foreign governments is exceptionally important.  This trip was a last minute addition to our itinerary, and in true cheap Mormon fashion, the church asked local members to serve as host families, taking as many performers in our group as possible so they wouldn’t have to pay for so many hotel rooms.  

The house I stayed at was breathtaking.  Think modern southern plantation.  It was in a wealthy area of Virginia on a huge plot of wooded land.  Huge columns flanking the door.  Perfectly manicured lawns and flower beds.  Just stunning.  The patriarch of the family that owned the house was a “General Authority,” somewhat equivalent to a bishop responsible for a regional arch diocese.  There were several extra rooms, so they had been willing to host five of us.  We arrived very late at night, after the house had gone to bed.  We were shown to our rooms.  Each of us had our own room, except for two of the guys, who shared a room with two queen-sized beds.  My room was at the back of the house on the third floor.  It was pitch black outside, the house was silent.  The California King bed was covered with a deep feather mattress cover, and all of the linens were crisp white.  The room was frigid, which is just to my liking, and the bedspread was a heavy, dense, white feather comforter.  It was heaven.  I kicked off my shoes, put on my PJs, and climbed into bed. 

Now, I have to pause in the narrative for a moment to explain something.  I don’t sleep well.  I never have.  I’m a very light sleeper–I need complete darkness and complete quiet.  I always wake up before my alarm, when I hear someone walking the door, when the sun even thinks about starting to rise.  It’s common that I awake at least once in the middle of the night to use the restroom or get a drink of water.  This is my normal state of sleep and has been for my entire life.

That night in the plantation, however, I crashed.  Hard.  Very uncharacteristically, my eyes were closed before my head hit the pillows and I was out.  I remember it being the most peaceful, dreamless, deep, relaxing sleep I’ve ever had without the use of prescription opiates.

I was awakened suddenly at about 6:30 in the morning, however.  Very suddenly.  I laid in bed for a moment, trying to focus my mind and discover what had caused such an abrupt change.  I was exceptionally warm and comfortable.  In fact, I was a little too warm.  And, I gradually realized, wet.  How did I get wet?  Then it dawned on me.  I ripped back the covers to find that I had peed the bed.  Peed. The. Bed.  At the age of 25.  PEED THE BED!  And, I have to say, it wasn’t just a trickle or a little leak.  Niagara Falls had nothing on me that morning.  My PJs were soaked, and, even worse, the heavy down mattress cover was drenched.

There are certain times in a person’s life where, no matter what kind of training or preparation they have had, they find themselves ill-equipped to handle the situation at hand.  Such was the state I found myself in at that time.  Here I was: a 25 year old college graduate on a trip with my fellow alumni, representing the University, staying as a guest at the home of a highly-placed and extremely wealthy family.  And I had just dehydrated myself trying to irrigate the mattress.  What is a person to do?

I got out of bed, and changed my clothes, leaving my soiled clothes in the sink of the en suite bathroom.  Then I pulled off the comforter, which had, thankfully, been spared due to the fact that I sleep on my stomach, and stripped the bed of the mattress cover and sheets.  Those rested on the tile floor of the bathroom while I spent the next ten minutes pacing around the room, freaking out, and trying to decide what the HELL I was going to do.  The first course of action I decided on was to do what any self-respecting man in my situation would do.  I called my mommy.  Or, more accurately, I tried to call my mommy.  See, this plantation was WAAAAY out in the boonies, and my little T-Mobile cell phone didn’t get reception.  So that was out.  Then I thought I would try to ask my friends Rob and Tom for their advice, but they were asleep. And besides, I did really want to ask other 25 year old guys what to do about peeing the bed?  (Answer: no.)

