Kelly Rae Lynn

The Fart Tape

I don't remember how old I was when I discovered it, but by the time I entered the fourth grade, Dad's tape recorder had replaced many playtime pursuits involving lesser toys.  In fact, the tape recorder wasn't a toy at all.  The tape recorder was a real thing, a piece of machinery, something Dad used for official work business.  The first time I asked him if I could use it (I never indicated that I would play with it, fearing that he would never give his permission to engage such an important machine in mere tomfoolery), Dad grumbled an apathetic caveat to not throw it or break it or step on it or drop it.  I chose not to reveal that I had proven the tape recorder's durability, having stepped on it and dropped it dozens of times already during several previous weeks of tape play on the sly. 

I marveled that I could use this technological wonder for my own amusement.  That black and silver box was the cornerstone of my entertainment for the entirety of middle school, its rectangular flatness more comforting than any doll.  The tape recorder, my favorite playmate, had maneuvered itself into my daily routine.  Its recording and playback capabilities enhanced other games, disguising their silliness with a sonic mantle of sophistication. 

I taped everything.  I taped my friends and myself playing.  I taped myself practicing piano.  I taped myself singing songs to the dog.  I would hide the recorder and tape my unsuspecting friends, then play it for them later and laugh at how stupid we sounded.  I taped the family watching television.  I whispered secrets into the three-slot mic.  I taped melodramatic “radio shows” of my own creation, starring myself in every role.  In one gripping scene, the evil stepmother (me) was administering a beating to her stepson Tommy (also me), while his indignant sister (still me) cried in the background.  I made the effect more realistic by slapping the tape recorder and jouncing it around while screeching and “throwing my voice”:

*Tinkling piano theme music*

Announcer: Welcome to another exciting episode of Little House in the Suburbs.  Last week, Tommy forgot to do the dishes, and Mrs. Glockenspiel had to work late.  Let’s see what happens…

Evil Stepmother: Look at this MESS!  Take THAT you worthless little brat!  (slap)

Tommy: Noooooo, Mommyyyyy, nooooooo!  I promise to be better!  Aiieeee! (whap bash)  

Sister: (turning my head away and wailing behind my hand to make it sound as if she were in a different part of the room) What are you DOING?!  Wahhhh!  

Tommy: Oh, the pain!  The paiiiiiiin! (slap crunch) 

Sister:  (“throwing my voice” again) I hate you and I hope you DIE!

*cut to commercial*

Candybar Jingle: Sometimes you feel like a NUT!  Sometimes you don’t!

The tape recorder was not only the best game ever, but a satisfactory companion.  I could easily entertain myself for hours, just me and the tape recorder.  The best part was recording myself with other people and playing it back later, alone.  It made life as an only child a little less lonesome.

*  *  *

Every year for Christmas, my parents and I would drive to Newport, Kentucky, within spitting distance of Cincinnati.  We would stay with my mom’s sister, Aunt Billie, and her four daughters.  Any trip to Kentucky was the highlight of my year.  I looked forward to my visits for months in advance, and dreaded leaving for home again.  My cousins were like ersatz siblings, and I thought of them as such, longing for them in ways they could never imagine.

For our Christmas visit when I was eleven, I brought the tape recorder along.  I wanted to demonstrate the fun for my cousin Alex in particular.  Alex was a year and a half older, nearly thirteen, and had forever been my favorite cousin.  Her flaxen hair flowed freely over her shoulders in thick waves, whereas my mother had always pulled my curly brown mop back into skull-gripping pigtails.  She had a romantic name I envied: Alexandra — so much more sophisticated than Kelly.  She was taller, stronger, and could turn flawless cartwheels.  She always had ideas for new games, and I gladly played whatever role she handed me, no matter how unsavory.  I loved playing with her in spite of her bossy tendencies.  She had a rebellious spirit, a flair for fashion and the latest fads.  She was funny and irreverent, whereas I was shy and timid.  She always seemed to be two steps ahead of me, and I was constantly trying to catch up.

