Better than the weather
Add to the list of things which most girls don’t talk about at parties but which are pillars of my conversational repetoire: Profane excretion.
He prepared himself by taking somewhat laxative, and came in on a solemn day, thrumbled in to the very altar, and there voided himself. Very soon, we may be sure, a cry arose; and he only desired liberty to tell the occasion. He had his story ready for delivering: that for many days he had been under a violent consumption, that he believed nothing would relieve him but this; that as soon as he came to the relic.. this cure was wrought. And, upon this, the priests presently took it as a miracle, and published it to the people, and he was the happiest that could get some of the excrements!
Quoted in Colley, Linda.Britons: forging the nation, 1707-1837, p.36.
Recently finished Bynum’s incredibly accessible Holy Feast, Holy Fast and found myself discussing that (inedia, sleep deprivation, suffering, medieval mysticism, the stigmata… you know… the GOOD stuff) at a party last week-end. This week-end it was fourteenth-century sodomy. I just don’t seem to be able to talk about the same things other people do at parties - if only interfemural sex wasn’t such a great topic for keeping a conversation full of laughs. LOL.
