If at Birth You Don't Succeed (4 page)

All day, as he had the day before, my assistant Hershall tried to get me to eat. Did I want pretzels? Crackers? Cheese cubes? Water? Are you sure no pretzels? Not being privy to my morning ritual, he couldn't understand my rigid fast. I
wanted
to eat all of those things but I couldn't risk waking The Beast! For that reason, it was best not to eat while I was with other people, or in any situation where getting to a bathroom with six seconds' notice was not an option. My stomach was on lockdown too.

Some people fear death or public speaking, but my most consuming fear was crapping myself in public. I would gladly die onstage while giving the State of the Union address before I let that happen. But my steadfast refusal to eat posed a problem for Hershall, who had been hired for the sole purpose of helping me with the parts of the competition that were physically prohibitive, which so far had been absolutely nothing. Hershall had become a man who was being paid to be told he wasn't needed. That didn't stop him from trying.

When he asked me for the forty-seventh time, maybe it was his youthful puppy-dog face, or that forty-seventh-time's-a-charm rule, but I finally relented. “Okay,” I said. “I guess I could try to eat some fruit.” Hershall sprinted off and in seconds returned with a fantastic fruit medley that put my breakfast to shame: diced-up honeydew, cantaloupe, pineapple, grapes, strawberries, the works. I let him down easy, like a father telling his son he won't be home for Christmas this year. “Hershall, I promise you I will eat this as soon as I get home. This looks great.” He put on a brave face, stuffing the fruit into a big ziplock bag and tucking it into the back pocket of my wheelchair.

After lunch, we headed into the red lacquered gallows of Stage Two to face the judgment of Dr. Phil. I didn't know if we'd be meeting the friendly one from earlier, the frigid one from the day before, or a completely new one, with a sombrero, perhaps. Sadly, it was the hat-less, calculated Dr. Phil from yesterday. But it became abundantly clear pretty quickly that my team had won the challenge, simply by virtue of not advocating unprotected sex. We were so close to the end of the day.
So close
. The lucky underwear was living up to its name. We had been sent back to the quiet comfort of the carefully arranged prop furniture in the green room, while leaders from the other team stayed behind to plead for reprieve from Dr. Phil. All we had to do was wait out their fate and film a few more minutes of us clinking champagne glasses in a victory celebration.

I had just begun to relax, anticipating the big dinner I'd eat back at the hotel with Andrew, when I felt a familiar twinge in my stomach; The Beast was stirring. It was hungry and I hadn't fed it all day, which made it very, very irritable. I could hear The Beast's moaning—like a baby whale that's lost its mother, but angrier. If I could just keep it contained, I might be able to chalk up my wincing and nervous sweating to sadness for whichever contestant was on the chopping block. Can the camera tell the difference between compassion and diarrhea?

There were two hundred people in the crew. All of us had been at work for eleven hours. I knew that if I went to the bathroom, I was going to hold up the whole production. Couldn't The Beast be held at bay for just a little bit longer?

Meanwhile, on Stage Two, the deliberation was taking a few more minutes than expected, and while others feigned concern for their fellow competitors, I remained stoic and quiet, trying to fend off internal chaos while my mind kept repeating over and over,
what the fuck is going on in there?
Then The Beast moved lower, causing a spasm in my sphincter so alarming that I knew disaster was imminent. The monster was storming the gates and the defenses would not hold. I needed to find a bathroom immediately!

I pulled Dino, the task producer, aside and confessed that I wasn't feeling well and needed to go to the bathroom. At this point, I was really pushing it, doing gymnastics inside my stomach to keep things from heading where they wanted to go. The other contestants had been denied their requests to take a 10-1 (as they call it in the business), but Dino recognized the horror on my face and just said, “Okay.”

