Alo, good morning dear reader.

If you are currently eating, I suggest you either stop reading this post or stop eating.

If you’re reading this on your smartphone while sitting on the toilet, read on. That is the right place and now the right time for this. 

This post, though an attempt to have compassion with a component of my readership, will likely cost me subscribers. It will cost me subscribers because, today, I’m going to explore an uncomfortable truth. 

This is another poo poo post.

Yup, another post that explores your relationship with your asshole

We all have one.

We’ve all touched it at some point in our lives.

And, there are some in the world who would like to either deny that they the big round poop loop. There are some who would rather others do not know about their massive stinky farts.

There are some who can not let others know about the big brown skid marks they leave on toilets.

There are some who can only poo in certain places, never in a public toilet.

And there are some who deny this not only about themselves, but about those they admire.

I am not one of those who denies such realities. As those who have unsubscribed as a result of my previous essays on excrement already know, I embrace all results of digestive functions.

But today in honor of subscribers I've lost, I’m going to attempt at empathy.

I’ll admit, this is a difficult thing for me. I once shared office space with a person who insisted that I never poop in the shared office facility because they neither wanted the fan, the smoke from the matches nor the residual traces of my processed meals lingering in the air.

My relationship with this person was both hostile and short lived. 

This person was anally retentive in their concern about what other people were doing and how it made them look. 

They were super concerned with being in control of their environment. My rank humanity was too random, too chaotic and too stinky for the pristine mask they desperately wanted to show the world. 

I imagine they were frequently constipated from clamping down so hard to keep their insides under wraps.

Many of you are likely either anally retentive or constipated much of the time. Twelve to nineteen percent of North Americans routinely suffer the slings and arrows - not arrows, oily rocks of constipation.

I have the opposite problem. I can’t contain myself most of the time.

There have been times where I’ve attempted to hold back. Typically these attempts ended badly. My father did not like my farts. I remember sitting in agony attempting not to fart while in his truck. The windows would be up. He’d be smoking cigarettes. And farts? Farts were banned. 

Sometimes things became too painful. My gut would cramp. I would do everything I could to sacrifice my comfort in order to please him.

I would do everything I could to block my biological imperative in order to not be embarrassed or in trouble. I would tie my guts into knots to please him. If someone could smell my foul nature, shame and embarrassment would follow.

The lengths I would go to were unlimited. I once bit my tongue so hard, in an attempt to suppress a fart, that it bled. I used to ‘inject the gas’ into the foam of his truck's cloth bench seats in the oddest way. I would compress the foam, like squeezing a sponge, then I would release my gas while letting the seat foam expand and ideally soak up the bum blast.

These were silent and undeadly. Though I do like to imagine that someone one day found my fathers truck, sat down too hard on the seat and died from gas poisoning - the ancient remnants of my anal annihilations wreaking chaos long after he sold the truck.

The time in the truck was formative for me. Holding onto my farts hurt my stomach. Squeezing them into seat cushions never worked. My father always smelt them. He would routinely get angry that they existed. Eventually he got over it. Eventually any time I wanted to fart I would simply crack a window, then let things go as discretely as possible. Eventually my dad had to learn to put up with my farts, my messiness and imperfection. My relationship with both him and my stomach relaxed. I could feel more ease in the world.

It was there that I vowed: Better out than in. Discretion be damned!

As someone who’s been described as anally explosive, prone to mistakes and messy, there are times where I wish that I had the discretion, the tact and self control of my constipated, anally retentive fellow humans. There are times where I would be better served by holding back.

In general however, I deeply believe in the theory of ‘better out than in’. I’d rather take risks, make messes, and make mistakes in order to keep myself from being tied up in knots internally.

And? There are places in my life where despite my explosiveness, I’m holding on too tightly to shit. There are things that bug me. I have behaviours that would make my life so much better if I could only let them go.

There are places where it would be wise of me to hold on a little more.

Are you anally retentive or explosive?

Or are you like me, anally ambidextrous? How do you know how and when to hold on, or how and when to let things rip?

Are you someone who needs to push or do the messes of your life just fall away from you?

Thanks for bearing down with me.

I’m glad we got to the bottom of this.

I'm grateful you are with me till the end.