BODILY FUNCTION ANXIETY
A small scene (that may not survive the edit) of current work-in-progress
BETH AND STEVE are curled up like housecats, underneath separate blankets, one each end of Beth’s bed. The bedroom is cramped and has no window. Incomplete drawings are scattered over every surface. On the floor beside the bed are three different-sized sketch books. The walls are covered in pictures of Bowie in his various guises. Two candles inside red vases illuminate the room. A projector projects stars onto the ceiling, that rotate hypnotically, changing from blue to green to white, giving Steve the impression that he is lying on his back inside a planetarium. He is sweating, but dare not remove the blanket and reveal his sticky state. A David Bowie song is playing. Steve doesn’t know the song. He doesn’t really know any Bowie song, apart from the ones everybody knows, like “this is ground control to Major Tom.” But this one playing now sounds so good that Steve can’t stop his head bobbing, nor the muscles in his legs from twitching along to it. Steve only now remembers telling Beth, the night they met, that he too was a Bowie fan. He just hopes she doesn’t ask him to select an album from the large collection of CDs stacked in the rack on the wall.
Time slows down when you’re on shrooms, but speeds up when you’re on pills. Steve doesn’t know whether he’s flying or swimming. He glances at his watch, but can’t make out the numbers. He thinks there’s a two, but maybe it’s a five, or an eight that’s belly dancing, who can say? He looks across at Beth, who is gazing silently at a framed photo on the bedside cabinet, of her as a child, around ten years old, gappy teeth, Mickey Mouse ears on her head; her younger sister, who looks identical, just smaller, also wearing Mickey Mouse ears; her dad, in an oversized blue denim shirt and a thin moustache, bald-headed and barrel-chested, like a fairground prize-fighter; and her mum, who looks exactly like her two daughters, except with crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes and mouth. The dad looks twenty years older than his wife. She can’t have been long out of her teens when she had Beth. Standing behind them, with his arms around their shoulders, is Goofy. Steve is curious to know if the picture was taken at Disneyland in America, or Euro Disney. But it doesn’t feel appropriate to ask.
Bowie is still playing, just loud enough to cover the long squeaks of gas that from time-to-time rip through Steve’s intestine like a shooting star. You always empty your bowels after eating shrooms. Not to mention the pills; which go through Steve like a laxative. There’s just one problem: Beth’s ensuite is right there. The sliding door appears to be made of bamboo. The room is so small that he could reach out and hold Beth’s hand while sitting on the toilet. Even with the door closed, she’ll hear everything. And worse, when the door slides open and he completes the walk of shame back to the bed, the room will fill with the stench of shit and he’ll keel over and die. There’s not even a window to open! She must have gone to the toilet before showering, Steve thinks. That’s why she put me in the kitchen with the lasagna. Well played. It feels like an alien’s about to burst out of my solar plexus, like in the movie. I wonder what she’s thinking about, she’s been looking at that photo for ages. At least, it feels like it’s been ages. Maybe it’s been no time at all.
Steve’s jaw aches. He has chewed the gum in his mouth down to a paste, and chewed the inside of his cheek so much that an ulcer has formed there, raw and sore. His teeth feel like razor blades as they grind against it; he must look like a cow chewing a cactus. He keeps picking up the glass of water, taking a sip, putting it down, then picking it up again. The quilt beneath him is soaked with sweat. There is no way Beth hasn’t noticed. But she’s still lost in that photo; gazing into it as if under a spell.
Steve gets up from under the blanket. Inside the small bathroom, with the sliding door closed behind him, he runs the cold tap and stands over the toilet, trying to pee. But nothing comes out. Partly because of the pills, that always happens; and partly because he’s afraid to push too hard — a loud fart now would be heard throughout the whole building, not just the room, and Steve’s gut feels ready to blow. Better to let it out now, under controlled conditions, than later, by accident, with a cough or a sneeze. Like what happened to Elise, a girl in Steve’s class back in middle school. The kids were sitting on the floor at Miss Berkely’s feet, listening with sad expressions on their faces as she read to them from Anne Frank’s diary, when Elise sneezed and at the same time sent a loud fart vibrating along the carpet. There was a moment of silence as kids processed what they had heard. Then came the explosion of laughter, and Elise got up and ran out of the classroom. Oh Jesus, can you imagine! With the tap still running, Steve clenches his buttocks and places his hand in the space between the tightened cheeks (outside his jeans), and releases the gas, slowly and silently, as if catching a cloud in a baseball glove. He gives up trying to pee, spits his gum in the toilet, wipes the sweat from his forehead with toilet paper, flushes, washes his hands, puts a fresh chewing gum in his mouth and returns to the bed feeling only slightly less troubled than before. Beth, still mesmerised by the photo, says nothing as he gets back under his blanket.
It takes Steve a while to find the position he was in before, that didn’t make his neck ache. No sooner has he made himself comfortable than his nose picks up the strong whiff of hard-boiled eggs, and he is mortified. With the exception of that one he released from captivity in the bathroom, he’s been holding them in all night. He’s sure of it. But now he’s not so sure. How slowly is time moving? What if it came out without me feeling it? What if it doesn’t exist — my senses are playing tricks on me, my nose is tripping, there is no smell. But I can smell it. She must be disgusted, that’s why she’s stopped talking, she can’t believe she invited me onto her bed and I did that. But I didn’t! That’s why she’s gone into herself, she’s embarrassed, she thinks I’m disgusted at her. I better say something.
“This projector is quality!” Steve says. “Where’s it from, I need to get one! So trippy!”
His words break the hold the family photo has been holding over Beth. She turns and looks at Steve with entertained eyes. “What projector?”
“The stars on the ceiling…” Steve says, his voice suddenly croaky with doubt.
Beth bursts out laughing. “There’s no projector! They’re glow in the dark stickers!”
“No!” Steve says, squinting to try and focus on one, without success, due to its unpredictable motion. “But they’re changing colour! And moving!”
Beth stops laughing and fixes her gaze on the glowing objects on the ceiling.
“Oh my god, they actually are!”
I think I've mentioned my anxieties about toilets in a previous story of yours, and this absolutely leans into them! For something so olfactory focused, I'd like some more smell related deatils throughout, maybe even having them merge into one another, swirling like the lights on the ceiling.
I'm intrigued as to where this scene would come in the larger picture too!
I think that was good, but I’m such a pushover for a good fart or poop story that maybe I’m not a good judge. But I’m glad you didn’t solve who dealt it, just let it die away.