THE PISS

Imagine finding 22 bottles of fetid piss in a college dorm room. Like any well-adjusted human being, you’re probably having a hard time. I’ll help.

I know what you’re thinking, “But some of that could be apple juice.” Nope. I checked.

THE BACKGROUND STORY

In my sophomore year at Columbia University, I lived in a doughnut-shaped building called McBain.

I call it McBane because:

• on weekends drunk students urinated from the top floors into the bottom of the shaft
• people throwing garbage into the shaft turned it into a giant trash compost.

One day, I walked to my friend’s corner walk-through double. Due some type of mixup (no doubt involving our wonderful Columbia Housing department), he got stuffed into a double with a stranger. His roommate was beyond strange.

My friend got the better end of the deal. He got the big room at ~200 ft², while his roommate was handed the windowed closet at ~100ft².

THE BOTTLES

I’ll call this kid Howard Hughes, for 22 reasons that have already been made as clear as semester-old piss. Hughes left behind a nice present for housing to clean up – rancid urine meticulously stored in

• 7x Powerade bottles
• 4x 1.5L Dr. Peppers
• 3x Ocean Spray raspberry juice containers
• some Nalgenes
• a Minutemaid orange juice bottle
• 2x 40oz malt liquor bottles
• a Natural Light aluminum can
• an regular old plastic cup filled to the brim
• etc.
• etc.

To the untrained eye this is just 22 reasons to retch, but to the scrupulous observer carefully enough to breathe through his mouth, these bottles tell a story. Their relative age can be deduced. Rich amber colored urine that is clear is fresher, while apple-cider gold with a bottom layer of coagulated sediment is, shall we say, aged. The average human adult produces 1-2 L of urine per day. My conservative estimate of the urine volume in Hughe’s room is 15L. This means it took him at least eight days to pump out all this juice.

I’m sure housing fined his ass to the maximum extent.

THE MOTIVE

As you can see from the floor plan below,

Hughes’ room was no more than 20 feet from the restroom. I could understand if he lived 40 feet from the urinals. This leads us to ask the inevitable question “WHY?”

Why fill up 22 containers with urine? Was he extremely lazy or was it some sick joke on his roommate and housing at the end of the year? A nice F**k-you send-off present. Maybe, based on this incriminating photograph,

of the bottle pipe on his shelf, he was just stoned. F.Y.I. After doing some cursory research, I have found that tenacious people have created extremely innovative ways to get high:

But I digress. So what is the motive? Drug screenings? But even the most suspected MLB players didn’t need to do that many screenings. There is probably some truth to this story out there, but most of us couldn’t give a cup of piss about it. In the meantime, here are some more pictures for your viewing pleasure: