Personal Perfume

You're used to the way the air in your apartment is never quite the same as the air in the hallway. It's most obvious when you first open the door, the warm stink of stale farts and musk, but after six months of living here you find that you quickly forget what fresh air smells like after a few minutes. The olfactory assault always sets off a bit of anticipation in your stomach though, a reminder of what lays beyond every time you walk through the door.

Matt is your roommate, an ex-frat type that had lived in the apartment for a few years and needed some help paying the bills. He had been relaxed and friendly when you first inspected the place, a warm, solid figure, muscle and fat in equal measure. Certainly not a hardship to look at. You had gotten along well, and it didn't take you long to decide to move in. It wasn't that you regretted doing so, but you definitely had been blindsided by the quirks Matt had neglected to voice about himself in your introduction. Namely: he was lazy, unashamedly gassy, and an utter slob.

Walking through the living room to the kitchen, you can't see your roommate anywhere. The TV is still on, a low murmur of a sports channel, and you're surprised to see he isn't taking up the couch like usual, splayed indecently in some state of undress. (That was always a flustering surprise, and happened more often than you let yourself think about.) Neither is he digging into the fridge for a beer, or sitting his admittedly incredible ass on the kitchen counter in his should've-been-thrown-out-years-ago briefs. You begin unpacking the few bags of groceries you picked up from the store, storing away vegetables and soda, when you hear it. The sloppy, echoing splatter of Matt's gas into the toilet.

You're familiar with the rush of heat across your skin by this point too, the way your pulse picks up at the revolting sound. The first time you had heard Matt take one of his obnoxiously loud dumps, you had been disgusted for maybe the first five minutes before the unexpected arousal crept up on you. You'd tried to deny it to yourself, of course, but there was very little room for argument when you throbbed between your legs every time your roommate grunted out an urgent log. The noise is impossible to ignore even if you wanted to, as you had those first few weeks of moving in. Matt's dumps were audible from anywhere in the apartment - moaning and groaning in between bellowing farts, swearing after every heavy coil of shit that left him. His habit of leaving the bathroom door open make the sounds crystal clear.

Another amplified, bubbly fart cuts through the stillness of the apartment, followed by a groan of relief. You shift on your feet, staring blankly at the off-white countertops. It's so hard not to picture him leaned back against the toilet tank, legs spread and one hand on his gut. Pressing deep into the area beneath his belly button. Face creased in concentration and bliss. You'd glimpsed him in this position when you passed by the open bathroom door once, unable to stop yourself from taking a look, and the image has haunted you since. You can hear the creak of plastic as he shifts on the toilet seat, a soft vocalisation that might've been him straining, and then the hard, gassy splattering of shit dropping into the water, steadily growing into distinct, slow plopping as his load grows more solid.

You wonder what he's eaten today to make himself so gaseous. The shit sliding out of him sounds soft and numerous, unlike most of the giant, solid logs you know he's capable of producing - and, damnit, your cheeks flame for even taking so much notice of your roommate's bowel movements.

You can hear him breathing deeply, sounding slightly out of breath, and the apartment is quiet for a while. You listen carefully, beyond convincing yourself that you shouldn't be, and wonder if he's done. You think he might be, when a final, ass-shaking fart blows out what seems to be the last few chunks of shit, cresting into a wet roar before tapering off. "Ohh, fuck," you hear him moan, and he lets out a guttural belch that rings in your ears.

He's a pig. An absolute pig. And you're throbbing in your pants just listening to him.

The toilet flushes and Matt appears around the corner, quickly enough for you to wonder if he even wiped, and his eyes latch onto you, flushed red in the kitchen with your hands in grocery bags.