Thus began my frenzied dash to the crew bathroom, as Hershall, now essential to the war effort, followed close behind. I couldn't afford a single delay. If I was going to make it, it would be the mother of all close calls. We shuffled past the camera-ready polish of the OWN studio set, into the back warehouse filled with shelf upon shelf of props and equipment. I could see the bathroom door. I was almost there. My stomach was tense and churning, a volcano ready to erupt and engulf everything in its path. But at least I'd made it, and then … the door was locked! I have never felt such despair. Who was in there? I had convinced my stomach and my mind that I would be on a toilet in thirty seconds or less, and just like that I had to renegotiate the peace treaty between Grendel and Tummy Town. In the heat of my exasperation, I thought,
How could ANYONE have to go to the bathroom except me? This is bullshit!

When the bathroom's occupant finally emerged, Hershall trailed in after me as I bolted for the toilet. “You need anything? You need anything?” he asked, with all the earnestness of a squire boy. “NO!” I shouted, and Hershall ran out, closing the door behind him. Finally, the pressure was off. I brought my trembling hands up to unfasten my pants, and, taking a deep breath, looked down and realized that my clip-on mic was still live. This meant that everyone on the crew could potentially overhear the firestorm that was about to take place. With Dr. Phil still in the building, I couldn't risk him accidentally tuning to my channel and concluding:
That doesn't sound like a man who can host his own television show. That sounds like a man who needs medical attention.

It was this foolish attempt to save my last shred of dignity that sealed my fate. As I fumbled to get the microphone's battery pack off my belt loop, it happened—The Beast came to the surface breathing fire on my lucky purple underwear. They would never be worn again. I had crapped my pants and I was only a bathroom door away from doing it on national television. As I frantically found my way to the toilet, I knew that there was no going back. The guy with cerebral palsy, who'd hoped to erase the stigma of helplessness associated with disability, had shit himself on Day Two.

I spent the next forty-five minutes surveying the damage and my options. Could I just live the rest of my life in this bathroom stall? Meet a special girl (probably someone from the cleaning staff), start a family? Or would it be acceptable to come out when the competition was over? Could it be perceived as charming if I went out there with no pants on? How could I possibly recover from this? As I was sitting there on the toilet, I had a lot of time to reflect.

I remembered how I'd been a slave to my stomach since high school, how I'd missed out on family vacations, friendships, and a normal life because I was afraid of what it would do. And now, at what was the most important and pivotal moment in my twenty-six years, my stomach had done exactly what I had always feared. Just as I was about to have a total meltdown, I remembered a simple, three-word directive:
Chew bubble gum
.

Sitting there on the cold porcelain with my defiled underwear around my ankles, I thought about how I'd tell the story to Andrew, how I'd turn this horrible situation into jokes to make my best friend laugh. It occurred to me that this was, all in all, the most hilariously embarrassing thing that could possibly transpire, and, to my shock,
I
started laughing, right there on the toilet. Even if I had to go out there and explain to Dr. Phil that I'd just crapped myself, I was going to do it because it would make for a funnier story.

I switched into survival mode and took inventory of the tools I had to clean up this mess. I was more prepared for this moment than any young man should possibly be. I had flushable Cottonelle wipes, hand sanitizer, a bottle of water, and a bathroom floor; as far as I was concerned, that was all I needed. If I could emerge from this stall triumphant, I knew that whatever challenges lay ahead would pale in comparison. This probably sounds strange, but once you've crapped your pants, you really feel like you can accomplish anything!

I clutched the grab bars and lowered myself to the ground and, with my newfound confidence, began erasing any evidence that this disaster had taken place. I removed my pants.
Thank God
. None of the offending matter had reached any visible outer layers. I then proceeded to get naked on a concrete bathroom floor that I'm almost certain had never been cleaned. I first removed my socks and then, very delicately, the new pants I'd been given from Kohl's (our sponsor), and the fallen hero of the day—my lucky purple underwear.

Outside the door, there was much conjecture about what exactly was going on. I learned later that my delay had at first been angrily attributed to another contestant. When they realized that it was actually caused by me, the producers just shrugged and said, “Give him all the time he needs.” Thank goodness society frowns upon berating the disabled for taking too long in the bathroom.

