Why Do Men Have Nipples? by Mark Leyner Page B

is readily available. Beano contains a food enzyme extracted from mold, one alpha-galactosidase, that helps to break down the complex sugars in gassy foods. Another method is to soak beans before you cook them, as this cuts down on their gas-producing power if you then discard the water. Unfortunately, you also lose some water-soluble vitamins by doing this.
    Other flatugenic foods are broccoli, brussels sprouts, cooked cabbage, raw apples, radishes, onions, cucumbers, melons, coffee, peanuts, eggs, oranges, tomatoes, strawberries, milk, and raisins.
    Notice the abundance of vegetables on the fart-producing list. That is why those vegetarians are always passing wind in yoga class as they contort themselves into weird positions.
    WOULD YOU DIE IF YOU ATE YOUR
OWN FECES?
    There is a psychiatric illness called coprophagia, the eating of one’s own feces. It is an uncommonly reported symptom that can be seen in patients with schizophrenia, alcoholism, dementia, depression, Kluver-Bucy syndrome (ask Mark), and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Scatolia, the smearing of feces, is often seen in psychiatric hospitals. High-functioning individuals may sometimes exhibit coprophagia as part of a paraphilia or abnormal sexual arousal disorder. There are even some claims that Eva Braun urinated and defecated on Adolf Hitler. Sexy!
    You can get very sick by eating feces. It shouldn’t be fatal, but complications from snacking on shit include hepatitis, oral infection, abscess, and a variety of other infectious diseases. Besides that, think of the morning breath.
    12:05 P.M.
    Leyner: Be right there . . .
    Gberg: OK, I gotta run to the bathroom.
    12:15 P.M.
    Gberg: I have returned.
    Leyner: Did you wipe standing up?
    Leyner: Some people do, I’ve heard . . .
    Gberg: Stop mocking me. You know I am sensitive about being a stander.
    Leyner: I’m sorry . . . you know sometimes I pee sitting down . . . out of pure laziness.
    Gberg: That is what they should teach you in school.
    Gberg: Bathroom etiquette.
    Leyner: They should teach boys that they don’t HAVE to stand up . . . that it’s an option.
    12:20 P.M.
    Leyner: When my niece was a little girl she said a great thing once on the way back from a little skiing excursion in Lenox, Massachusetts.
    Gberg: And . . . what were these words of wisdom?
    Leyner: It was quiet in the car and all of a sudden she piped up, “I didn’t fart . . . but I’d open a window if I were you.”
    Gberg: With all the new technology, they should make an automatic sensor that senses the gas and opens the window.
    Leyner: I hate going into a bathroom in a fancy restaurant where they have an attendant in there.
    Leyner: A men’s room seems to be the one place on earth where Emersonian self-reliance should be the rule.
    Gberg: I know, I don’t really need assistance getting the paper towel out of the dispenser.
    Leyner: There’s really nothing that goes on in a men’s room that I can’t handle myself.
    Gberg: You end up feeling so guilty that you have to give the poor bastard a tip.
    12:25 P.M.
    Leyner: You know that expression for waiters and cooks—when they spend their day off at the place they work?
    Leyner: Bellman’s holiday or something?
    Gberg: ??
    Leyner: Wonder if there’s an equivalent for men’s room attendants?
    Leyner: Look that expression up online, will you . . . bellman’s holiday.
    Gberg: They probably can’t urinate or defecate at home because it reminds them of work.
    Leyner: What about the people who check stool samples all day, like at that place Jetti Katz, you know that lab?
    Gberg: What the hell are you talking about?
    Leyner: There’s a lab I went to once when my cousin, my gastroenterologist, thought I might have picked up some exotic parasite in Tierra del Fuego.
    Gberg: Jetti Katz sounds like a performer in the Catskills.
    12:30 P.M.
    Leyner: So he sent me to this lab that specializes in analyzing stool for parasite eggs . . . Jetti Katz or