We can all tell a story about having sat across the table from a hot prospect, sipping a latte and pretending to laugh at a lame story, when our brain has received an urgent Anus Alert: Warning! Warning! Gaseous emission coming through!
Who among us has not clamped her butt muscles tightly while endeavoring to keep a happy, bright-eyed facial expression? Who hasn’t pretended all is well — great, in fact! — while inwardly, we are fighting a desperate battle against nature?
Who among us has not then tried to decide whether it would be better to excuse ourselves to the restroom or wait for our date to go get a refill on his or her coffee, or considered the possibility of pulling off a quiet little release?
That last possibility is tempting, but do not do it unless you’re in a large crowd that is constantly moving so that you can plausibly deny having produced a noxious cloud. Even if you’re quite sure you are a fart ninja and can fart absolutely soundlessly, no amount of skill can control the smell.
It would be nice if you could un-toot, wouldn’t it? If you could take it back if you’d miscalculated. But once you’ve let the cat out of the bag, there is no going back.
Tooting: Saved Joe-st in Time
The only exception is if your need is dire, you cannot get away, and you’re sure of being able to deflect blame. Let me tell you a little story about one afternoon in junior high math class. I knew the teacher was not going to let me go to the bathroom just because I had a raging case of Cafeteria Food Fermentation going on in my gut. So I quietly let one and hoped for the best. (Feminine, right?)
Almost immediately, a thick, horrible gas enveloped the classroom, a cloud so noxious nobody in the vicinity ever took on another higher math class, due to brain damage caused by prolonged lack of oxygen. It was bad. My life, I realized immediately, was over.
Except just at that moment, a prudish sort of girl I will call Mindy immediately attributed it to a boy sitting near me. I will call him Joe. Mindy attacked him viciously for his gross indiscretion. Joe’s cries of innocence were dismissed. The whole class spontaneously turned on Joe. He was pronounced guilty.
I felt bad for poor Joe, but not bad enough to take responsibility for my actions. In fact, I realized, I was now free to fart at will, and did so for the rest of the class. Each time I cut loose, Joe was freshly reviled. Being a girl, I was never suspected. This grave injustice has never been corrected. Joe’s life, I am sure, has never been the same. Sorry, Joe.
This was a formative experience in my life. I realized I was very fortunate to have stunk up an entire classroom without consequences, and I’ve always recognized that such luck could not be counted on to repeat itself.
So through the years, I developed a number of strategies for discreetly relieving tummy troubles.
Tooting While Dating: The Definitive Guide
Send the Guy Away
If you have an impending fart, send the dude off an errand. Ask him to go fetch you a beer, for instance. Or a snack. Or anything that will take him out of your immediate vicinity, where it’s going to be unsafe for a few minutes.
Go Off On Your Own
If he’s the lazy sort, go on your own errand. Make something up. If you have to, claim to think you’ve seen a friend on the far side of the room. Express a desire for a drink or snack. Pretend you hear a suspicious noise outside you need to check out. Anything. Get far enough away from him to ensure he cannot hear or sniff out what you’re really up to.
Muffle the Sound
If you’re at his place, and you need to toot, you may have a problem. Yes, you can excuse yourself to use his bathroom, but what if he lives in a small apartment and you’re afraid he can still hear you?
Don’t worry. Lock the door. Turn on the water. Flush the toilet. If there’s a fan, turn it on. Right when the flush is at maximum volume, quickly evacuate all extra air from your colon. Move quickly and quietly. Master class tip: Grasp your buttocks and spread your cheeks while emitting the gas in an even, quiet, controlled fashion. This reduces the chance of flappering.
Blankets Are Your Friend
If it’s winter and you have a good, thick throw across your lap, you may be able to get away with all sorts of shifty shenanigans. But I must caution you that things can still go wrong. I was once sitting in a chair with a big blanket over me. When my guy went to the bathroom, I saw my chance and farted big, thinking the combo of man-out-of-room and big-blanket-on-lap would save me.
How was I to know he would return to the room in record time, immediately drop to the floor in front of me and stick his head under the blanket? It all happened so quickly I couldn’t stop him, but he wasn’t under there for long. He whipped the blanket back and, gasping for air, asked me, “Have you been farting?” I had no defense but my own shame.
Know the Enemy Position
Once I was in a hotel room with a man and had been holding back my farts all night. But I woke up, saw I was alone in the bed and looked around the room. He was nowhere to be seen, and I heard shower noises. Oh, excellent! I could finally fart! Everything I’d been holding back for the last 12 hours came out. It was loud and it was long and I felt the most exquisite relief. And then, to my utter horror, I saw his face pop up from the foot of the bed, wearing the most profound look of shock I have ever seen.
He’d been crouching on the floor looking through his suitcase, which he’d left at the foot of the bed. The shower sounds were from the next room. I will never forget the deer-in-headlights look he gave me. Long after we were no longer an item, he loved to reminisce about that story. “I had to pay for structural damage to the room,” he always claimed. (Might have been true. It was a fart to end all farts.)
Reaching Your Goal
But if you can get through the courtship without ever getting caught in a fart, you may progress to that happy stage of life when you are allowed to fart again.
Farts are the real reason people get married. The greeting card companies and poets like to talk about love and the desire to join two lives together, blah, blah, blah. That’s all bull. The real reason for serious relationships and marriage is simple: You will both finally be able to openly fart. It’s not two hearts joined as one; it’s two anuses free to be. Hey, card companies! You’ve got a new marketing campaign.
Sophia Sinclair is Curvicality’s sex and relationships writer and the author of the Small-Town Secrets romance series, available on Amazon. Reach Sophia at sophia@curvicality.com
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