March 2022 Story - College Gas 101 (Chapter 2) (Patreon)

Emilia will never forget how she met her roommate Melissa Pereira.

Minutes after her parents dropped her off, Emilia was unpacking her bags in her dorm. The room was quite small, but such was the way with freshman dorms. It was cozy, to put a positive spin on it. Apparently, Melissa had already arrived earlier and unpacked her stuff. She had hung up a framed poster of Cristiano Ronaldo above her bed, along with few FIFA World Cup flags from various years, and a giant flag of Brazil. She had her desk neatly organized with pens and pencils and other office supplies in their respective bins, and she even had all her textbooks arranged in height order.

Emilia hadn’t even bought a single textbook yet. She grew worried – these were all signs that Melissa was a neatfreak, and most likely a stickler for “the proper” way of doing things.

All of that vanished when Melissa stepped into the room, not expecting anyone to be there, and let off a massive belch that reverberated against the walls of the room. Emilia’s ears nearly hurt at the bassy explosion.

BRAAAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUURRRRRRRRP!

The second Melissa finished burping, she cackled and said, “Oh shit! I’m sorry!”

Like Emilia, Melissa also wore thick glasses that made her eyes look bigger than they were. She was black, short, and held a large curly mane of black hair that Emilia found amazing. It was more mesmerizing than Alessa’s.

“I went to get some soda down the hall,” Melissa said. “I was, uh, really thirsty. As you can tell. Hahaha!”

And that set the tone for the rest of Emilia’s first week at Dickinson University.

They hit it off immediately during orientation week. The two of them could not stop talking about anime, boys, favorite soccer players, and video games. It felt refreshing for Emilia to talk to someone so easygoing about anything. Melissa was “chill” in the truest sense. She had a rather funny, droning sarcastic voice, but then it shot up when she was truly excited about something. It was the cutest thing ever.

Their dorm hall was the envy of all other freshmen, as it was recently renovated. Emilia and Melissa mainly bonded over video games on in a brand-new common room with plasma TVs and fresh new furniture – it looked like a corporate office, but in a good way. The hallways throughout the dorm hall were quite narrow though, which Emilia didn’t like as much. However, the caveat was that every bathroom was a private bathroom. Emilia secretly loved that. No more awkward silences if other people were in the stalls after she would rip massive farts. She already took advantage of the private bathrooms. Since Day 1, she had casually gone into one, lifted her leg to rip a fart, and come back out – completely at ease that nobody heard her. This was perfect. Farts were now her deep, dark secret. She went there to be alone and suffer any gaseous indecencies in private. As such, she secretly enjoyed the prospect of letting loose. She sometimes had to lift her leg on the sink to let out a stubborn fart or pull down her pants and spread open her cheeks. She still felt embarrassment as the farts reverberated against the bathroom walls. But nobody could hear her! The fans in those bathrooms were very loud. It was fantastic!

Emilia quickly became accustomed to Melissa’s monstrous belches. The best part? She was unapologetic about them. They would be hanging out in the common room and Melissa would just let them out in the middle of her sentence without warning, and then continue talking as if nothing had happened. Emilia was often embarrassed to be with her when she belched, but at the same time laughed aloud.

One time in the common room, Melissa belched as usual while they were playing video games on the big screen TV. A gangly jock was walking by with his friend, narrowed his eyes at her, and said, “Wow, that’s fucking gross!”

“Say that to my face again, bitch!” Melissa suddenly shouted, not caring to even face him. The guy scoffed and continued walking.

Emilia had a ball and could not stop laughing. “Oh man. Melissa, I love you!”

“Fuck around and find out. That’s what I always say.”

Melissa’s belches always reeked of whatever she last ate. Emilia often had to waft the air around her, and sometimes gagged.

With how open Melissa was about burping, Emilia wondered whether she could be comfortable farting in front of her. They hadn’t yet broken that barrier a week into their freshman year. She wasn’t sure what Melissa’s “stance” was on farting. It was odd but some people were not at all shy at belching out loud but still fiercely grossed out at the thought of farting. Kim and Michelle were like that.

Even so, Emilia found Melissa’s unapologetic nature about burping in front of others admirable. She wished she could be that devil-may-care about life. The most amazing belch yet lasted probably ten whole seconds. Melissa was a soda fiend and straight up chugged an entire bottle of Coke. They were walking back to their dorm from dinner, and she complained about having a belch stuck. She wasn’t ashamed of her belly hanging either, even going so far as to unbuttoning her jeans in public.

