Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal (24 page)

Gustav Simon was the doctor for them. In 1873, Simon pioneered
^†
the “high introduction” of a whole hand, “richly oiled,” into the rectum. This was done with the other hand pressed to the abdomen, to palpate the pelvic organs and check for abnormalities. (Gynecologists employ the method today, though typically hold themselves to two fingers.) Any resulting “pain in the parts,” Simon assured the reader, was fleeting.

Mike Jones explains the arousal-by-stretching phenomenon by way of shared wiring. Defecation, orgasm, and arousal all fall under the purview of the sacral nerves. The massive vaginal stretch of childbirth sometimes produces orgasm, as can, at least in one diverting case study, defecation. Jeremy Agnew, in his 1985 paper “Some Anatomical and Physiological Aspects of Anal Sexual Practices,” wrote, “Contraction of the anus upon manipulation of the clitoris during physical examination is often observed by gynecologists.” Which kind of makes you wonder who Jeremy Agnew’s gynecologist was.

I have a question, and forgive me in advance. If filling the rectum with stones or concrete or arms can be a direct flight to ecstasy, why is constipation so universally a misery? Or is it? Are there people who derive sexual gratification from self-manufactured filler? Is the urge to go ever complicated by the urge to come?

I accosted William Whitehead with these questions. “A lot of visceral sensation seems to follow what’s been called a kind of Janus-faced function,” he managed—meaning pleasure and pain on different sides of the same head. He had sidestepped the constipation question. Not wishing to be a pain in the parts, I lobbed the question over to Mike Jones’s court.

“I think that the difference is that constipation is very rarely a self-determined event.” What Jones was getting at, I believe, is that sexual arousal depends on the players and the circumstances. The difference between Ping-Pong balls and scybala is the difference between sexual intercourse and getting a Pap smear.

Most fans of back-door activities probably enjoy a combo plate of rectal and anal sensations. Why else would someone have invented the anal violin? Agnew describes this unusual item as an ivory ball with catgut attached. “The ball is inserted into the rectum while a partner strokes the attached string with a type of violin bow, thus transmitting vibrations to the anal sensory end organs,” and puzzlement to the neighbors.

I never asked Rodriguez my question about “masked anal manipulation.” (The term refers to gratification of anal carnality via seemingly nonsexual behaviors. It does not necessarily, though surely can, involve a Lone Ranger getup.) It seems to me no masking is needed: that men in prison can be fairly open about their anal intents. If a prisoner puts an iPhone up his rectum, it’s because he wants to use it or sell it. If, on the other hand, he puts a toilet brush up there, he is seeking something more ineffable. Rodriguez told me about this one. “They took him out on a gurney, man. The
handle
was sticking out.”

I told Rodriguez about the 402 stones.

“The rectum will stretch. Believe that.”

T
HOUGH THERE HAS
yet to be a case of a terrorist detonating a bomb in his alimentary canal, explosions inside the digestive tract are well documented. Flatus is mostly hydrogen, mixed with (in a third of us) methane. Both gases are flammable, a fact that occasionally becomes obvious in the endoscopy suite. As in volume 36 of the journal
Endoscopy
: “A loud explosion occurred in the colon immediately after the first spark induced by argon plasma coagulation.” And again in volume 39: “Immediately on starting to treat the first of these angiodysplasias with APC, a loud gas explosion took place.” And finally in
Gastrointestinal Endoscopy
, volume 67: “The authors reported that a loud gas explosion was heard during the treatment of the first of the angiodysplasias.” Intestinal gas is not always funny.

*
Available in four languages, with minor modifications.The Portuguese edition, for instance, makes a distinction between the sausage of Types 2 and 3 (referred to as
linguiça
, a fatter German-style product) and that of Type 4, which is compared to
salsicha
(the more traditional wiener). The Bristol scale is, after all, a communication aid for physicians and patients. The more specific phrasing was undertaken “for better comprehension across Brazil.”

†
In a more perfect world, Whitehead would be a dermatologist, just as my gastroenterologist is Dr. Terdiman, and the author of the journal article “Gastrointestinal Gas” is J. Fardy, and the headquarters of the International Academy of Proctology was Flushing, New York.

*
Back in 2007, while researching a different book, I came across a journal article with a lengthy list of foreign bodies removed from rectums by emergency room personnel over the years. Most were predictably shaped: bottles, salamis, a plantain, and so on. One “collection”—as multiple holdings were referred to—stood out as uniquely nonsensical: spectacles, magazine, and tobacco pouch. Now I understand! The man had been packing for solitary.

*
Biofeedback can help. The anal sphincter can be briefly wired such that tightening and relaxing causes a circle on a computer screen to constrict and widen. The patient is instructed to bear down while keeping the circle wide. The maker of that program has one for children, called the Egg Drop Game, wherein clenching and relaxing causes a basket to move back and forth to catch a falling egg. The website of the American Egg Board has a version of the Egg Drop Game that does not require an anus (or cloaca) to play, just a cursor.

