It's A Windy Kind of Love

Last night I was speaking to an old friend about the nature of true love. As the romantic sort, I expected him to wax lyrical about the power of Cupid's arrow and irrepressible urges. Instead, he paused for thought and said quite simply: "Well, you know it's true love if you can fart around that person and not regret it." Hmmm and they say romance is dead, eh?

Having been subjected to a love quite flatulent, I can only hope that this definition is far from the truth. Reading the tale of Lindey Best's tale in the Sun, "Farting Ruined My Sex Life", I realised that I was not alone in reaching for the gas mask in the presence of a walking stink bomb.

While most duck and run for cover when faced with a loved one's gassy emission, there are some who just can't wait for their love's next windy blast. Eproctophilia, or sexual arousal from another's farts, is on the rise with sites offering film clips and images for those who crave gas-powered erotica. Forums such as the Queen of Farts forum, moderated by the Queen of Farts Sexy Miss Lizz, allows members to openly discuss their farting realities and fantasies.

Fart fetishism is a true feast for the senses - stimulating eyes, ears and nose. For those unable to express this desire in their love, a wide range of porn films are available which cater to this fetish, however, it is my understanding that the 'best' are of Japanese origin. Sometimes just seeing or hearing is never enough. At times like those, look no further than Farting Sexy's Farrah and LadyEve who will send you worn panties which received a bottom-blasting all day. An interesting aspect of the erotica surrounding this subject come in its form of written erotica. Fart diaries or Gas Logs such as Lisa's and Jillian's allow for insight into the world of the sorts of women whose emissions can "burn a hole in her panties". In their diaries they detail not only how many times they pass wind, but also detailed descriptions. Jillian wrote of her first one that day: "Bathroom-just out of bed - Big, rotten eggs and sour milk ". While these appear quite innocent to a novice like me, I'm guessing it works for someone!

Many worry about the effects of the internet and how it increases our sexual perversions, but in this case, it certainly is not a 'new fetish'. In the 18th century Jonathan Swift famously wrote a pamphlet called "The Benefits of Farting Explain'd". In the early 20th century, author James Joyce's erotic letters to his wife Nora, reveal his affection and desire for her farts. In December 1909, he wrote: "At every fuck I gave you your shameless tongue came bursting out through your lips and if a gave you a bigger stronger fuck than usual, fat dirty farts came spluttering out of your backside. You had an arse full of farts that night, darling, and I fucked them out of you, big fat fellows, long windy ones, quick little merry cracks and a lot of tiny little naughty farties ending in a long gush from your hole. It is wonderful to fuck a farting woman when every fuck drives one out of her. I think I would know Nora's fart anywhere. I think I could pick hers out in a roomful of farting women. It is a rather girlish noise not like the wet windy fart which I imagine fat wives have. It is sudden and dry and dirty like what a bold girl would let off in fun in a school dormitory at night. I hope Nora will let off no end of her farts in my face so that I may know their smell also."

These intimate exchanges, written over a period when Joyce and his 'little fuckbird' were apart, clearly were written for arousal. Richard Ellmann, writing the introduction to the 1975 Faber & Faber edition of Selected Letters of James Joyce suggests that the erotic letters can be misunderstood. He writes that: "They display traces of fetishism, anality, paranoia and masochism, but before quartering Joyce into these categories and consigning him to their tyranny we must remember that he was capable, in his work, of ridiculing them all as Circean beguilements, of turning them into vaudeville routines. Then too, the letters rebuke such obvious labels by an ulterior purpose; besides the immediate physical goal, Joyce wishes to anatomise and reconstitute and crystallize the emotion of love. He goes further still; like Richard Rowan in Exiles, he wishes to possess his wife's soul, and have her possess his, in utter nakedness. To know someone else beyond love and hate, beyond vanity and remorse, beyond human possibility almost, is his extravagant desire."

So, maybe my friend makes a valid point about the criteria for true love, perhaps he's even read some Joyce and embraced an all-encompassing love. Perhaps he is a closet fart fetishist and spends his evenings feeding his girlfriend beans in the hopes she'll treat him to a show. But, more likely, he's just too lazy to excuse himself from a loved one's prescence before releasing his not-so-fragrant aroma.