farting

i know. some do, some don't. or they say they don't, but they do, don't they? everybody farts. (isn't that an R.E.M. song?) anyhow it is not who farts but who thinks they're funny and who doesn't. my sisters do. my nieces and nephews don't. my (German) room mate does. my co-workers don't. my father did. my mother did not. she slapped me loud and hard across the face in a Thai restaurant after i cut a string-of-pearls oinker. (i was in my 50's). she did not think it was funny, except once when i blew a brown note into my cat's face. mum was sitting on the couch and peering over a magazine as i squatted and aimed my artillery inches in front of Ralphie's little pink eraser. he squinted, edged a bit into the brown blizzard, wrinkled his nose and sniffed, as if reading a tea leaf. mum lost it. she doubled over with tears of laughter streaming down her face. i got her. just that once. so i guess even with the proprietary, a fart can make you laugh. it is one of those rare unpredictable acts we humans are capable of. we never know, we can never predict what it will sound like, or how it will stink. like jazz, it improvises it's own vocabulary. i don't think i'll ever get over it. armpit blats were funny when i was 5. sour puffs in high school english were historical events. in the sickening incubation of an enclosed fuselage everyone is suspect and grim. in a noisy bar egg and beer conspire to force you to the floor or out the door. in elevators you foist them off onto an infuriated friend. Holden Caulfield cut one in chapel and that was in a book you had to read. i doubt i will ever get over doing, hearing, talking about, waking up to these foul snorts out the back door. they keep the kid in all of us present and accounted for. embarrassed? well maybe, once, tho it's more of a shit than a fart story. on the dance floor at Villa Victoria, Daisy, a black queen, asked if i wanted t do a bump. why not? a teensy pebble of coke won't make me crazy and maybe i'll transform into a dancin' fool. so i did it, right then and there and immediately had to go. had to go bad before i shit myself. there was only one unisex piss pot and this being an emergency i cut in line, squirreled in and locked the door. i knew how bad it was going to be. i'm not sure if it's the shit itself, the gas or the effect of cocaine on nostrils that does this, but i can assure you it is just The Worst Smell Ever and sure enough, the results were ungodly. i batted at the fumes to disperse them and planned on returning to Daisy and the hot pump of the dance floor, but realized, as i exited (slamming the door in hopes that it would kick back the smut smog) that a line of 10 frantic queens were waiting in line to get in there and bump themselves silly. uh oh. i ducked, arm in front of my face like a Chicago mobster who doesn't want his picture in the paper and bolted for the door just as les girls rushed in and then almost immediately ricocheted back out in a fanfare of shrieking, fanning noses, coughing and gasping for air. i'm outed, flat out outed. i squirmed through the exit and made my way home, tail between rubber legs. the moral: shitting and farting never amuses all the people all the time.