†
Especially if the exam entails defecography, which is pretty much what it sounds like. The patient is the star in an X-ray movie viewed by an audience of technicians, interns, and radiologist. “As close to pornography as medicine will come,” says gastroenterologist Mike Jones. Worse, the patient is passing a barium-infused “synthetic stool” crafted from a paste of plasticine (or in simpler days, rolled oats) and introduced wrong-way into the rectum. For the constipated patient, notes Jones, it can be a real ordeal. “It’s like, ‘Dude, if I could do this, I wouldn’t be here now.’”

*
Customs officers at Frankfurt Airport have it easier. Suspects are brought to the glass toilet, a specially designed commode with a separate tank for viewing and hands-free rinsing—kind of an amped-up version of the inspecting shelf on some German toilets. P.S.: The common assumption that the “trophy shelf” reflects a uniquely German fascination with excrement is weakened by the fact that older Polish, Dutch, Austrian, and Czech toilets also feature this design. I prefer the explanation that these are the sausage nations, and that prewar pork products caused regular outbreaks of intestinal worms.

*
Other red flags for customs agents include the unique breath odor created by gastric acid dissolving latex, and airline passengers who don’t eat. For years, Avianca cabin crew would take note of international passengers who refused meals, and report the names to customs personnel upon landing.

†
Occasionally the justice system has no choice but to step right in it. In
State of Iowa v. Steven Landis
, an inmate was convicted of squirting a correctional officer with a feces-filled toothpaste tube, a violation of Iowa Code section 708.3B, “inmate assault—bodily fluids or secretions.” Landis appealed, contending that without expert testimony or scientific analysis of the officer’s soiled shirt, the court had failed to prove that the substance was in fact feces. The state’s case had been based on eyewitness, or in this case nosewitness, testimony from other correctional officers. When asked how he knew it was feces, one officer had told the jury, “It was a brown substance with a very strong smell of feces.” The appeals judge felt this was sufficient.

My thanks to Judge Colleen Weiland, who drew my attention to the case and did me the favor of forwarding a logistical question to the presiding judge, Judge Mary Ann—may it please the author—Brown. “It appeared,” Brown replied, “that he liquefied the material and then dripped it or sucked it into the tube.”

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Seriously, published by Oxford University Press. But highly readable. So much so that the person who took
Inner Hygien
e out of the UC Berkeley library before me had read it on New Year’s Eve. I know this because she’d left behind her bookmark—a receipt from a Pinole, California, In-N-Out Burger dated December, 30, 2010—and because every so often as I read, I’d come upon bits of glitter. Had she brought the book along to a party, ducking into a side room to read about rectal dilators and slanted toilets as the party swirled around her? Or had she brought it to bed with her at 2
A.M.
, glitter falling from her hair as she read? If you know this girl, tell her I like her style.

†
Of or relating to the belly or intestines. With crushing disappointment, I learned that Dr. Gregory Alvine is an orthopedist. Staff at the oxymoronic Alvine Foot & Ankle Center did not respond to a request for comment.

‡
You would think the percentage would be higher, but in fact 80 to 90 percent of nondigestible objects that make it down the esophagus pass the rest of their journey without incident. If a man can swallow and pass a partial denture, a drug mule has little to worry about.

*
Close to but not quite the most egregious indignity bestowed on a corpse by drug dealers. Smugglers have occasionally recruited the mute services of a corpse being repatriated for burial and stuffed the entire length of the dead man’s GI tract. Heroin sausage.

*
A term coined by sexologist Thomas Lowry. In his efforts to research fisting, Lowry found himself writing letters to strangers at academic institutions that would begin like this: “Dear Dr. Brender: We spoke on the phone several months ago about ‘fist-fucking.’ At that time you mentioned two surgical articles.” There was no academic term, so eventually Lowry made one up. “I Googled it recently,” he told me, “and found over 2,000 hits. Made me chuckle.”

†
Simon refined his technique on cadavers, rupturing a bowel or two along the way, and then began offering training seminars. Cadavers were replaced with live, chloroformed women, thighs flexed on their abdomens. “A large number of professors and physicians” flew all the way to Heidelberg to practice “the forcible entrance.”

12

Inflammable You

FUN WITH HYDROGEN AND METHANE

L
ONG BEFORE ANYONE
put a cautering wand up anyone else’s patoot, the dangers of flammable
^*
bowel gas were well known. If you let manure sit, as any farmer can tell you, bacteria will break it down into more elemental components. Some of these are of value to farmers as fertilizer, which they can pump from their manure pit out onto their crops.
^†
Others—hydrogen, say, and methane—will blow the roof off the hog barn. Here is the Safe Farm Program channeling Beatrix Potter in a methane-safety radio spot: “It has no smell. It has no color. It often lurks about, but fails to leave a trace.”

Methane and hydrogen are explosive in concentrations higher than 4 to 5 percent. The foam on liquid manure in pits is 60 percent methane. Farmers may know this, but their families sometimes don’t. Which explains why the University of Minnesota Extension Service’s farm safety curriculum includes instructions for a children’s classroom Manure Pit Display. (“You will need: . . . toy cow, pig, and bull [1/32 scale], an aquarium, one pound of dry composted manure . . . and chocolate kisses . . . to simulate manure on top of floor [optional].”)