MEDIEVAL SLIMES - PART 1Two Weeks of Living Disgustingly
BY THOMAS MORTON
According to such sources as Hollywood, history textbooks, and the word on the street, the Middle Ages were a thousand-year grunge revival in which everybody walked around covered in fleas and mud and you could tell a person’s class by the particular stench of their balls. This is total bullshit. I know this because I just spent two weeks adhering strictly to premodern hygiene techniques and aside from a few skid marks, unexplained sores, heavy dandruff, lots of smegma, and a possible case of Saint Anthony’s fire, I turned out fine. Here’s how it went.
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THE BASIC RULES
I was not allowed to indulge in any sanitary practices developed before the Age of Enlightenment, and I had to wear the same set of clothes for all 14 days. I went with an all-white ensemble because I wanted to keep track of the grime. I also thought it gave the whole endeavor a sort of Fitzcarraldo expeditionary vibe, but I’m only able to admit that now, after the fact.
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PISSING
I am what you might call “lackadaisical” about cleaning myself in the first place, so the only thing separating my first few days of medieval hygiene from three days of my regular hygiene was pissing. I’d initially decided to go al fresco, a move I’ve perfected over many nights of drinking. But then I discovered that pissing on the sidewalk, sober, at 10 in the morning feels like a dress rehearsal for exposing yourself to a kindergarten class. So I got a chamber pot.
These are probably the best thing to happen to peeing since the bladder. There were a couple of basics I had to get down, like holding the pot up to my crotch instead of trying to aim into it on the floor and never starting full-stream. But after mopping up a couple early loads with my sleeve, the whole apartment was now my bathroom.
The only downside was emptying the pot. Heaving it out the window doesn’t work since I live above my landlord (it’s also been illegal since the 500 BC Roman dejecti effusive act). Most mornings I would just dump it out in the gutter between a couple of parked cars or, if I was feeling particularly civic, the storm drain at the end of the block. It took me three days to figure out that you have to pitch the urine if you don’t want it dribbling all over your pants.
TEETH
After two days of neglect, the plaque at my gums started to shift from faint yellow to ocher and I was increasingly finding deposits of caramelized soda in the top of my crowns. My girlfriend classified the scent of my breath as somewhere between the smells of garbage and human crap.
Miswak is a weird Middle Eastern stick that Mohammed loved so much he should have married it. It’s just a twig that frays down into a decent toothbrush, but that didn’t stop the prophet from bringing it up in the Hadith every chance he got. Nor does it stop present-day miswak exporters from claiming it “strengthens the back,” “keeps away devil-thought,” and is the “cure of every disease except death.”
I gave the stick a dry run, at which point I learned that miswak tastes eerily similar to the smell of urinal cakes. Then, following an ancient Egyptian recipe, I ground up a bowl of ox hooves, pumice, burned eggshells, and myrrh and whipped it into a thin, grainy paste with some of my spit. This concoction sounds pretty gross and it felt a lot like I was buffing my teeth with sand, but guess what? It is basically the same thing as contemporary toothpaste, give or take a little fluoride. Without being too much of a skirt about it, it got the job done.
SHITTING
I’m a fairly infrequent shitter, so I was lucky to enjoy a three-day honeymoon period with my chamber pot in which it was a urine-only receptacle. Eventually, inevitably, I was forced to break the seal and drop a log in there. This was a shame because, as I came to discover, no matter how carefully you piss away the little brown flecks on the side, you will never kill the smell.
Still, shitting in a pot was a lot easier than I thought it was going to be. All you have to do is make sure you’re squatting over the right place, tuck back your dignity for a couple seconds, and gingerly let rip. This seems counterintuitive, but I found that it helps to have a teensy pool of urine at the bottom of the pot—not enough to splash back, but just a little puddle for the turd to land in so it doesn’t instantly graft itself to the pot’s ceramic surface. I consider this discovery on par with the invention of modern plumbing, as it transformed the process of dumping my shit by the East River on the way to work from a terrifying five- to ten-minute ordeal into a simple stop-and-slop.