Finally, I decided I would see if I could find the family’s laundry room and just take care of the problem myself.  I prowled around the third and second floors of the house trying not to make any noise and seeing if I could find any laundry facilities.  There were a couple of problems with this scenario.  First, I had never been in this house before.  I was a little weird to be sneaking around in a stranger’s house trying to find a laundry room.  Second, I couldn’t open any of the doors, because I had no idea which rooms were the laundry rooms and which were, oh, I don’t know, occupied bedrooms.  Third, I was certain if I did find the laundry room, the noise of starting up the washing machine would be sure to rouse a family member who would undoubtedly wonder why this complete stranger was wandering around their house and using their washing machine without asking.  But it was the only thing my increasingly mortified mind could think of.

Eventually, I decided that I wasn’t going to have any luck on the second or third floors, so I headed down to the ground floor.  As I came down the stairs I found the woman of the house in the mammoth kitchen cooking a gigantic breakfast for all of us.  (By the way, it is from this woman that I learned how to make the forever sublime Baked French Toast.)  I stepped into the room and she looked up. 

“Oh, you must be one of the boys from BYU who’ll be staying with us for a couple of days.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I replied.  I figured since I was in the south, I should probably use the local parlance.  “My name is Matt Armstrong.”

“Nice to meet you Matt.  Breakfast will be ready in about 30 minutes.”

“Oh, that was nice of you.  You didn’t have to get up early to make us breakfast.”

“Early?  I’m always up this early.  My husband’s an early riser.  We’ll be having baked french toast.”

It was difficult attempting to carry on small talk with a complete stranger while, at the same time, trying to determine how best to ask her to use her washing machine to clean the urine-soaked bedding that was still festering on the floor of the bathroom upstairs in my room.  I’ve had few experiences that were quite as surreal as that one.  Eventually, after a little more talk about the breakfast menu, I broached the subject.

“Would you mind terribly if I used your washing machine?” I asked, purposefully leaving out the reason for the request.  I was still hoping to save at least of modicum of face.

“Oh, of course not.  It’s downstairs in the basement.”  Of course it is.

“Great, thanks,” I said, starting to head back up the stairs, wondering how I was going to carry her own bedding past her in the kitchen without letting her know what I was doing.

“What do you need to wash?,” she asked as she was scraping freshly pureed raspberries from her garden through a wire mesh sieve to remove the seeds from the juice and pulp. 

My heart sank.  Well, it was time.  Time to own up the to inevitability of my humiliation like a man.  A man who can’t control his bladder.

“Well…umm…see, the thing is…” I stammered.  “I was…well…really tired and I…umm…well…I,” this was getting painful.  “I had a little accident.”

She paused her scraping for just the shortest of moments, and tried frantically to wipe the shocked expression from her face.  Not completely succeeding, she bend back over her sieve and tried to suppress a smile.

“Oh.  Of course.  These things happen.  It’s just downstairs.  The laundry soap is on the shelf above the washer.”

“Thanks,” I murmured, glowing fuchsia.  I ran upstairs, gathered up the bedding and my PJs, went back down the three flights of stairs, and through the kitchen.  The whole time I was thinking, “I hope this doesn’t smell like pee.  I hope she doesn’t smell anything when I go past.”

I laundered the bedding, dried it, made the bed, and nothing more was ever said about it.  In fact, Mrs. ____ didn’t say another word to me the entire time we stayed at their house.  I was so embarrassed that I basically just hid the entire time we were there, except at meal times.

It’s now been six years since that day (SIX YEARS???  I’ve been out of college THAT long?  Yeesh) and I haven’t peed the bed since.  I can laugh about it now, but at the time, it was completely horrifying.  I told my friends, who commiserated and laughed about it.  Then, they made me tell the entire cast of the showcase.  A few years later, I related the story again to a couple of other friends who laughed so hard at the abject horror of the experience that one of them had to excuse herself to use the bathroom so she didn’t pee her pants.  Then they termed the phrase pee-the-bed funny.  So now, if they watch something on TV that was really funny, they don’t say, “That was so funny, I almost peed my pants.”  Instead, they say, “That was so funny, I peed the bed.”

I’m glad to know that I can bring so much joy to so many people.  Now, I’m off to drink a glass of water before bed.