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.”
THOUGH 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 lingui?a, 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.