It's just like standing up for yourself - only with animal waste.

"Alright, guys. We're going to play a game. It's called Never Have I Ever."

I have always been a sucker for a good house party; probably because I am rarely invited to them. I still largely believe that they are a myth. Most young adults spent their college years balancing keg stands with study groups, but I foolishly wasted that valuable, first couple of years gridlocked with a mean, old fartass and felt that I had been robbed of the "house party" experience advertised in films like Rules of Attraction and Clueless.

During my penultimate year of college, a friend and fellow theater major from the apartment below mine invited a few of us to a party at his place. He had a reputation for throwing rowdy affairs that typically ended with a broken piece of furniture or several people in a bathtub, completely naked except for a fez hat and maybe a feather. However, he also happened to throw parties that attracted people outside the theater program, therefore offering us the opportunity to socialize with individuals outside our kind. I met up with my friend, Betty, and together we ventured to his apartment on the second floor.

I knew the majority of the people sitting in the living room. If I didn't know them personally, then I knew them by type. You can typically pick out underage drinkers by the way they take any and all opportunities to brag about their sloppy, drunken encounters with an acquaintance's genitals in the bathroom or way they enthusiastically volunteered their spotty knowledge of cheap liquor and the number of ways to make it stay in one's body.

"Oh, god; McCormick's is terrible! " one might say. "But if you run out of orange juice to chase it with, try eating some Honey Nut Cheerios really fast!"

I was once young and stupid enough to actually try chasing shots of Captain Morgan's with whole grain cereal. All I got was a nasty mouthful of grainy, fiber fortified rum and a moderate case of alcohol poisoning. Those days were behind me, but for most of the kids at this party, they were in full swing. That night I found myself with them in the middle of a riveting round of Never Have I Ever, a game that targeted one's innermost secrets and made sure that a bunch of total strangers knew all of them before going home.

"Never have I ever... been caught with someone at church," one girl piped up. Six or seven people took a swig of their drinks, signifying that they, unlike her, had been caught in the act on holy grounds.

"What? Come on, that's pretty much the best place to get caught! What a little bitch!" laughed one guy. The offender, whom I'll call The Tool, was a Nick Jonas look-a-like with a can of Keystone Light in each hand. He wreaked of cheap liquor and cologne.

"Never have I ever... been with someone way older!" the next girl said.

"Fuck that, be more specific," said The Tool. "How old?"

"Um, old enough to be my dad," she said. I felt the tingling sting of her words creep into my feet and rise up through my chest as I looked at my glass and, finally, took a regretful swig.

"Oh damn!" The Tool pointed at me. "This girl's a freak! Hey, what are you up to later?"

"Telling my mother how I went to this party and met this obnoxious kid who looks strikingly similar to Nick Jonas," I replied, taking a dainty sip of my drink. "It's your turn, by the way."

"Fine, fine," he said, his tone saturated in subtext, "I see how it is."

"Good. Then go."

I watched The Tool slide back into the couch and survey the crowd before snapping his fingers at his own brilliance.

"Never have I ever kissed a dude!"

"Surprise, surprise," Betty whispered, "He screws in church and hates the gays."

"Hey," The Tool said, raising his glass, "You guys better be whispering about how much you want me."

"Oh, honey," I said, getting up for a refill, "Don't flatter yourself."

"Don't flatter yourself. You know you'd do me." He called after. I squeezed my cup and swallowed my anger with a smile before I turned around and said,

"Yes, well: your ship sailed the minute I became too old to watch Camp Rock."

Betty and I observed the Never Have I Ever circle from the kitchen. With the two of us temporarily out of the picture, The Tool had moved on to terrorizing the poor girl who had never had copulated in a place of worship. She was about to cry.

"Hey, Nick Jonas," I said, sitting back down, "Lighten up. You're killing the mood."

"Come on. Like you could even get enough of this," He said, grazing his hands across his torso.

"You're giving yourself way too much credit," Betty scoffed.

"You're one to talk, missy," The Tool fired back, taking a drink.

The noise level record-ripped to a dead silence; the party seemed frozen in time.

"One to talk? What exactly do you mean by that?" she said slowly. Betty made no qualms about the fact that she was full-figured and gorgeous, but The Tool had clearly gone too far. He knew he had struck a nerve and he wasn't about to relent.

"I'd pay money to see Miss Freak over here take her shirt off, but I wouldn't pay shit to -"

"Hey. Asshole," I cut in, "Will you just shut up?"

A few seconds passed. People from the bedroom had propped the door open, peeking their heads out to listen.

"No," he finally stammered, clearly taken aback, "No, I will not!"

"Fine then." I stood up. "Betty, you sick of this guy?"

"Yeah. I need a cigarette, anyway."

"What a waste of a person," Betty said, taking a drag.

"Forget him. He looks like Nick Jonas and drinks Keystone Light."

Betty was silent.

"Hey," I said, "You ok?"

"I will be."