CONTINUED
MEDIEVAL SLIMES | 1 | 2 | >
| shelby, on Sep 29, 2009 wrote:
your pee is way too orange. | | Anonymous, on Sep 28, 2009 wrote:
Instead of Baby Balls, I would want to nickname him...Unsanitary Disgusting Runaway Balls, or something akin to that, wow, fucked up hygene is so offensive it’s not even funny, I didn’t even realize that until I finished reading this article. Fuck you for doing that Thomas, but...regardless of how dirty, you do got a pair. | | Anonymous, on Sep 27, 2009 wrote:
Is this guy British? Looks like just another day in England to me... | | Anonymous, on Sep 27, 2009 wrote:
Medieval slimes, more like bumass. | | Anonymous, on Sep 26, 2009 wrote:
im no doctor or anything, but isnt there something unhealthy about shitting one time in 72 hours? were you on heroin? | | Anonymous, on Aug 29, 2009 wrote:
He mentions his girlfriend in the article... did you read it? | | Anonymous, on Aug 23, 2009 wrote:
funny, informative, and misdirected :)
maybe you should have done a put a little more (less?) thought into this. | | Anonymous, on Aug 23, 2009 wrote:
funny, informative, and misdirected :)
maybe you should have done a put a little more (less?) thought into this. | | Anonymous, on Aug 19, 2009 wrote:
I find it amusing that the poster a few below me thinks this Hipster Douchebag has a girlfriend. | | Anonymous, on May 15, 2009 wrote:
"it’s a little contrived to "pretend" like you’re medieval"
Wow, congrats for figuring that one out, Einstein. | | Anonymous, on Apr 10, 2009 wrote:
I LIKED IT! | | Anonymous, on Apr 10, 2009 wrote:
Anyone remember the spark website where the editor gave himself athletes foot, you know, for fun? Or did I dream that? | | Anonymous, on Apr 9, 2009 wrote:
"I notice you still have your glasses on - Fucktard -"???
whats that got to do with it?! haha, what a nutter. good study. very interesting. Made me appreciate my bath. | | Anonymous, on Apr 6, 2009 wrote:
I thought that was a onesie at first. Very white and monochromatic for optimal dirtiness potential! | | Anonymous, on Apr 5, 2009 wrote:
what an idiot | | Anonymous, on Apr 4, 2009 wrote:
I feel bad for your girl...did you also go without sex for 2 weeks? | | Anonymous, on Apr 4, 2009 wrote:
This is so gross....I skipped over the poop stuff becuase it made me want to barf! Then, there was more and more poop and pee....come on. I wonder why you didn’t just interview a homeless person, and ask how they are getting by, it’s a little contrived to "pretend" like you’re medieval....people live like this allover the place without trying so hard.. | | Anonymous, on Apr 3, 2009 wrote:
they didn’t have soda in the medieval ages | | Anonymous, on Apr 3, 2009 wrote:
why is your pee so dark? it’s like apple juice. | | Anonymous, on Apr 3, 2009 wrote:
yes, and he’s also wearing things with zippers. it’s not dress up, it’s hygiene you fool. | | Anonymous, on Apr 3, 2009 wrote:
I notice you still have your glasses on - Fucktard - | | Anonymous, on Apr 3, 2009 wrote:
Maybe you should have studied toilet habits of more countries.
Asians have been using water to wipe their ass for millennia - and still do. Less than a pint is enough.
They also recommend splashing a bit of water in the (squat) toilet before doing the deed to make cleaning easier. | | Anonymous, on Apr 2, 2009 wrote:
Yuck | | Anonymous, on Apr 2, 2009 wrote:
Thank you VERY MUCH for your experiment, it was quite informative. The near future of mankind will see an abrupt shift in hygiene habits. I loved the roman sponge thing, I’m trading toilet paper for it at once. | | Anonymous, on Apr 2, 2009 wrote:
Bath houses (public baths, ie heated swimming pools) were common in most medieval towns until the 16th century. Yes, people bathed. And they washed. The only exceptions would have been the indigent poor, but homeless people aren’t big on hygiene today, either. | | Anonymous, on Apr 2, 2009 wrote:
i think you should have had to eat similar to what they ate in the olden days, then maybe the teeth thing wouldn’t have been so bad, your poor girlfriend :) | | Anonymous, on Mar 31, 2009 wrote:
that had to be a heavy load of doodoo to make him grimace like that. i wonder how far is a reasonable shit toss. probably depends on the dryness to wetness ratio. | | Anonymous, on Mar 31, 2009 wrote:
maybe it’s the inner crust or gutter punk in me, but there’s just something so fulfilling and satisfying about being dirty as shit. | | Anonymous, on Mar 30, 2009 wrote:
i suppose it comes down to your definition of dick cheese, but i consider anything in the crotch republic that gets slippery or smells unlike the rest of my body to be included in the dick cheese category. | | Anonymous, on Mar 30, 2009 wrote:
I’m very confused about this dick cheese business. I didn’t know it localized on your balls?? and i thought it was only an issue for the uncircumcised. I obviously dont know my dick cheese facts. (and I think Im okay with that) | | | Next 30 comments > |
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