Fear of public farting | Humdrum 30
I was in a small yoga class once (maybe 5 of us) and a succession of people farted. There were nervous giggles and the room began to smell. I was not one of those people. I don’t remember what pose we were in, but I remember being close to the ground. Maybe gate pose.
This is one of my fears, that I’m going fart in public. Yoga class or the unpredictable sneeze-fart will be my downfall.
I did fart once, accidentally kinda, while I was outside having drinks with a bunch of coworkers. There was music and a lot of people talking loudly so I’m pretty sure no one heard anything. If they did, they kept quiet, like mature 30-somethings, not like hooligan middle schoolers.
I was accused of farting in elementary school. I didn’t; it was some kid standing ahead of me in the line. We could all smell it. But no amount of shrieking, “It wasn’t me!” would convince any taunting nine year-old boy. It could have been him, the one making a big deal about it. Everyone laughed and I had no where to hide and I was trapped in this line in this hallway, with my face turning red.
Women learn, somehow, that our bodies are gross. All bodies are gross, for sure— strange odors are wafting off of us all the time; we sweat, we shit, many of us bleed on a monthly basis—but women especially have absorbed that "gross" message and have learned to do all sorts of things to mask our normal functions. Shaving, perfume, deodorant, surreptitious trips to the bathroom with a tampon shoved up our sleeve so no one sees.
When my partner and I started living together, I made sure he was on the other side of the apartment before I took “my morning constitution.” But for a couple weeks, for some reason, I was inexplicably gassy. Perhaps it was the sudden uptick of broccoli in the diet. Whatever it was, the results were atrocious.
“Careful! The blankets are keeping it in!” I yelled one night as he crawled into bed. I had retreated to the bedroom so I could expel all the trapped gas in my body without shame. Until he came in and pulled the comforter up and a noxious cloud escaped.
“I’m so sorry,” I said mortified. It was the hundredth time I had apologized for unleashing my body’s stinky ugliness on the world. Women are not supposed to create such terrible smells.
He sighed and climbed into the stinky bed. “Stop apologizing. You’re a person, that’s what people do.”
He was dead right, of course. That apologizing was a reflex and it would take me several more gaseous bouts before I stopped and switched to “excuse me.” Nowadays, I sometimes don’t say anything or will even announce, “I farted.” Prepare for the cloud.
That’s with him and family. My family has always made fun of each other for farting or otherwise stinking up the bathroom. A smelly bathroom is an opportunity for a crass joke.
But that’s not the way it is anywhere else, certainly not at work. In the bathroom, women hold it all in until they’re alone. Or if it's desperate, we paw at the toilet paper, the thunk of the roll hitting the metal holder is just enough background noise to make it feel as if it’s loud enough to cover up the sound of us shitting. But it’s really not.
I was washing my hands once in the ladies bathroom at work, and an older lady came in and let it rip. She had no shame. I wanted to shout, “Hell yeah! Let it go!” while simultaneously laughing and fleeing because the bathroom started to stink like an unwashed latrine.
I do not want to be this woman. I see her occasionally in the kitchen, and I think about what she’s capable of in the bathroom. Of course we all are, at least at sometime or another, maybe after consuming a mountain of broccoli with dinner, capable of making people flee the bathroom and the surrounding area. I just don’t want everyone to know it was me.
Farting as a fetish and other weird facts about farts.
About This Newsletter
Humdrum is written by Christina Brandon, a writer and user experience researcher based in Chicago. Broccoli no longer gives her the farts, usually. She's writing a memoir about teaching English in China. You can connect with her by replying to this email or jumping on Twitter or Instagram.
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