Yesterday, I Farted About Five-hundred and Forty Times

Please forgive me as I’m about to foray into a vapory territory but rest assured this is not just an extended fart joke. Yesterday, I farted about five-hundred and forty times. I realize this is not a particularly fabulous subject for discussion except the sheer amount of farts I farted, to me, makes it worthy of a fair amount of consideration. Especially since I suspect you’ve been in the same dreadful situation before.

I was with a woman whom I fervently fancy, talking to her about things of small and great consequence, and I enjoyed all our moments together except for the fact that I was farting like a methane factory all the time. She was telling me stories about her friends, fashion, and famous folks on Facebook but all the while, I was letting out flatulence in controlled little pauses so as not to produce a single perceptible whistle…

Fetid gas with unfriendly intent made their flight to freedom from the fissure in my buttocks in freakish frequency.

Needless to say, the task of keeping the fascinating conversation going while producing something unfragrant and maintaining a smiling facade was extremely difficult. I could imagine my little rectal muscles flexing its fibers to keep the floodgates of feces from forcefully erupting in a frightful flash of fustiness.

It was farcical how much effluvium I fielded. A whole farm of cows firing a symphony of fumes into the sky would have faired no better against me. I fought off the formidable foe in my belly with the ferociousness of a feral feline or a frenzied ferret but it was for the most part, fruitless. I farted as she spoke. I farted as I replied. I farted as she joked. I farted as I laughed. And laughed I did several times for she was a truly funny person with a flawless sense of humor, and as I laughed, I farted even more. I farted while we ate cup noodles and watched videos of people making fools of themselves. I farted fast and furtively, trying to forestall the inevitable. For to fail in front of her was frankly unfathomable.

And it made me wonder how people came to set such lofty expectations on themselves. Forcing out flatus is as natural a physical phenomenon as speaking and breathing yet we have come to regard it with infinite contempt. Wouldn’t it be freeing and far more functional if we’d simply let folks fart as often as they fancied without getting all furious about it? So that instead of me trying to hide the complex digestive processes forming and flowing along my intestines from this female I truly find fetching, I could just let out a fart bomb whenever I felt like it?

But all it is is fable and fiction because the sad and sometimes frightening fact is that public farts are forbidden. As frowned upon as nitpicking your nose, excavating your ear, and poking your nipples in full view of people. Yet I bet all these gestures are hardwired into our brains and have been passed down in the form of firm instincts from an early age when we were all honest apes.

And so as the sun flickered and fell in the sky, I spent the day with her and felt real fine. Frustrated as I was for the frenetic fabrication of fermented fumes in my tummy, and fatigued from fighting off the unfiltered, the truth was that I was grateful that she was there with me. We watched a fairly gratifying flick in the cinema, and there I had the freedom to flat out fill the room with funky air in the cover of thunderous sounds. There was definitely something fortuitous about the whole set up, but what really made me feel fortunate was that she was there beside me having a freakin’ fantastic time.

In those fleeting moments where she guffawed at the buffoonery on screen rather loudly and charming, I found few problems with life. I felt my fat face smile as my heartstrings were fiddled by a force frivolous and flowery–a formless, fragile fairy in a fugly world. So I decided that though my fanny was feverish, I had something fundamentally special that I must hold on to in the irony of a day filled with letting go.

Who cares about the future? I’ll go ahead and have fun in the present. Foul gas in my gut. Her in my mind.