The Luv Doc: Hold It

Dear Luv Doc,

I feel like I am a pretty chill person and I don't have a lot of hang-ups, but I am having (I have always had?) a problem with my boyfriend. He farts. All the time. In front of me. I have asked him to please try to control himself or maybe go into another room, but he always says that I am being too prissy. I don't think I am. I don't think it's too much to ask for him to try to hold it in every once in a while. What do you think? Should I not make a stink?

– Gassed

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No, you should not make a stink. The world is already foul enough. That goes for your boyfriend Mr. Fartypants, as well. Hold it in, motherfucker. Hold it in until one lone tear streams down the side of your face. Hold it until a fat, blue vein pops out of your neck. Hold it until you can get to that forest where the tree falls and no one hears it. Hold it until you are far enough out in the surf where the riptide will carry your fart bubble into international waters before it surfaces. Hold it until you are far enough out in space to fart methane crystals. Hold it until it comes back up as a burp and then hold that, too. You know why? Because no one wants to smell your goddamned burp either – especially one that made the Odyssean journey back from your small intestine.

Look, I get that fundamentally we're all just smelly beasts and that those scents exist for very important reasons. Like – for instance – they remind us to not shit where we eat. That's a fairly huge deal epidemiologically speaking. Nothing signals the end of the digestive cycle better than an unpleasant odor. It's a scent that says, "I believe we're done here." Other smells come close – like the uneaten remainder of your all-you-can-eat buffet run at the Golden Corral, or maybe the grease dumpster behind an Applebee's, or the trash can by the exit to the Tilt-A-Whirl ride at a carnival, but all of those take a backseat to plain old poop.

There are also those pheromonal sibling avoidance olfactory cues that, with the exception of European royalty, a few remote hollers in Appalachia and the Ozarks, and the entire Emerald Isle, seem to be reasonably effective at keeping people from banging their immediate kin. You can deny global warming all you want, but if you deny olfactory chemistry you might just end up with a bleeder who looks like that banjo-playing kid from Deliverance.

All that said, I can think of no good reason for human beings in the third millennium to wallow in the stench of their own excrement. We get it. We're not going back to the shit pile to try to leech out a few more nutrients – OK – maybe for the luxurious grass at Zilker, but not to shore up an iron deficiency. So, very politely and patiently let your boyfriend know that if he needs to fart, the door is always open and he can use it to get the fuck out.