“I gotta do what I gotta do to let this out,” she said, pounding her fist on her chest to try and dislodge the gas.

“Aw, Christ. It’s really stuck. Oh man. This really hurts. It feels like I’m---” Her eyes then bulged and she leaned forward. “--BRRRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUURRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP!—ah. Fuck. That feels better.”

Emilia shook her head in disbelief and laughed.

They became acquainted with their fellow floormate across the hall – Rita Rossi. When Emilia first met Rita, she admired right away the way she dressed. She wore a bright yellow dress with a matching brown belt. As far as Emilia could tell, Rita never went out wearing sweatpants or pajamas. She always wore dresses and skirts. Rita was the shortest of them, and slightly heavier than Emilia. She had long brown hair that reached down to her butt. But she also wore similar thick square glasses, and Emilia joked that the three girls could practically make a rock band of chicks who wore the same thick rimmed glasses.

Rita’s roommate Natalie meanwhile – well…Rita didn’t want to talk about her. Natalie was a very messy roommate who was hardly there because she was already out partying and doing things she wasn’t supposed to be doing. She became the “ghost roommate” trope, and only appeared at the most awkward of times. Emilia and Melissa got closer to Rita after Rita walked in on Natalie having sex in their dorm. Rita had been “sexiled” and needed a place to stay for the night, so they offered her to sleep in their room.

“I can’t believe she didn’t text you that she was bringing someone over,” Emilia said. “That’s INSANE! The least she could do is give you a heads-up.”

Rita let off a disgruntled sigh. “I can’t believe she already got some and we didn’t even start classes yet. What the hell?”

They bonded over relationships. Emilia was shocked at how open Melissa and Rita were about sex, about their wants and needs.

“This is my man up here,” Melissa said, smacking her poster of Cristiano Ronaldo. “You bet your ass I’m gonna be going to wherever the soccer parties are looking for someone like him.”

“There’s a guy down the hall with a man-bun,” Rita said. “I looooove man-buns! Oh my God.” Rita reminded Emilia of a woman from a Jane Austen novel. She fanned her face and blushed.

“What’s your type?” Melissa asked Emilia.

“Well…I already have a boyfriend!” she replied, enthusiastically. For once, she was able to show off.

Melissa instinctively said, “Oh.”

“Oh what?”

“Nothing. I’m just surprised is all. Usually, people don’t carry over relationships from high school. Something usually goes wrong.”

Emilia frowned. “Well not Zack. We’re doing great.”

Melissa took a sip of her soda. “Where’s he at? He goes here too?”

“N-No. He goes to school over in Philly. I’m already going to visit him this weekend for the first time. I’ll take the train there.”

Melissa and Rita exchanged glances.

Emilia felt worried. “Why? What is it?”

“That’s just a lot of effort,” Melissa said. “He’s going to visit you here too though, right? It’s only fair that both of you take turns visiting each other back and forth.”

“Oh yeah, of course! Duh.”

He had to.

That much was a given.

#

Emilia, Melissa, and Rita quickly realized that the food served at the cafeteria might not be considered food. At first, they were excited at the smorgasbord of options – ice cream, pizza, meatballs, every cereal known to man, waffles, and even chicken nuggets!

The main courses for dinner were oftentimes much better left unspoken for. There seemed to be more misses than hits.

“What the fuck is this?” Melissa hissed. “It looks like vomit.”

The best way to describe what they were staring at was “beefy mush”. It was a brown sludge of saucy beef mixed with corn, carrots, and onions.

Emilia felt queasy. “Don’t say that. Don’t make me think about it that way.”

They could always go to the pizza bar in the aisle across but having pizza everyday wasn’t exactly the best choice either. Domino’s tasted better than the pizza they had at Dickinson anyway.

“Maybe we can order out later,” Rita said. “Chinese food?”

“Yeah,” Melissa said. “I ain’t touching that shit with a ten-foot pole.”

The two girls moved on down the aisle, but Emilia was too damn hungry. She had to have something. Maybe it tasted better than it looked. That was usually how it worked anyways.