Alex responded enthusiastically to the presence of the tape recorder.  We staged radio interviews in which we played ourselves or assumed fake identities (“Jennifer Noonoo,” “Guido DeDingaDong”).  We taped ourselves talking before we fell asleep, and in one segment had a lengthy gush-fest praising the hotness of Rob Lowe (inspired by one of my other cousin’s posters).  Alex taped me talking gibberish in my sleep.  We taped when we woke up in the morning and talked about what we were having for breakfast, what dreams we had the night before, and what presents we wanted for Christmas.  During one particularly boring clip, we taped ourselves playing a game that Alex had christened “Crazed Yaks,” wherein we would take turns standing on the bed, falling backwards and doing backflips off the edge.  There wasn’t much in playback value; all we could hear was tape hiss, the sudden sound of bedspring fatigue, and a series of thuds on the floor followed by either massive giggle fits or exclamations of pain.

Our crowning achievement was, by far, when after playing Crazed Yaks, Alex insisted on tape that she had “knocked loose a bubble in her pipes.”  She had to get rid of it or the house would explode.  During playback, there were muffled footsteps, a staticky silence, and then….

Bbbbbbbrrrrrrraaaaaaaap.

There followed a flurry of hysterical giggling, and then alternating between us both:

“I got one, I got one!”  (Poot!) (giggling)

“No wait, I got one!” (Ffft!) “Oh no, that one was silent but deadly!” (giggling)

“Okay, okay, this’ll be good, I’ve got a big one.…” (Bbbrrt) (giggling)

“My turn, my turn....” (silence) “Hmm…I’m all out.  Well I’ll go get some!”  (giggling)

We kept this up for who knows how long.  Every time we thought we could squeeze out a fart, we’d rush over to the tape recorder and let her rip.  When we had exhausted our natural supply, we then pretended we had a really good one and blew huge raspberries into our arms and hands.  One of them sounded so comical that description would impoverish the reality; it sounded rather like an elephant trumpeting while trampling a baby hippo.  It was funny enough to double us over, gasping for air and unable to fake-fart any further, and multiple playbacks only made it worse.

We subsequently referred to the tape as “The Fart Tape,” and played it for all of our friends, who somehow never thought it was as funny as we did.  They’d chuckle, but Alex and I would again and again double over in breathless hilarity.  Alex insisted on playing the tape for Mom and Aunt Billie.  I quaked with fear that I would get in trouble for desecrating the tape recorder with our emissions.  Much to my relief, they laughed along with us.

After we left that year, I listened to The Fart Tape over and over for months, reliving our flatulent glories.  I couldn’t wait until our next visit.

Six months later, in the middle of summer vacation, we drove to Kentucky again.  I packed my suitcase one outfit short to accommodate the tape recorder.  I was bursting with anticipation, wondering how we could possibly top The Fart Tape this time.

However, Alex was different.  She was thirteen.  She had gotten a stupid haircut.  Worse than that, she was nonchalant, and didn’t seem interested in playing or even talking.  She sat on the sofa watching soap operas.  During a commercial break, she finally turned her head in my direction and mumbled, “So whaddya wanna do?” 

I asked if she wanted to give me a makeover (one of my favorite activities, since I was not allowed to wear makeup yet; all those tubes and powders seemed so magically adult).  This idea was met with subzero enthusiasm.  I tried tempting her with the Crazed Yaks game, to which she grunted: “Nahhh.”  

Undeterred, I revealed what I had thought would be a great surprise: that I had once again brought the tape recorder and wasn’t she excited?!

Alex merely shrugged and then turned back to the television.  Days of Our Lives was back on.

Deflated, I pretended not to care, and attempted to follow the excruciatingly intricate plotline of Days.  I ingratiated myself by asking questions about finer plot points during commercial breaks, and Alex showed more spirit than I had seen all day.  In spite of her lack of interest in the tape recorder at the time, I hoped that later she would change her mind.

Later, she got a phone call.  On the phone, she underwent a transformation.  She suddenly became giggly and animated.  After she hung up, she told me that she wanted to go for a walk and meet a couple guys, and did I want to go? 

