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And then Came the Cleanse

Alfie Jane
3 min readAug 14, 2019

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Photo by Bundo Kim on Unsplash

Hot pot. It’s one of the best things a person could ever eat in China. A giant pot of soup broth, and whatever ingredients you want to throw in. It’s a great way to spend time with friends, family, or coworkers. Every time I wanted to celebrate something in my life, we went to hot pot.

One day, I was out with one of my best friends eating hot pot. Not thinking much of it, I ordered some cokes, and drank them. We finished, paid the bill, then went home.

She didn’t have to go to the subway, but I did. The subway ride was no problem. I got on, then got off. Then, I had to walk home for another fifteen minutes.

After that third step, my stomach clenched, and my body stiffened. I knew this pain all too well. It wasn’t any old stomach pain. It was the kind of stomach pain that if I didn’t find a bathroom in the next ten minutes, I was going to embarrass myself.

It was the beginning of The Cleanse.

Photo by Mitchell Orr on Unsplash

Here was the situation. It took fifteen minutes to walk from the subway to my house. If I ran, that would end in a mess. But ten minutes was all I had. There weren’t any rickshaws around to drive me home either. The…

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