The cafeteria was a very large expanse of old wooden chairs and tables. In the past week, the three of them got used to sitting in a small table of four right by the window near the emergency exit. There, they had a nice view of the forested campus and its walking trails.

They sat there and talked about their classes and goals in life. Emilia had absolutely no idea what she wanted to do. She could draw, she liked learning Spanish, and she was interested in political science and philosophy. But there was nothing that really drew her in, and for now she was “undeclared”. She would have to declare a major by the end of the year. Meanwhile, Rita talked about entering pre-med and looking forward to becoming a cardiologist, and Melissa mentioned wanting to get into marketing to one day build her own body cream business.

Emilia sighed, sitting back in her chair.

“What’s wrong?” Melissa asked.

“It seems like every one of my friends knows what they’re going to do in life but me. Isn’t there anyone who has no idea what they’re going to do?”

“Yeah. Plenty of people!” Rita said. “Like ummm.” She looked around the tables. “Like ummm.”

“It’s okay. You don’t have to make me feel better.”

“Emilia,” Melissa said. “Don’t freak out. It’s alright. We’re fucking kids. For all I know I could drastically change what I want to do halfway through the semester. It’s ridiculous that people expect us to figure this shit out before we’re 20.”

Rita adjusted her glasses. “Well, Alexander the Great conquered half the known world by the time he was 23.”

Melissa dropped her utensils. “How the fuck is that helping?”

Rita stooped her eyes. “I mean. I think one should have some direction at least…”

Emilia zoned out while Melissa and Rita argued. She got into a mood thinking about her high school friends again, and how she was always surrounded by excellence.

Rugby tryouts were that coming weekend. Maybe, if anything, Emilia would do well and get some kind of scholarship. Yeah! Emilia’s strength was always her literal strength. That could be a way out if she failed her studies.

Emilia continued eating the shlop that they served. Despite it being total gunk, she ate every bit of it. She had worked out earlier in the day after class, getting used to the gym here. She hated going to the gym back home because of all the looks she got, so she had developed an intense need to avoid eye contact with anybody. But here in college, people had wildly different schedules, and she could workout in peace with hardly anyone there.

“Be right back,” she said, “I’m going to get seconds.”

Melissa was appalled. “What? Really?”

“I’m hungry! I’m trying my best to get into the rugby team!”

#

That night, Emilia was eating some Cup Noodles in bed texting Zack and all her high school friends. Throughout Orientation Week, the group text between her and her friends shared images of their colleges. Emilia grimaced a bit thinking about how her college didn’t look as fancy or great as Columbia, Harvard, or Princeton. Dickinson University was a modest little place in the woods. It had, at best, an attractive forest. The buildings were still nice, something like 150 years old, but they were nothing compared to grand legacies of the Ivy League colleges that her friends attended.

Zack still hadn’t texted her back. He had texted maybe once or twice in the past week, and they only spoke once on the phone to talk about their first few days. She wanted to vent to him about how worried she was about being “undeclared”, but he wasn’t responding.

Melissa walked in. “You still here? Rita invited us over to watch a movie. Come!”

“Yeah. In a minute.”

She stared at her message log with Zack, waiting.

Melissa said, “Who you’ve been texting?”

Emilia bit her lip. “Ummmm.”

“It’s okay. You don’t have to tell me.”

“Just my boyfriend.”

“Oh.” Again, Melissa’s low tone of voice made Emilia give her a look.

“Oh? Oh what?”

“Nothing. Just ‘oh’.”

“Why did you say it like that, though?”

Melissa shrugged. “Like what?”

“I dunno. Like there was something wrong with that.”

Melissa sighed. “Well. I mean. You’ve been all over your phone for the past hour and a half. It’s COLLEGE. We can stay up ALL NIGHT and eat junk food. You know? Come on!”

Since Natalie was not in their room again, Rita had more space for people to sit.

Melissa couldn’t get over the fact that Natalie’s side of the room looked like a prison. She didn’t hang anything on the walls, didn’t have much on her desk, and the bedsheets she used looked centuries’ old. Meanwhile, Rita’s wall was filled nearly every inch with some kind of poster of famous paintings, movies, and quotes.

That night, they watched through three movies – The Road to El Dorado, Iron Man, and Catch Me If You Can. All throughout the marathon they ate nothing but Cup Noodles, popcorn, pretzel snacks, and Domino’s. Emilia used to pig out at home after a rough day at work, but this was pigging out like never before. She felt thoroughly stuffed, but still found some room to munch on more snacks.

