Sputterpub's Blog

The Feortan

Jill’s stomach can tolerate just about anything. It’s her lower GI tract that punishes her when she overdoes. Her whole family was like that, and she’d grown up with so many references to flatulence that she used to think all humor was fart jokes.

Her brother sang “Beans, beans, the musical fruit.” Her father instructed them (for the future) about holding the sheet tight against their necks after letting one rip in bed, to send the effluvium to their mates.

When Jill was 18 she developed odd pains. Suddenly it hurt when she inhaled, between her neck and shoulder or below her ribs. The family doctor guessed it was her gall bladder and put her on a fat-free diet. She lost 20 pounds but not the pains. She was referred to an internist, who ran tests and pronounced her gall bladder perfect. He told her she had a tendency to a spastic colon – when nervous or stressed she was likely to gulp air by yawning or eating too fast, which made for pockets of air in her large intestine, which is another way to describe gas. Extreme enough, the air moved to other parts of her torso, pressing on places that then gave her pain.

Jill resisted the diagnosis at first. The doctor was accusing her of nervousness, and she wouldn’t take that without debate. She told him what a rock she was. How often her friends depended on her to take care of things. “My dear,” the doctor responded with words Jill never forgot, “there’s a difference between nervous and hysterical.”

She learned then not to eat when agitated. Not to drink while eating. To chew her food thoroughly. To pay attention to her own yawns, for she was headed into discomfort when she yawned a lot, packing the long tube with unnecessary air.

Eventually she took up yoga and meditation; she even tried a little bio-feedback. She began a regular exercise program and stuck to it.

She managed her condition so well that she was rarely socially troubled. She had some emphatic nights and mornings at home, but those were known only to her and her dog. She paid attention when she was with anyone and usually she was comfortable.

Usually. Somehow pot de creme and conversation brought on a bloat like she hadn’t suffered in years. Sitting conversing and settling the tab, Jill’s waist grew an inch while her belly distended with gas. She gulped air and then noticed herself gulping, and immediately her thoughts were sardonic: “Oh fine! right! no sooner do Robert and I set ourselves up to try this again than I explode like the marshmallow man. Gad: if he hugs me I’ll release like a blown balloon!”

“I really need to walk,” she said as Robert put his card away

Whatever he intended to say was avalanched by his belch. He burped impulsively, almost passionately, and the hands that were putting his credit card in his wallet were too slow to block it.

The initial look on his face was deerlike panic. Then they both laughed. Standing to leave, guffawing, Jill couldn’t suppress her fart.

The Bealcan

Robert learned what heartburn was at 12, not long after a dinner of pancakes and orange juice. It felt like a burp coming on but it seemed to jam halfway up. His chest grew crowded and hot. He kept opening his throat and moving his lower jaw forward, which usually brought up a belch. All he got were ear pops.

That was it. After that Robert had heartburn if he drank citrus juice. If he ate uncooked tomatoes. If he snacked before bed. It was as if some digestive part of him failed, that first night when he was 12, like a valve insufficiently closed or a hinge broke, making a place of vulnerability in him.

He was protective about it. He tended to curl around his stomach no matter what he was doing. He sat with his legs crossed at the knee, his arms folded over his chest. He stood with his shoulders curved forward. Acute observers thought him inhibited. He would have said it was gas.

Deborah had understood his problem. They’d always dined well but with limited spices, and they never snacked after supper. Which took off the ten pounds that had weighed on Deborah: the bulk like butter that crowded her lap and bounced independently when she danced. Living with Robert had clothing fitness benefits for Deborah, but other than that they were like their diet: well but not spicy, successful and bland.

Things were different with Jill. She was direct like Deborah had been, but much more forceful. He had described his reflux problem but that was awhile ago and on an intellectual level. It was another matter to feel the old burn while out to dinner with her.

He hadn’t expected it. The good thing about his heart attack scare, besides the reassurance he received after the full scan, was the prescription for Protonix.

He had been able to toss his Tums. He found he could even drink orange juice again. So he hadn’t expected a dining problem. He’d thought he could treat Jill to good food and fine conversation, and maybe try another kiss, later, after they pulled out of their customary hug. Now all he could imagine was the suppression he’d have to make not to burp in her face. The effort to resist relief.

Maybe his body was trying to tell him something.

“What would you like for dessert?” he asked. It was customary for them to share one. Robert would rather skip more food, and always before he would have been comfortable saying so, but something was different between them lately. Ever since their kiss fiasco. Not awkward, exactly: just less verbal.

“Want to share the pot de creme?” It was mocha flavored, which didn’t suit Jill as much as chocolate would have, but they ordered one.

They had finished dessert and were preparing to leave as Robert’s Protonix went to work. His hand lifted but made an inadequate barrier, and with all the vigor and embarrassment of a 13-year old, he belched across the table.

(to be continued next Wednesday)

The Coss

Their kiss was anything but cinematic. His mouth didn’t devour hers and she didn’t surrender. Their teeth clacked.

They were old enough to do better. Robert was almost 60 and Jill had just turned 57. Each had been married – Robert with Deborah till her death from cancer, and Jill twice.

Robert and Jill had considered each other, that way, ten years ago after Deborah died. Jill had been single for eight years when she and Robert were introduced. They had one date – lunch and a walk on a fair Sunday – she thought him too fussy and he found her too loud. But they shared some interests and each of them needed to get out more. They became friends. They hiked, dined, even traveled together, but they never touched. He had a few other platonic friends and she enjoyed a couple of passable boyfriends, but each had spent a mostly solitary decade.

Something shifted in the last year. An esophageal spasm mimicked a heart attack in Robert and, once aware of his heart, he was besieged by it. It seemed it might be worth the embarrassment, to love.

On Jill the attack wasn’t medical as much as temporal. She had too little stamina for the dating scene any more. She wasn’t attracted to Robert, but she was starting to think their friendship could try it and fail and adjust to that failure easier than it could survive them declining to try.

So that evening, after a fine meal and a good opera, after Robert pulled his car to her curb and Jill leaned her head back, looking left to him, he tipped his chin right and made his mouth touch hers.

His lips were tight at first and it was when he loosened them that their teeth met. He smelled or tasted, so close Jill couldn’t distinguish, of the figs he ate for dessert. Her breath added some pesto from her entree, underscored by her after-dinner coffee. Then their exhalations mixed.

That should have made it better but they were still off. He pressed just when she wanted gentle and slow. Then he pulled away and came back softer, but she had adjusted backward for the expected pressure, they barely touched, and then both overcorrected and clacked again. Jill’s lower lip was mashed between their teeth.

She couldn’t help it; she winced away. He reacted as if he’d been slapped. Their shift from curious interest to dread was the only thing mutual about the moment.

“This is ridiculous,” she thought, not about the kissing but about her inability to correct it. She knew she should have been able to take his sparsely bearded cheeks in her palms and kiss him correctly, but she hesitated and lost the moment. What should have felt natural became awkward; she wanted Robert to take the lead.

But he had never been the initiator. Deborah had been his only lover, and from the beginning she indicated when they did what. This night, this awful kiss, was the first time Robert had moved forward on his own, and the feedback had not been positive. He still looked chilly. Wary. Self-protective.

“Shit,” he thought. “And I’m supposed to be so articulate.”

Just then Jill was thinking the same about herself.

The moment passed, and at least six more, till bridging it seemed impossible.