Angry Anus

Black Conrad

Fall 2009

1.

It was Kevin who got the game for Christmas. Angry Anus, the latest board game from Milton Bradley. None of the kids were playing it. Kevin got it from his parents because it made a cheap gift.

We stood around a desk in his bedroom on Boxing Day—Kevin and I—trying to decipher the instructions and figure out how to play the game. On that desk was the Angry Anus itself: a plastic rendition of the lower human torso in a pinkish hue. The torso itself was utterly sexless: no penis or vagina to denote any kind of sex. All there was the beginnings of two legs, which the game stood upright on, and the Angry Anus itself. That in question was a plastic asterisk squeezed between two flabby half moons of plastic. On top of the flat upper side of the torso was a screw-top opening, which appeared to be used for pouring the dark liquid contained in a pouch that also lay on Kevin’s desk. There was also a sliding compartment on the side of the torso for batteries to be placed.

Littered around the desk were various implements, like plastic logs and twigs. There were also plastic rocks and other knick-knacks to be used, like tiny plastic combs and scissors. The game itself rested on a sheet of newspaper on Kevin’s desk, lest things get a wee bit on the messy side.

This is what it said on the instruction sheet:

Angry Anus: The Ultimate Party Game From the Makers of Operation!
Players: 2 to however many you’d like.
Ages: 8 to 80

There were then diagrams on assembling the anus to stand upright, which I skimmed over, and also a blurb about filling the torso with the dark liquid from the packets. There was a warning that seemed a little cheeky (Careful: contents may be somewhat toxic! Just kidding!), but I just glossed over that, too, for the time being, along with the part about the game needing two AA batteries to operate. Then I got to the fun part.

Instructions: Game play starts when one player shoves one of the many items scattered in the enclosed kit up the Angry Anus. Careful, though, that the anus doesn’t get angry and cover you in feces! It really doesn’t like getting things shoved all up in there! Before that is about to happen, a buzzer will sound to adequately prepare player for the spillage about to occur.

Remember: When the anus gets mad, the player who gets pooped on is the loser. Game play resumes with remaining players who continue to add items into the rectum. Game play concludes when there is only one winner left, and that winner hasn’t been shat upon. It’s that easy!

You could tell just from the way the instructions were written that whomever was tasked with writing them knew the game was destined for the Remainder Bin.

“First things first,” I said, pointing to the sachets of dark liquid. “You got to put the shit into the game before you get to play it.”

I let Kevin do the dirty work, and watched as he carefully ripped open a slit in the liquid pouch and poured it into the game. There were instructions on the sheet that I held about how to order more liquid, if it came down to that. I bet they were hoping that someone would probably want to play this game more than once. Just hoping.

Once that task was done, Kevin capped the Angry Anus and stood back, almost if he were admiring his work.

“Next step: batteries,” I said.

Kevin then filled the compartment on the side with the two AA batteries. With that step out of the way, then he grabbed a log from the game’s box and looked over at me, grinning.

“Well, do you want to get started on this?” Kevin asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “Might as well see what kind of kicks we get out of this thing.”

And with that, Kevin approached the Angry Anus and jabbed his log into the plastic rectum. He literally went to town on the device, pushing and pushing the log further and further into the plastic membrane. I could tell just by Kevin’s efforts that the purpose of the game was to be the loser. He wanted the Anus to get very Angry, indeed.

But this Anus wasn’t going to let Kevin off so easily. Nothing happened. The Anus simply took its punishment and swallowed part of the plastic log. Kevin pushed and pushed for awhile, but nothing seemed to happen.

“My turn,” I said, picking up one of the tiny rocks from the game pieces after Kevin had finally given up.

I was surprising even braver, using the tips of my fingers to push the rock up into the anus to the north of Kevin’s stick. The Anus surprising was able to stretch and accommodate the rock with ease, with simply no trouble at all. I pulled my fingers back and waited.

Nothing.

“Hmmm,” said Kevin. “Let’s try something else.”

Kevin tried to shove the little plastic scissors that came with the game up the Anus. He had trouble at first navigating around the log and the rock that had been shoved up there already. However, he was able to get it up into the plastic membrane, which gobbled up the pair of scissors.

And still nothing happened.

Kevin seemed suddenly unimpressed with his gift, I could tell. He had now crossed his arms and had a sullen look on his face.

“Maybe this is like Jenga, in which nothing really happens until, like, the tenth move,” I offered.

“This game sucks,” said Kevin in return. “It’s your turn.”

I took a plastic twig, one of the other game pieces, and did my best to shove it through all the objects that had been placed up there. I didn’t want to break Kevin’s game, but I also got a little more violent with my move than I had been previously. I jimmied the twig up into the anus, past all the other pieces that were up there.

Still nothing. The Anus was dead still.

That’s when we decided to get a little more experimental.

We got rid of all the materials that had accompanied the game from the Anus, and tried other items around the house. A butter knife. Nothing. The arm of a Barbie doll owned by Kevin’s little sister Katherine. Nothing. A cigar wrapped in plastic owned by Kevin’s dad. Nothing. Everything we put in greeted nothing but inactivity on the Anus’s part.

Finally, we both realized that nothing was going to work.

“This game must be broken,” Kevin said.

“Yeah,” I agreed. “Something must be wrong with it.”

Kevin seemed to be a bit upset at this notion, as his face was now turning red.

“Maybe you can exchange it or get a refund on it,” I offered. “Sometimes if you mail things back to the company, they can fix it.”

“Whatever,” said Kevin. “Let’s do something else instead.”

And that was that. The end of our Angry Anus playing experience. We went off and watched a movie downstairs, leaving the Anus to itself on Kevin’s desk. If it did something diabolical outside of our presence—like buzz and drip brown fluid—I never knew. And that was, at the time, fine by us. I have to admit I shared Kevin’s disappointment. Angry Anus, it seemed, to be a very boring game to play. There seemed to be nothing to it; the Angry Anus was not particularly Angry, as it turned out. And that’s why when summer finally rolled around, I thought I was safe in asking to borrow the game from Kevin. Because I simply thought nothing would happen.

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