1.14 Farting Etiquette
1.14.1: Alenby Agrees to a Small Mac
Traveling along the Loire en route to Pouzay
Mid-afternoon Wednesday 2 April 1987
The enjoyment of life flows from the impact of food and wine on one’s nose and palate. That was Alenby’s guiding principle, or had been until about half-way through lunch at les Dhuits. That pesky green-salad/bloating/burping incident had prompted him to reconsider. Might the impact of food and wine on one’s digestive system also have something to do with one’s well-being?
He knew the sensations that prompted disquieting questions like that sometimes went away of their own accord, without the aid of any medication. For a time this seemed to be happening. As he guided the Mercedes towards Pouzay, he managed to blank out of his mind all thoughts of wine and food, instead dividing his attention between inconsequential conversation with Ada—she particularly amiable since their intimacy behind the Fragonard screen—and the various sensations of the contact of tweels on road surface. But he was beginning to notice bodily reactions that, little by little, brought the non-aesthetic realities of eating and drinking to his unwilling attention. Realities like hunger, flatulence.... He nosed the hycell off the graveled road on to the smooth-surfaced highway running along the Loire, just past Orléans.
"We’re making good time," said Ada. "We’ll cross over the bridge at Beaugency, and then follow the left bank."
Alenby nodded agreement. He knew this part of France well. He accelerated to set the car gliding swiftly westward. The river came into view, an island-studded expanse glaring metallic in the mid-afternoon sun. Like an oeuf au miroir flecked with black pepper, he thought. Now that he’d lost the bloated feeling brought on by the green salad, he felt rather peckish--wouldn’t say no to an oeuf au miroir, though there were a few dozen egg dishes he liked better…. But he kept his feelings to himself.
For some time the couple traveled in companionable silence, broken on Ada's side by exclamations of pleasure as especially attractive riverine vistas came into view. Until they happened to pass two men in plaid kilts running along the footpath beside the highway, one of them displaying an auto stop sign .
"What splendid young men!" Ada exclaimed. "They must be Scotsmen—mmm, those short kilts! Alenby, they want a ride. Let’s pick them up. Their sign says they’re going to St-Dyé—that’s just this side of Blois."
"Why would they go to St-Dyé? St-Dyé has no restaurant of any particular distinction, does it?"
"No, there’s nothing there at all, only the P A L Ducru Biochemical Research Center--but never mind that. Do let’s pick up those mini-kilted Adonises—oh, how I adore those shapely bare legs, and I am so partial to nice buns!"
Alenby was partial to nice buns, too, but only to the kind consisting of small, round yeasted rolls flavored with cinnamon or raisins and served at afternoon tea in Britain.
Nevertheless he brought the car to a stop, allowed the Scotsmen to get in, and stopped again to let them off again in downtown St-Dyé. He was glad to be rid of the Caledonian duo. Fellows had absolutely no sense of correct attire. Kilts all wrong—too short for a start, and from their limp hang, obviously not wool, polyester or something. But that was in the back of his mind. His focus was buns. He craved a bun. Perhaps one could get a bun somewhere? Not necessarily a bun, exactly. Just a nosh of some sort.
"A Small Mac," Ada responded. "There’s a fast-food place at Blois."
"A Big—I mean Small—Mac? Does that mean that McDonald’s has a foothold even in u?"
"McDougall’s, not McDonald’s, and McDougall’s has more than a mere foothold. It has the concession on many of the French highways nowadays.
"But tell me," Ada continued, adopting the smarmy tone she used to inquire about the oh-so-amusing grotesqueries of U, "what is a Big Mac?"
Alenby felt a pulse of empathy with a naive lady tourist from Texas, who had stepped into the spotlight of Dutch comedy club to explain how the carrying of side-arms promotes public safety. Unlike that lady, however, he ducked the question.
"But it’s big?" Ada persisted.
"Well, yes—not as big as a human head, mind you, but certainly bigger than the human mouth. A multi-bite size, one might say."
"I’m afraid our Small Mac is nothing but a mono-bite sized purée of spiced baked beans wrapped in an envelope of wilted collard leaf," Ada said. "Since you skipped the main dish at lunch--the platter of lightly steamed spring vegetables les Dhuits was at delightful, by the way--perhaps you should order several Small Macs."
"Yes," said Alenby, "But isn't there a, uh, problem with baked beans? Unless the beans are rigorously soaked, or something, to remove certain gas-forming—?"
"Oh, we don’t worry about the accumulation in the lower intestine of non-reactive gases such as methane, carbon dioxide and hydrogen."
"But the discharge of flatus, isn’t that frowned at?"
"Oh, Alenby, you’re getting things backwards! On the contrary, farting is no more to be looked up to than any other bodily sound, such as cracking one’s knuckles. In fact it’s a social accomplishment of the lowest order, when performed with style. Thus…"
"Charming!" exclaimed Alenby. "Quirkily rhythmic in the early twentieth-century English manner, with folk-song elements-- Vaughan Williams, I believe?"
"Yes, a fragment from Vaughan Williams’ tuba concerto," said Ada, flushing with pride in her musicianship. "Of course, I do have a pitch problem."
"Charming nevertheless. And quite free of any offensive smell."
The color left Ada’s face as quickly as it had appeared. "Smell? But intestinal gases have no smell, offensive or otherwise!" A moment later, her composure regained: "I beg your pardon, Alenby. I was forgetting that a U-person’s flatus would inevitably reek of putrefying proteins of the sulfur-containing sort that are predominantly present in pus and other substances of animal origin."
"Oh, quite all right, a natural-enough error!" said Alenby, gesturing magnanimously. "And may I say that your remarks not only lift my inhibitions to the consumption of the Small Mac, but also persuade me to modify my views on the propriety of, ah, farting. Let us proceed in the direction of the nearest McDougall’s."