I insisted that if we were going to be meeting boys, I needed a makeover.  She agreed, and proceeded to brush blue powder across my lids, rouge my cheeks and tint my lips with Wild Cherry and Zinc Pink lipstick in a checkerboard pattern, topped with strawberry-flavored gloss.  I changed into what I imagined was an outfit epitomizing chic: sky-blue corduroys and a matching t-shirt featuring a pink unicorn galloping across my chest.  Alex swept the upper half of my hair into a jaunty ponytail perched atop my scalp, and brushed out the rest in an oily fan of frizz. 

After telling Mom that Alex and I were going to get ice cream, I emerged from the front door freshly powdered and primped, my trembling hands belying my supermodel strut.  Alex leading the way, we walked east on Monmouth and turned left on York.  We passed by Otto’s Print Shop, a family business where my mom used to work.  I nervously examined our reflections bobbing along as we walked past the Dixie Chili parlor window.  We headed down the final hill approaching the park.  My heart drummed twice as fast as our feet thudding on the sidewalk.  Alex was drawling something I never heard; I could see her lips moving, but her words drowned in the ocean of anxiety swirling in my head. 

The boys would be awaiting us on the playground a few blocks away.  We plodded closer, each step jarring loose another anxious thought.  Who were these boys?  Were they cute? Would they think I'm cute?  Would they like me?  What would I say?  What did girls usually say to boys?  What do cool girls say?  What if they laugh at me?  What if Alex is embarrassed by me?  What if I smell bad?  What if I say something stupid?  What if I fart really loud (that would have come in handy for The Fart Tape, but I doubted its merits in this situation)?  What if — what if one of them wants to kiss me?  Oh god — why did I have a piece of garlic bread earlier?  What do I do what do I do what do I do?

We crossed the threshold of the playground and assessed the equipment, which appeared empty.  The jungle gym stood like the skeleton of some unlucky hulk of a beast, and the swings dangled empty, one of the chains emitting a mournful whine when stirred by an imperceptible eddy of sticky air.  The slide reflected the sky with a cold glint, contradictory to the pulsing humidity of July in northern Kentucky.  At the sight of the deserted playground, my heart twisted in simultaneous relief and disappointment; the shot of makeup confidence had faded long ago, and I was suffering an acute attack of shyness.  In spite of an intermittent rustling from an unseen source, I clung to a fleeting hope that the boys had decided not to come.

“Looks like they stood us up.  That sucks,” I said, feigning apathy as I turned homeward, my mind already on what stupid things we would do with the tape recorder this time—if Alex wanted to play.

Just then, a mighty belch reverberated beneath the slide. 

Alex stepped around the slide and stooped to peer under its vacant wooden platform.  

“Hey-y-y,” she hailed.

Two dark blobs lounged languidly in the deep shadow of the slide platform.  A third blob soon joined them, leaving me alone in the sweltering air.  Shielding my eyes from the bright sun, I took a deep breath and awkwardly ducked under the platform.  Blinded by the sudden change in brightness, I could see only blurs and spots.  After a moment, my eyes adjusted.

There they were.  If I had been expecting Rob Lowe, I was seriously disappointed.  I only have a clear memory of what one of the guys looked like.  Paunchy and hairy from his mullet to his unshod clodhoppers, he more resembled a middle-aged man than a boy not old enough to drive.  The other one, lankier than his companion, silently ogled a stack of Penthouse magazines.

Alex introduced me, her tone blasé, and the boys grunted perfunctory greetings.

If I had been tongue-tied before, my jaws were now clamped in a vise of mortification.   

The fat boy lit a cigarette, and in between amateurish puffs discussed the possibility of scoring a dime bag.  Alex seemed to perk up at this revelation, but I, uninitiated into recreational drug use at age eleven, had only a nebulous idea of what they were talking about.  I felt the sweat trickling down my sides and began to feel a sickening sense of compression, tucked in with these strange, experienced boys in a too-tight space. 

