Le Fartiste (Which is an "F" word)

This promises to be one of my quirky posts and not one of deep philosophical significance. (As if that's anything new!) This could be a long story, but it isn't. The Fartiste was a 2006 musical, awarded "Best Musical" at the New York International Fringe Festival. It was based on the life of Joseph Pujol, whose stage name was Le Pétomane, and lived from 1857 until 1945.

Just to put this bluntly and so as to not consume copious amounts of web space on nicely tippy toeing around the subject. Monseur Pujol was a professional farter. Yes the man got paid to fart on stage, and people would pay money to sit in a theater and listen/watch. Evidently he could blow out candles several feet away, play a flute though a rubber hose inserted in his rectum, and exercised such fine sphincter muscle control that he could fart La Marseillaise, the French national anthem. (I thought the French national anthem was Retreat, as played by General Custer's cavalry bugler, but that's another opinion for another post.) Believe it not, this is a true story. Le Pétomane was so popular at one time that his act eventually moved to the Moulin Rouge, where his audiences included both royalty and celebrity.

I learned all this while reading the comprehensive treatise on flatulence available at Wikipedia. I hate to say this, but we have nothing like this here beneath the Carolina moon. We've got some wild stories of some pretty eccentric characters, both saintly and shady, but no professional, paid for it, made a grand living at it, farters. We've got Buck Gentry, who burned down his house trailer by accident, when he did the obviously adolescent stunt of lighting a fart. I mean what group of teens hasn't peer pressured some looser into giving it a go? You can even find YouTubes of the events today.

But, Ole' Buck was out beside his pickup truck which was missing the gas cap and Buck had stuck a rag in the fill tube to make do. Well, when the fart lit, the truck lit, and then the trailer lit, and Buck's wife lit into him pretty good. We all took up a collection for Buck down at the Elks club and the pool hall. The Red Cross and the Salvation Army pitched in, and in no time, Buck, Becky, and the two kids, were in a brand new trailer.

Buck hasn't lit any more farts, and nobody wrote a musical about the event, although on some Saturday nights, a gang of kids sometimes park their cars around on the vacant lot where Buck's old trailer used to be, and play music, sip beer, and pass around funny smelling cigarettes. Buck Gentry was the only person that I ever knew personally that came close to being paid to fart.

I don't go around there much anymore. Buck just never was the same after the accident, and Becky developed a mean streak. But sometimes, that's just how life turns out to be, here beneath the Carolina moon.

Posted by Dread, who last night, slept fitfully.