Only three or four us kept our clothes on; the rest wore pajamas. The women in the blue pajamas brought the drugs and drinks, but you weren’t allowed to have any if you kept your street clothes on. My husband had his clothes on when he went through the door with the blonde-haired woman and came back wearing nothing but a beige, cotton bathrobe backwards. He was lying in a bed and had passed out from the drugs. That’s when they let me see him.

 

After twenty minutes, one of the women in blue shook my husband awake and asked him to fart. Really. I wouldn’t lie about something this serious. She didn’t say pass gas, she said fart. You can’t leave until you do, she said.

 

Then all around the room, people in their backwards bathrobes, rolled on their sides, unveiled their instruments and played the Symphony in B Flatus, also called Flatulence No. 2. I picked out the French horn; a loud, stuttering trumpet; the expressive vibrato of the oboe; the high notes of a violin slightly out of tune and sounding like a creaking door (which happened to be my husband); the staccato beat of a percussionist; and what sounded like the susurrations of the end-blown flute. The symphony had only one movement, but the blue pajama’d people never stopped waltzing around the room, now praising, now encouraging each instrumentalist to keep playing.

 

After the music stopped, they helped my husband into an easy chair and served him drinks. A man in pajamas with his face mask pulled down came over to talk to my husband. This man knew a part of my husband that I will never know.  Under the influence of the drugs, my spouse showed that man a side of himself that he has rarely shown anyone, except his mother, many years ago. Oddly, I didn’t feel jealous.

 

However, I grew tired after a while and convinced my husband to put his clothes back on. With my help, he got dressed, but we had to wheel him out to the car. He kept saying he was fine, but he couldn’t remember much of what he had done that morning or what he had said. I decided not to ask too many questions.

 

That’s what happens when you go to one of those colonoscopy parties, so let that be a warning to all of you who are considering going. Drugs make people do strange things, and people who dispense drugs make people do even stranger things, like making you stay at the party until you pass enough gas to fill several helium balloons.

 

The next day my husband was back to normal, although he told me the whole ordeal had left him feeling pooped.