Girls Pass Gas Too

  

  I was 18 years old when I first heard a girl fart.

  It was an amazing thing to me, I have no other way to describe it.

  I mean being as I’d never heard a girl do that before when I first heard it…it was a big moment.

  Guys fart, it’s what we do.  But a girl?  I think “amazed” is a good word to use the first time I heard it.

  It was during my first quarter in college.  I don’t know how I met Kirsten but there she was in my dorm room on a fall Saturday afternoon.

  And we were just talking.

  I’m not cleaning this up or anything.

  “Swar t’God” as my old dead friend Mark might say, we were JUST talking.

  It turned out that even though her dad worked for the U.S. State Department and she had been to Europe and stuff and was from the D.C. area she had been born in the mountains of Virginia, not far from where I was from.

  “We oughta go on a road trip,” I said to Kirsten.

  “Next weekend,” she said.  “Say, I need to use the restroom.”

  Hit pause here.

  Remember, this is a dorm room we’re sitting in.  An all male dormitory.  To use the restroom you have to go down the hall where there was a restroom with 3 toilet stalls, a couple of urinals and a shower room with 3 or 4 shower heads.

  “But,” I said to Kirsten, “There aren’t any girls toilets here.”

  Kirsten stared at me for a few seconds.

  “You go check and make sure no one’s in there,” she said, talking slow like she was talking to someone with diminished mental capability, “Then I go in and you ‘stand guard’ outside so no one goes in while I’m in there.”

  “Oh!” I said, having a lightbulb-over-my-head moment.

  “I’m the first girl you’ve had in your room, aren’t I?”

  “Sure,” I said.  I didn’t see any reason to lie, besides I’m sure she could tell.

  So we went on down the hall to the restroom, I checked to make sure no one was in there, she went in and I stood by the door.

  Then the noises began.

  And more noises.

  Noises of explosive flatulence.

  I furrowed my brow, standing all alone outside the bathroom.

  This was something I never heard before.

  And so Kirsten emerged from the restroom, we went back to my room and made a date to go on a country ramble the next Saturday so she could see the mountain town where she was born.

  Then she was gone.

  I sat on my bean-bag chair in my dorm room pondering this new experience.

  In walked my roommate Dax.

  “You have a dumbass look,” said Dax.  “You stoned?”

  “No, man,” admittedly the next words I said…I should’ve run them through the word editor in my brain, because I really didn’t say what I meant…

  “I just found out girls fart,” I said.

  Dax burst out laughing.

  “WHAT?” said Dax.

  “I mean I just heard a girl fart for the first time,” I said.

  “You’ve…never…heard…a…girl…fart?” Dax was still laughing.

  “No, man,” I said.

  “What’d you think?  They save them up and then once a year they go out in the woods and blow out one gigantic fart?”

  “No, man, of course not…I…I just never heard a girl cut one before.”

  Me and Dax shot the breeze about it for a bit and resolved that a really great relationship with a girl was one where you could freely pass gas in front of each other.

    Now there was that time that my grandmother and her sister, Aunt Maude, were out in the yard and Aunt Maude bent over and let one fly.

  I laughed and laughed.

  Aunt Maude turned, pointed at me and said, “Now boy, when you’re old that’ll happen to you and you’ll be embarrassed.”

  Yeah, there was that time, but I guess I didn’t relate to Aunt Maude being a girl…she was Aunt Maude, she was like…from another branch of the human family tree.

  After that fall day, when Kirsten came by, it seems like I heard girls passing gas all the time.

  One memorable time was the next summer when I went out with Nancy who would go on to be a doctor.  I just mention that because it’s kinda funny thinking about a farting doctor.

  We had gone to a movie and returned to my grandma’s house where we sat on the back porch shooting the breeze, telling stories.

  I reckon I told a pretty funny story, Nancy started laughing hard and then……..

  “FFFFRAAAPPPPPP…” Nancy farted.

  Nancy promptly jumped up, ran out in the yard, turned around, pointed at me and said, “Don’t you EVER tell anyone I did that.”

  “What?” I said, “It’s perfectly natural.”

  “Girls aren’t supposed to fart in front of boys,” said Nancy.

  Well, Nancy has “done gone on to Glory” so I reckon it’s okay to tell you she farted in front of me on that summer night over 40 years ago.

  It would be years later that I would understand why, as a young boy, a farting woman was a mystery to me.

  It was in the 80’s and I was hanging around with a woman I’ll call “Darcy.”

  We were out on the town and decided to go pay a visit to my mom who lived nearby.

  Darcy had been enjoying a few alcoholic beverages that afternoon so when we got to my mom’s house Darcy was talky, giggly and flat-out drunk.

  So as we sat in mom’s living room talking Darcy began to pass gas.

  Loudly.

  And every time Darcy did she broke out laughing.

  “Come help me in the kitchen,” my mom said to me.

  I got up and left Darcy on the sofa farting proudly and laughing at herself.

  In the kitchen my mom turned and pointed an index finger at my nose.

  “I just want you to know that in the 40 years your father and I were together we never did that in front of each other or in front of you children,” said mom.

  I stood there and smiled.  I started laughing.

  “You don’t know how much you’ve cleared up a great mystery in my life,” I laughed.

  “FFFRAAAPPPP,” came the noise from the living room and more laughter.