Melissa belched endlessly throughout their marathon.

“I don’t mean to be a bitch,” Rita said, trying to not to laugh, “but your burps kind of ruin the best moments. Don’t you ever burp more quietly?”

“I can’t. I literally can’t. I tried.”

“How can you not?”

“I don’t know! I just burp loud like that all the time. It hurts so bad when I even try to hold it in, so it just---I dunno. Comes out!”

It sounded similar to how Emilia felt about her farts.

Seconds after Rita had complained about Melissa’s burps, she too belched aloud. It was nothing like Melissa’s roars but it was still very audible and lengthy. It sounded like a low roar of some wild animal. Rita then patted her belly, relieved.

“Ohhhh,” Melissa said, “so you burp but I can’t?”

Rita suppressed a smile. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I didn’t burp.”

Melissa nudged her and the two started fidgeting and hitting each other like they were siblings.

They called it a night somewhere around 2:17 AM.

Emilia snuggled into bed and checked her phone once more.

Still no response from Zack.

She sighed and fell asleep.

#

Melissa had her very first class earlier than Emilia. She had to get up around 7:30 AM whereas Emilia didn’t have to get up until around 9:00 AM. Well, technically Emilia should have gotten up earlier to have breakfast, but ever since she started college her scheduling of meals was all over the place. She usually wolfed down a yogurt or bowl of cereal before starting the day. The thought of actually going to the cafeteria for breakfast in the morning made her groan.

Melissa did everything “properly”. She woke up on the dot without snoozing her alarm. Emilia didn’t get it. They fell asleep at least around 3:00 AM. How could Melissa have so much energy in the morning? Emilia could barely raise her head from her pillow for a second before falling back asleep.

As Melissa moved around getting ready, Emilia was in-and-out of wakefulness.

Just then, Emilia felt a great discomfort in her stomach. It gurgled aloud, and Emilia froze, embarrassed. Melissa didn’t seem to notice, but then again Emilia was lying on her side facing the wall.

Melissa prepared to shower, and Emilia could hear her get her towel and put on her slippers and pick up her shower caddy. Once she left, she could let it rip. But Melissa was taking an excruciatingly long time. Emilia could just get up and rush to the bathroom, but she was so damn tired and also if she sat up she would no doubt fart out loud. The gas was literally ready and waiting at her butthole. She knew how sudden movements at the wrong time could let it rip uncontrollably.

Emilia’s stomach suddenly formed the biggest ball of gas she ever felt. It grew worse by the second! That goddamn greasy cafeteria food really didn’t agree with her. She felt queasy and rubbed her belly. It was just like that time in Zack’s bathroom – but worse! The pain was actually worse! What the hell was in that food?

Emilia closed her eyes for one moment and then opened them once she heard the door close.

Melissa left! Finally!

Emilia then raised her leg high, as if she were mounting a motorbike, and let rip a terrific fart that would put any frat boy to shame. She not only felt embarrassed but even slightly disgusted at herself. Never in her life did she hear such a loud, long, sonorous blast exploded from her rectum.

PPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRPPPPPPPPPPPP!

“Gah!” she moaned aloud, sighing in satisfaction when it ended.

The relief was unlike any she had ever felt. It was like she had taken the world’s biggest shit. She could bear to move around now, and her stomach stopped gurgling.

With a smile, she turned around in bed and when she opened her eyes she froze.

Melissa hadn’t left the room. She had opened the door but then closed it to fetch a bottle of shampoo that she forgot. She stared wide-eyed and mouth agape at Emilia…and then started laughing. Emilia meanwhile was petrified and thought this was the end of their rooming-in together. It was finally out that Emilia ripped loud farts – a sordid embarrassment.

But Melissa didn’t make fun of her or express disgust.

“Wow! That was amazing!” she said. “Holy shit, woman. I’ve NEVER heard a fart like that before!” she cried out.

It was weird hearing her say that. It was the first time Emilia ever heard anyone say anything positive about her farts. She was still to embarrassed to speak.

“Man,” Melissa said, shaking her head. “Imagine if some of the guys here heard that? That would show them. Aight. I gotta shower.”

Emilia still stared into space processing the moment after Melissa left.

They had finally broken the fart barrier.