Just then, the door swung open, startling us. Out staggered The Tool, calling inside,

"Yeah, well fuck you guys! Your party sucks, you cocksucker!"

He lost his balance and fell toward me.

"Dude! Chill out!" I said, pushing him off.

"No, you chill out! You crazy ... freak... bitch!"

He slammed his fist on the door and used the force to push off and get some momentum going in the opposite direction, turning around only to throw a can of beer at us.

"You and your fat bitch friend can suck it!"

He continued to scream obscenities and slam his fist into the walls as he staggered to the apartment where he was staying at, three doors over. The door slammed and we could still hear him, screaming and throwing things against the wall from the inside.

I looked back over to Betty, glossy eyed and quiet, clearly holding back something complicated.

We left shortly thereafter.

--

The next day, I lost an hour long battle against the urge to go buy a microwavable pizza. On my way to the car, I noticed that The Tool's sneakers were sitting right outside his door. I paused to look at them. They were all alone; void of any protection from their owner.
I bit my lip as my brain fired out the possibilities.

I shouldn't, I thought.

I took a few more steps toward the car. The shoes, pristine and white, seemed to be calling after me, filling my general area with visceral sensations to tempt me back toward their resting place.

"Jas. Jas," they cried, "please, please take us. We belong to a heartless creep who resembles Nick Jonas. Please, please use us to achieve your vision!"

I turned around. The soothing sounds of psychological seduction stopped; there were only the shoes.

I really shouldn't, I thought.

I made it all the way to the inside of my car. I sat in the front seat, unable to put the car in drive. I thought of the nasty things that The Tool said. I remembered dodging the beer cans as he slammed his way back to his apartment. I remembered the hateful comments he made to my friend. Each scenario overlapped the next in a Rocky worthy montage, faster and faster until I felt my arm turn the key to the left and I heard the sound of the engine shutting off. I opened the door, ran up the stairs, snatched the shoes, and went to get my pizza.

Upon entering the safety of my bedroom, I tossed them on the ground and let my two ferrets, Elroi and Nola, out to play. Ferrets love anything that smells or allows them to crawl inside, so it made sense them they immediately began to attack and burrow down inside The Tool's shoes. They began to drag the shoes to their special hiding place near their corner litter pan.
It was then that I saw the litter was due for a change.

It was then that I got an idea.

I put on some gloves, took a paper towel, and wiped the freshest, slimiest waste from the top of the litter pan. Then, I stuffed it into the tiptoe of one of the shoes. Seeing that the majority of urine had accumulated at the corner of the pan, I poured it into the shoe as well. Once the litter pan was empty, I headed straight for the cage: the mother load of all things that come out the wrong end of a ferret.

I filled both shoes with waste and used the urine soaked paper towels to stuff the contents deep enough into each sneaker so that The Tool wouldn't be suspicious as he put them on. I figured that if he kept his sneakers by the door, then more than likely he was the type of person who mindlessly stuffed their feet into their shoes on their way out the door. In other words, he wouldn't even see it coming.

I poked my head out the front door, listening for activity on the floor below mine. Hearing nothing, I crept down the stairs with shoes in hand. The sound of a car alarm made me jump and hide under the stairwell. When the coast was clear, I focused my attention on The Tool's doorstep. It was a straight shot. There were no obstacles standing in between us. The time was now. I sprinted to the door, arranged the shoes as best I could, and sprinted back up the stairs and into my apartment, slamming the door behind me.

--

I came home from rehearsal the next evening and was delighted to see that the shoes were missing. I saw the friend who had originally thrown the party a few days later.
"So," I said, casually, "Has your toolbag, dead-ringer-for-Nick Jonas friend found anything interesting in his shoes lately?"
My friend looked over to me, his eyes widening.
"You didn't."
I smiled.
"Jas, what did you put in those shoes?"
"So he found them?"
"Yes, he found them."
"Do you know if he put his feet in them?"
"I'm pretty sure he did. What the hell did you put in there?"
"Well, you've met my ferrets, right?"
My friend was silent for all of two seconds before he burst out laughing.
"I won't say a word," he promised, catching his breath.

When I told Betty what I had done she hugged me and said,
"This is why we're friends."
Then, after a pause, she said,
"Ferret shit, though? Really?"

I only saw The Tool a couple of times after that; shortly after the shoes incident, the leasing office had him evicted for violating the terms of his lease. Basically, he threw a party of his own at which time the police came and caught him and all of his underage friends drinking alcohol and "disrupting the integrity of the lawn."

I have to give him a little credit, though: before I encountered The Tool, I had never considered considered myself a person of action. I was usually content to step back and avoid conflict. However, watching this asshole sense vulnerability in my friend and viciously go after her ignited a little retaliative streak in me. A good streak, a bad streak; there's no way to really tell.  Sooner or later, someone will be an insufferable ass. That's fine; I can handle myself. That said, enough turns into enough at some point.

Once it gets there, you'd better watch your shoes.