The following is the unedited excerpt of a topic featured in Max McDowell's Penelope One
Suddenly there was a tremendous gastric boom. Then a
muffled roar, like the rumbling of far-off thunder. Hurriyet looked up for a moment and gave us a smile of utter
gratification. His intestine tract had gone on air. The actual catalyst
involved was entirely mysterious. Like a geological convulsion in a sudden
tectonic displacement, Hurriyet’s digestive processes altogether eluded
rational explanation. But every so often he would experience the urgent need to
pass wind. Resistance was pointless. If one’s immediate reaction was to bolt
for the door, Hurriyet usually got there first. Faint, but invidious. A minor
rumble. One of those silent, stealthy precursors to a major quake. Then a real
Richter-scale tremor followed by a tremendous methane blast. Something
approaching an off-key rendition of the Kurdish national anthem. On the
seismographic scale of Kurdish farts it maymerely have been a three to five,
but on a finely calibrated odour scale, it was nothing short of mayhem. The
night had definitely lost its chill. And this was obviously one of those
internal-combustive nights when Hurriyet’s bowels were putting on a major
gastro-intestinal display. Something forced up through the multiple meanderings
of his alimentary canal and thrust through the crust of his rectum, blasted
away with flawless sonority. Like an organ stop in perfect tune.
In
between bouts of this flatulent purification, Hurriyet would calmly check his
cards. As amiable as you please. Then there would be another convulsive
shudder, accompanied by the intestine roar of the colonic tract in full
throttle. I reeled. My future in stud-poker loomed like a gas-chamber. I
could see that the Ferret was terrified. Minnesota kept his ebony face as
mask-like as he could. But I could hear him gasp. Then Hurriyet rose to the
occasion in a remarkable act of deportment and poise. Raising his hand after
the manner of the prophets, he looked at us with the benign forbearance one
might expect from a sated boar, nodded his raw,
Actually,
having purged himself of the problem, he would simply pull his necktie loose,
open the shirt collar and unbutton his fly. An emergency escape for the methane
gas trapped in the folds. Silence finally settled over the game. Minnesota held
his nose, his eyes wide with indignation. The Ferret shakily lit a cigarette.
‘Goddammit man, I wouldn’t want you to break wind for me if I was suffocating.’
I couldn’t think of anything to say. So I remained silent. But I was a very
nervous man.
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