I’m on a few different Discord servers, and one of them has a daily prompt. Today’s prompt was “what is the most you’ve ever laughed in your life”, and it called to mind a situation I’m sure I wrote about on some blog years ago, but since (I assume) there’s very little overlap between the folks who read my writing now and those who read my writing ten years ago, I’ll tell the story again.
To set the story up, let’s go back to the late ‘90s, and also let’s provide a little background.
I was poor: I was working at a record store (and didn’t get promoted to manager until 2001). So, I was making maybe $6.50 an hour. Based on a 40-hour work week, I was maybe pulling $200 a week after taxes. I was renting my aunt’s basement during that time, and my rent was $350. So, about 40% of my check went to rent. Almost everything else went towards food and transportation. I didn’t have a phone from 1996-1999, a lifestyle choice that seems improbable these days. If someone needed me, they either had to call me at work or page me and I’d call them back from a pay phone.
My commute was lengthy: My aunt’s house was at the edge of Queens, close to Kennedy Airport. My job was in the South Bronx. To safeguard against being late to work, I’d usually leave the house two hours before my shift began. I’d walk the 13 blocks to the train station, take the A to Fulton Street (40 mins or so), switch to the 4 and take that to Fordham Road (another 40 mins or so). I could (and often did) listen to entire albums on my way to and from work. If I had, say, a 1-10 shift, I’d leave the house at maybe 10:45 and get home at damn near midnight.
My diet was poor: I wasn’t exactly eating healthy meals during this period, because a) when was I gonna cook? b) when (and how) was I going to buy groceries? c) I was in my late teens/early twenties and had no real concept of what nutrition meant. Breakfast was sometimes a bagel with cream cheese, sometimes a donut or a Little Debbie cake. Lunch was often rib tips and fried rice from the Chinese restaurant down the street, or the $2.99 double cheeseburger extra value meal from McDonald’s. Dinner—usually eaten around 11 PM-was often a chicken gyro with a heaping serving of french fries and pita. I was a walking, talking, carbohydrate. I was also phenomenally unhealthy. I weighed fifty to sixty pounds more than I weigh currently, but I was young, strong (I was on my feet for 10 hours a day and spent a solid chunk of my time at work going up and down stairs and/or transporting and moving boxes and other packages. The poor quality of my diet wouldn’t come back to haunt me for some time to come—thanks diabetes!
At any rate, I must have gotten an opening shift on this particular day, because I was returning home on the subway just a little after rush hour. It was 6 or 7 in the evening, and the trains were full. I’d improbably gotten a seat on the A train, and we were cruising through Brooklyn. At some point, the combination of the motion of the train and the shitty food I’d eaten earlier that day set my guts to bubbling. I shifted from side to side in my seat, counting the stops until I got home. There were very few public restrooms in subway stations (still the case), and the public restrooms that were open were not places you wanted to use the bathroom in (lack of cleanliness, presence of unhoused/mentally unstable people, drug and/or sexual activity). Plus, there was no way I was getting off the train. Lose my seat? Kill that noise.
I figured it couldn’t hurt to, as my friend (and boss at the time) Craig often says, “release a little gas”. On a crowded train, no one’s gonna know it was me. Plus, this is New York City. Someone could drop their drawers and take a leak in the middle of the train car and barely anyone will bat an eyelash. Trust me, I have actually seen this happen. More than once.
What I thought was a little slip of gas turned out to be a cheek-quivering rumble. You could barely hear it over the train noise, so I wasn’t incredibly embarrassed. Besides, the silent ones are the ones you have to worry about, right?
WRONG.
The stench that rose up seconds later sent half the train car scrambling for the exit. While I looked down, trying to be inconspicuous, I could see commuters making the stank face. A person or two might have even muttered “damn”. Luckily for them, a stop was imminent. The doors opened, the car emptied out. I’d venture a guess that only half the people got out because it was actually their stop. The other half took the opportunity to scurry into another, potentially less smelly (after all, this is New York City) car. The doors opening removed most of the odor. As they closed, I surveyed the train car and hurriedly looked back down, but not before a slight grin of contentment touched the edges of my face.
A voice cut through the relief I was feeling. I looked up to see an older Caribbean woman sitting directly across, staring daggers into me. “You’re rotten”, she proclaimed with disgust. That statement broke me, and I hid behind a newspaper as my body shook with laughter. Years later, when I relayed that story to my family, probably after Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner, I laughed until tears poured from my eyes. They were all beside themselves with laughter as well (I get my sense of humor from somewhere). Even now, as I type this story out for the second or third time, I have to pause every few words to giggle.
Yes, the progressive masculinity podcast guy still gets the giggle fits from a 25-year old case of the bubbleguts. We contain multitudes, God damn it.
I was expecting worse!
To quote George Carlin “Farts are funny as hell”. Reminded me of this clip…
https://youtu.be/iI96AS3U_i4?si=zmFteXF20-r3mXFC