To my immense relief, the fat boy crawled out into the open air.  His ass was asleep and would Alex rub it please?  He swaggered over to the swing set as we all emerged into the light. He leaped up, grabbing the top and side bars of the swing set.  He hung for a moment, then hoisted his knees up high and rotated his hips, so his girth wobbled and rolled in the air like a pear swinging from a tree branch in a windstorm.  Bored and disgusted, I thought longingly of the ice cream we had lied about in order to meet these Neanderthals, and wished that we were back in Alex's room playing with the tape recorder.  Since we had left the only shady place in the playground, I hoped that the boys would succumb to the heat soon and we would be free.

But they showed no interest in moving along.  The fat one dropped with a plunk from the swing set, and as if on cue, the skinny one opened a magazine to a lurid close up.  The fat one grabbed the magazine and showed it to Alex, and asked if her "cooter" looked like that.  She recoiled in mock disdain, but laughed flirtatiously when they said they wanted to rub her knockers.  She shrugged noncommittally when they wanted to go get that dime bag and get us high, and then we'd really party.  I didn’t know what she was thinking.  Was she annoyed or aroused?  Did she really think getting high with these clowns would be more fun than farting into the tape recorder with me?

Then the fat one caressed Alex's thigh and reminisced:

"You remember that one time—" (rub rub) "when we drank those wine coolers—" (rub rub) “and then we went to the closet—" (rub rub) "and we fucked?"  The sound of his hand brushing her denim-encased thigh sent shivers down my spine.  My face flaming, I nervously avoided eye contact with any of them, absorbing myself with inspecting the weedy fauna surrounding the swing set.  I surreptitiously darted my eyes at Alex hoping to catch any hint of contradiction.  Surely she did not—you know—with that guy in the closet.  She was only a year and a half older than I, and I hadn't even held anyone's hand yet.  But she just looked at him, her face smoothly blank.  Gone was the witty cut-up the tape recorder had captured last Christmas; in her place, an inscrutable stranger. 

I don't recall when or how we finally escaped.  I don't remember the walk back to the house.  All I remember is a general sense of oppressiveness, and an inability to speak freely.  I wanted to ask if she had really fucked that guy in the closet, but her attitude was prickly, a palpable barrier preventing me from getting too close to the truth.  Perhaps I didn't ask because I was afraid that it was true.  I had always considered Alex the epitome of cool, and idolized her in every way.  This girl was not the cousin I adored. 
It frightened me to think that in the next year and a half, I would suddenly find all the games I now enjoyed boring and babyish, preferring instead to watch endlessly banal daytime television.  Was drinking wine coolers and fucking hairy neighbor boys in the closet better than farting in the tape recorder?  Alex seemed to think so. 
I buried the tape recorder at the bottom of my suitcase and waited to go back home. 

*  *  *

I turned twelve right after I started seventh grade.  My main birthday gift that year was a fancy lavender radio/tape deck with a grey fabric shoulder strap.  It was funkier than the old school tape recorder.  But by that time, only a few months after the playground incident, my interest in recording anything but music had waned.  Not because I didn’t think it was fun, but because I felt let down.  I never had as much fun recording things with anyone as I did during that one vacation with Alex. 

Somehow, I knew that Alex and I would never again play with the tape recorder.  I brought the shiny new one on a couple subsequent visits, hoping to entice her, but I never flat-out asked if she wanted to play, fearing her scorn.  I left it out where she could see it, but she never took the bait.  Eventually, I quit bringing it.  Besides, I was almost thirteen and too old for such silliness.

Back at home, alone in my room, I would get out my trusty old tape recorder and listen to The Fart Tape that Alex and I had made, what seemed like ages ago.  I listened again and again, laughing at the farts and the goofy voices, straining to hear over the tape hiss, trying to catch something that I might have missed.

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Kelly Rae Lynn used to write jingles for a toy company until it went bankrupt.  Despite this ominous coincidence, she still writes.  She used to be a professional bellydancer, but now pens copy about bellydance costumes for a St. Louis-based merchant.  She also writes and designs the 'zine Milk Teeth, and is stymied by her lack of time to work on it.  She blames her pets and her librarian-ish job at Washington University.