The bathroom scene from 'Bridesmaids' happened to me on a first date. We still had a blast.

• A first date in Charleston, SC was expectedly a reenactment of a scene from "Bridesmaids."
• I had explosive diarrhea so bad, I had to poop in the sink; I later realized I stained my shorts.

The humor of the "Bridesmaids" food poisoning scene, like many good comedic concepts, lies in its unexpectedness. Watching it, you're under the assumption that the events faced by Annie and her friends could never happen to you. Going to the bathroom in the middle of the street? Burping and farting simultaneously in a pristine bridal shop? Emitting effusive diarrhea directly into a bathroom sink? That could never happen!

But what if it could?

Food poisoning played an unexpected role in my first date

When I started out as a digital nomad a couple of years ago, I also started going on dates with a lot of different guys in the cities I traveled to. Thankfully, my date in Charleston, South Carolina, was the only one that involved food poisoning.

Not long into my first date with a cute guy from Tinder, I felt a faint sense of fatigue creeping over me. I attempted to put it out of my mind. After all, I was enjoying myself. It was in summer 2021, right after the worst of the pandemic, just as the world was opening up again.

My date and I, like the rest of the world, had to learn how to interact with strangers again. So, as my date led me on an unofficial walking tour of the city's French Quarter, we had fun bridging the awkwardness of it all. Then my butthole clenched.

"We need to find a bathroom," I said, before adding, "Now."

My diarrhea was so bad, I couldn't make it to the toilet

Thankfully, my Charlestonian companion knew his hometown like the back of his hand and led me to a tiny café with a single-stall restroom in the back. I duck-walked back there as quickly as possible, attempting to prevent having an accident in front of not only my date, but everyone attempting to have a nice afternoon.

I threw open the door and looked wildly around, like a detective with a warrant. After a quick calculation, I determined that I didn't even have enough time to make it to the toilet at the other end of the room. I would have to settle for the next closest porcelain fixture with a hole in it: The sink. I had only enough time to rip off my pants and release the beast.

Twenty minutes later, however, my "Bridesmaids" moment turned into a "There's Something About Mary" moment when a father and his child, as well as my date, started knocking on the door and asking if I was OK.

"Coming!" I said, amazed that they had waited so long (and that my date was still there). Thankfully, I felt that my body was "safe" now, so I quickly cleaned up the sink with running water and a gargantuan wad of paper towels and got out of there. Thus, 25 minutes after first entering the bathroom, I finally emerged from my hellish, Sisyphean prison with a forced smile and a brow laced with sweat. The worst was finally over. Or so I thought.

I was horrified to discover poop on my shorts

You see, I was still feeling residual effects from a Covid infection I'd had at the beginning of the pandemic. I had been living in New York when it all started and had been one of the first in the country to lose their sense of smell, and mine never fully came back. I could smell some things, like lemons, but not others, like the poop that was now on my shorts. Apparently, I hadn't cleaned up everything in that bathroom.

Upon touching the back of my shorts 30 minutes after the Incident, only to discover poop there, I was understandably horrified. "Should I say something? Maybe he smells it, and he's just not saying anything to be polite?" I thought, sweating even more profusely. But minutes later, he provided our date with the twist ending it needed. We had been talking about the pandemic — because what else did people talk about back then — and he blurted out: "Did you know I got Covid a year ago and I still can't smell right?"

At last, I breathed a sigh of relief and vowed to spend the rest of the date with my back turned.

And yes, I still got laid.