My great lament

By now, most of you may know that I'm divorced.

While I sit in the center of my egocentric universe, garbage piled as high as an elephant's eye in my house, I contemplate what the future may hold for me. I'm recently 34, fairly intelligent, not unhandsome, and considerably witty. There could potentially be prospects out there for me, and this thought pervaded my curiosity as I searched online for girls that I used to know. Found some old high school acquaintences, a few girls I knew from college, and even a classmate or two from grad school. And while these online discoveries won't lead to any social connections of substance, I'm certain, I realized one gaping void that divorce has left in my life.

I'm going to miss being able to fart in front of a woman. I mean that in a more immediate basis. Sure, I could certainly find myself in a relationship where I'll cultivate the level of trust and acceptance that would be needed to really cut loose in front of a significant other, but for right now, if I go out on dates or some such, I'm going to find myself playing that bullshit game where, like, I have to pretend that the heat in the car has gotten too great and I have to roll the window down to get some air to circulate, "to balance out the warmth" or whatever shit I spontaneously came up with on my second prom night back in 1993.

That really sucks too, because just like there's no manual for decyphering the cryptic messages that women send out when they want to have the sexual encounters, there's likewise no manual that tells you when pooting up a storm is perfectly acceptable. That's a moment that you can't turn away from; either you pick the right time, and you and she can now feel totally relaxed in each other's company as you've found a new element to this person with whom you share your time, or alternately you'll be looked at as if you've just gone into your date's home church and called the pastor a motherfucker.

In the past eight years, the only other female I've farted in front of was my nurse when I had an appendectomy. They told me after the surgery that if I felt a buildup of gas in my stomach, I needed to relieve that by expelling it or else I'd feel a lot of discomfort. One mid-afternoon - 'cause the medications were out-STANDING! - I wake up, hike up a leg, cut loose a Hurricane Katrina of flatulence, and satisfied with my output, I capped it with a satisfied "Yeeeeeaaaaah ..." Only to hear a slight giggle, which came from my nurse who was behind me changing my IV bag. I quickly apologized, which led her to reply, "No, it's quite alright. I told you that it was something you needed to do." My only response was, "Yeah, but you didn't say to take so much pride in it."

With this in mind, here's to a brave new year of squinching my buttcheeks tight, excusing myself to the restroom of any restaurant/ department store/ ballgame (although I might could swing the ballgame setting ...), rolling down car windows, trotting upwind down a busy sidewalk, excusing myself to one aisle over in the grocery store because "I thought that's where the cereal was," and finding the nearest dog or infant and blaming it on them.

One other thing I realized I might miss is slapping the cobra clutch on a girl when I'm getting her doggy style, except that had nothing to do with my marriage; that was a whole other thing entirely, and in fact, I don't think the statute of limitations has run out on that yet, so let me conclude by saying, "Fuck you donkey punch, you think you're so great!"