The Fart Of Fiction, No. 2

Stop... walk into the room. It's a workshop on sensory writing and you're waiting for the touch, taste, or scent. But a primary sense of sight takes hold first for the observer, describing the drab room, quality of light, and person in a way that's never been described before. "Oh God, he's aged badly. Look at the wrinkles! I can't stop observing the freakish contours on his face," she says.

But my reddish nose (dimmed red under light to reveal I'm a recovering alcoholic) smells boiled hot dogs on the girl. Maybe I'm old, but she smells like a hot dog. The smell triggers a memory of many hot dogs I've dated before meeting my wife. Sound is another vital sense. Sound can be about dread or suspense, or something making me feel comfortable. But sometimes I'll get overly comfortable and fart. It's noisy like the crude, robust diesel engine from a nineteenth-century locomotive. Everyone in the room starts to disappear. The classroom sounds like the bottom of an ocean and everything is happening in slow-motion as the classroom clears from ten or twelve people to just me, but I'm almost touching intimacy that I can feel from hearing a familiar radio station in my head. I almost taste draught beer going down, because a sound buzzes madly.

The human body makes many sounds and the human brain will control them. There's a musical recording in my skull, the static is taking over now, bending around in my brain and I feel ready to explode. I turn the music off and read, and the empty classroom smells like a sweet home.