Romance, Riches, and Restrooms: A Cautionary Tale of Ambitious Dreams and Irritable Bowels - A Review

Author: Tim Phelan
Publisher: iUniverse, Inc.
ISBN: 978-0-5953-8544-7
Pages: 264

Tim Phelan’s Romance, Riches, and Restrooms treats us to something quite rare: we get to peer into the mind and life of an individual who, through this unabashed memoir, allows us to become intimately familiar with him, and his “functional” disorder. Peppered with humor and the hilarious situations experienced by the author, the book expertly demonstrates the great burden shouldered by IBS sufferers, who must daily walk a tightrope of social scrutiny that no human being should be forced to.

The author’s struggles with the disorder are penned with a rare precision that is at times enrapturing—given the level of writing—and at times as suspenseful as anything I’ve read in a good mystery. Some scenes will leave you on the edge of your seat, like the one that had me wondering whether Phelan, his bowels suddenly acting up, would end up soiling himself in the driver’s seat of a car while trapped on a highway with a gorgeous and unsuspecting blonde riding shotgun.

Then there is a scene following the one above that seems to realize Phelan’s worst fears. After heading over to the home of his date, Phelan sneaks off to a powder room to divest himself of some unwanted waste, just as his date’s parents decide to make their fateful return. Eager to meet Phelan, the parents, led by the date, attempt to locate his whereabouts, and they end up on the other side of the door to the powder room while Phelan is confined inside, trying his best to keep quiet as he daydreams about one day building the perfect noise-absorbing bathroom. Phelan then writes:

My daydream came to an abrupt end when I briefly and suddenly lost control of my sphincter. My body was hell-bent on performing for the unsuspecting audience.

A short blast echoed throughout the powder room, followed in rapid succession by several more. With acoustics that rivaled those of the Hollywood Bowl, each note, both high and low, ricocheted off the porcelain and reverberated through the adjacent amphitheater. I felt my face turn bright red. My eyes lit up like headlights.

Thoroughly embarrassed, Phelan later recalls that “[i]f the powder room had had a window, I would have crawled out and driven off into the night.” Well, it turns out Phelan’s date wasn’t in the hallway at all, nor were her parents. Phelan imagined all of that. This is a perfect illustration of the psychological ramifications IBS can have on those who suffer from it.

The book also recounts Phelan’s attempts to balance a life full of lofty career ambitions, a feat made all the more difficult by the presence of IBS. While Phelan’s early IBS symptoms don’t appear as such to him at first, he eventually begins to see something peculiar in the sudden frequency of his uncontrollable bowel movements. And after putting the pieces of the puzzle together, much like a sleuth in the aforementioned “good mystery,” Phelan senses something isn’t quite right with his innards, though he can’t put his finger on what it is exactly. Phelan eventually learns what the dysfunction is, and the way he deals with his newfound medical condition results in a refreshing literary exercise that has to be read to be appreciated.

Overall, the book makes for a highly engrossing read, and by the end of it one comes away satisfied, even enlightened. Instead of loading the material with poignant moments (one would think there would be a great deal of those in a work that deals with a disorder), Phelan delivers on humor, and I mean a considerable amount of it. But while he isn’t too concerned with poignancy—we are talking about a dysfunction of the bowels after all—his lighthearted and humorous approach is both palatable and befitting.

That said, Romance, Riches, and Restrooms is well-written, which allows for smooth absorption by any reader; it is well-edited, which raises it to the status of a professional product; and it even has a decent looking cover and interior, which gives Phelan the right to distribute this baby with a degree of self-confidence. In short, the book is an impressive contribution that is as important for its subject matter as for its entertainment value.