I am getting dressed in the locker room of the gym after my
workout. It’s 6 a.m. I’m leaving and a guy next to me has just arrived and is
pulling his workout gear out of his bag. All is quiet and sufficiently mundane.
Then, he farts.
It’s not a weak, wispy fart, mind you. This is the real deal
– a robust, stereophonic, authoritative, almost bellicose fart. It’s equal
parts duck snort, a heavy cotton sheet tearing in two and that moist, chaotic
reverberation that the last squeeze on a nearly empty plastic ketchup bottle gives
up without fail.
I’m standing, pulling on my pants. He’s sitting down,
dressed only in his boxer briefs and white socks, wrestling his microfiber
t-shirt overhead when his blast rattles and ricochets off the wooden bench,
snapping my otherwise drowsy head into rapt attention.
No one else is around. It’s just us. I look over at him. He
does absolutely nothing – just keeps getting dressed, sliding on his shirt,
shorts and begins lacing up his Nikes. No acknowledgement of me or of the fart.
It’s as if nothing happened at all.
A Two-Part Dilemma
So, as I dress, I now have a dilemma – the first of my young
day, which until this point has been decidedly routine. This is not a simple
dilemma either. It’s a two-part dilemma.
First – do I call out the elephant in the room – or more
accurately the elephant fart in the room? Should I acknowledge this profound
act of flatulence, or should I just let it slide – write it off as just
something men do occasionally in a locker room without any acknowledgement, let
alone discussion?
The second part of my dilemma is trickier. I know this guy –
the farter. Yet by his passive disregard of me, it appears he’s entirely
forgotten who I am. We’ve met before – in fact, multiple times. Let me explain.
His name is Larry. We went to the same high school together
– a Jesuit, all-boys school. He was 3 years older than me and served as one of
two student aides in my freshman theology class. Mr. Joyce was our teacher, a man
of slight stature and a calming
yoga-instructor voice who had impeccably combed wavy brown hair and an
impressive array of brightly colored sweaters that he wore regardless of the
temperature or season.
I was impressionable then, I guess. Prior to the locker room
blast, Larry burned a spot in my cerebral cortex that stores my long-term
memory. I, on the other hand, apparently did no such thing to him. I know this
because a few years earlier I saw him standing by the coffee lady at the
commuter rail station. I shook his hand, introduced myself and reminded him of
high school, Mr. Joyce and our mutual theology class. His response was a foggy,
polite and a quite perfunctory, “Oh, right…” as he weakly shook my outstretched
hand.
While I was nonplussed, I figured, “Well, whatever.” It was
30 years ago. He’s a lawyer now, I learned, during our short chat. I cut him
some slack. He’s been busy, plus lawyers need to remember a lot of stuff. We parted
ways at the train station that day, yet here we were again, both half-naked in
a locker room at 6 a.m. and seated a mere four feet away from me, he unleashes
the mother of all farts, then proceeds to pretend it didn’t happen, leaving me
with the dilemma I’ve just described.
"Did You Say Something?"
Seconds after Larry’s fart, I felt compelled to speak. Somehow
the first response that came into my head was Shrek’s simple but profound, “Better
out than in, I always say.” But I
kept quiet.
Then I thought of saying, “Sorry….did you say something?” I
held off, though.
I then considered saying, “That’s my point exactly!” but I
backed off because it seemed out of place and somehow rude.
Larry was a slow dresser. This afforded me some time to
think things over, actually. He was in no hurry. Fortunately for both of us,
this atomic gastrointestinal event was curiously odorless. Had it not been, I
suspect it would have hastened both of our departures.
As the awkward silence continued, I came to realize quickly that Larry could care less – not just about the fart, but about me. There was no, “Excuse me,” or “Sorry, those Brussels sprouts get me every time” He didn’t come out with even a slightly boastful claim of, “Now that’s what I’m talking about.” Nothing.
Any of these phrases would have been fine, but he was like a
Trappist monk seemingly reflecting in his own mini mental monastery, focusing exclusively
now on making the most perfect knot possible in his white shoelace.
My desire to interject faded. I realized that if I were I to speak, I’d need to remind him of our common past. I’d have to mention high school and then the train station. It seemed like a long, burdensome conversation, one entirely not worth having. So, I left.
It’s just as well. I’d heard enough. I needed to start my day. I had no desire to dredge up the past – at least with an unrepentant, flatulent attorney with an aloof demeanor and a sketchy memory to boot.
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