Because of spatial constraints in the stall, my maneuvers while removing my underwear were the closest I've ever come to performing ballet. About halfway through, the ever-attentive Hershall cracked open the door and whispered, “You okay, buddy?” “I'LL BE OUT IN A MINUTE! NO WORRIES!” I shouted back. As I lay naked on the floor, I had to decide what to do with my tainted skivvies. If I threw them away, there was a chance that some perceptive janitor might retrieve them from the trash, and, having heard of my epic bathroom break, put two and two together. I couldn't put them back on (or could I?… no, ew!), nor could I risk clogging the toilet. Where could I put this wretched, noble garment? If only I had some sort of airtight receptacle to contain them in. Hmmm …

I headed back out to the set, cracking jokes with my costars. None of them had any idea that in the back pocket of my wheelchair, crammed into a ziplock bag, there was a pair of crappy underpants resting upon a lovingly prepared but now very unhygienic fruit medley. It was at once a carefully sealed bag of disgrace and a badge of triumph. I realized that day that I didn't have to prove anything to Dr. Phil or Oprah. Whatever artificial challenges they put us through for the reality show, I had just faced my biggest challenge in
actual
reality, and I had owned it LIKE A BOSS. I didn't need to win this show because I was already the Champion of Confidently Shitting Myself—and how many people can claim that title? The terror that rained down upon Tummy Town had, for this day, been conquered. I was free in the way you can only be after you've faced down your worst fear and lived to tell about it.

That evening, as I recounted the epic saga to Andrew, I presented the bag of fruit and underwear to him as a final flourish. “Wow! That fruit still looks really good!” he said, briefly considering if it could still be eaten. As a trained medical professional, he concluded that it could not.

By the time I'd built up the confidence to finally tell Hershall about the underwear calamity, I'd worn my remaining Fruit of the Loom supply nearly four times over. It was the day before I won the
Your Own Show
competition, and we were headed to the editing suite to work on my pilot presentation for what would become
Rollin' with Zach.
Over the past month, I'd made a lasting impression on all of the cast and crew as a leader, a hard worker, and someone truly capable of hosting his own television show. Nothing could soil that now. As I finished the tall tale, emphasizing how his fruit medley had saved the day, I was surprised to see a heartbroken look on Hershall's face. Then, after a solemn moment, he asked, “You mean … you never ate any of the fruit I gave you?”

 

CHAPTER 3

Drivers Ed in the Mars Rover

“We did it!” Andrew exclaimed triumphantly.

“That was awesome! This is a day we'll always remember,” I declared.

April 20, 2011, was the day Andrew and I were rewarded with ten dollars of free frozen yogurt because we'd managed to spend a hundred dollars at Yumilicious in the previous week. It was the most accomplished I'd felt since I'd won my travel show almost six months earlier. Back in October, all the OWN producers and executives assured me that
everything
was about to change. “Things are gonna get crazy!” they warned. “You're gonna be doing tons of press, flying everywhere.… You'll be the busiest you've ever been in your life.” As it turned out though, my first job as a newly minted Oprah protégé was to keep my mouth shut.

I'd had to wait three months before I was even announced as a contestant on a reality show, and it was February 2011 before the last episode finally aired, revealing to the public that I had won. Up until that moment, the nondisclosure agreement I'd signed required me to keep the greatest personal success I'd ever had from everyone I knew and loved. That period of my life was underscored by a peculiar mix of euphoria and mortal fear that I'd let something slip to my grandpa, and he'd tell all of my thirty-seven hundred cousins in South Carolina, and one of them would put it on Facebook, and then I'd be served with a lawsuit for millions of dollars by OWN Studios and get an angry call from Oprah herself where she would unironically quote
Home Alone
, scolding, “Look whatcha did, ya little jerk!”