The not so novel navel

The word belly button is even gross. I don't like the actual body part, nor it's name. If I have to refer to it as all, I call it a navel. Though the word 'navel' is awkward to me as well. Navel makes me think of the military, like a navel base, but it also conjures up images of giant bell buttons walking around in uniforms. I know. I can barely bring myself to eat a navel orange.

I understand why we humans have belly buttons but I'm just not a fan. You know how some people are totally anti- feet? Repulsed by feet? Freaked out by feet? Well, I'm that way about navels. Innies and outies are equally repulsive to me.

Navels on skinny people are even icky. I know some folks think a guy with six pack abs has a sexy bellybutton but I am not one of those. I like the abs and the way a guy's hip bones are cut, but I don't like the belly button.

In a movie if a guy or girl licks another person's navel I get all creeped out! Or licks a shots or eats a cherry or whatever.... just.... ewwwww!

I also think innies are gross. Since I've gained weight I don't even look at my own belly button. I just make sure I wash and rinse it well. But here's a semi- gross story! (I'm obviously desperate for blog fodder if I'm telling this story) My navel hurt the other day. Actually was in pain so I itched the inside of my navel and my finger came away with pus and blood. Oh yeah. I had a pimple in my navel. GROSS!! And I was completely freaked out. I wanted to run and flee but like a shadow, the belly button would be coming with me. So I cleaned it well, with peroxide watching it bubble, and with alcohol (OMG PAIN!). Then a few days later it itched again. After an internal struggle of to itch or not to itch, I finally caved to the comparable to water torture and itched it! And... more repulsion- a scab the size of a small stone fell out. More alcohol and more bubbling with peroxide. More wanting to flee from my own body. And I've never gone back.

But my navel zit is not as disgusting as ITSam's belly button was (maybe it still is... I'm going to write about him in the first person since he's not dead, that I know of. I'll treat him like literature). His belly button is huge- you could practically stick your whole fist in it!!! And he's really hairy, so it's just beyond gross. He has globs of lint in there, every day. All the hair catches his shirt fuzz- it's like a lint trap in the dryer, and it gathers huge clumps. Revolting.He showers and washes but it just gets all... lint-y.

I have no idea why, but I was thinking about a day he and I were watching television and he was messing with his navel cave- I don't know why. He plucked the lint and then was turning his navel inside-out and he asked me to look at it. He said he could see a spot and wanted to know if his belly button was bruised or if there was a freckle in it. Seriously?!? But I looked. I said I would look but wouldn't touch it. And it was black. HIS BELLY BUTTON WAS BLACK ON THE INSIDE!!!!!!!!!!! I was slightly freaked out. So, I took his keys from the table and poked and scraped the black gunk from the creases and it CAME OFF!! OMG!!! the deep, dark creases of his navel had mold in it!!!! I threw up in the back of my mouth a little bit, and then went home.

(In all fairness, it wasn't mold. It was just wet lint from a dark colored shirt, post shower)

But his belly button smells. It smells so gross I can't even come up with a description- 4 week old sweat socks and molding cheese? Maybe it smells like the color brown. Ya know? Yuck.

He's a very, very clean guy, obsessively showering and never wearing dirty clothes. He has (had?) good hygiene. But the whole navel thing had me freaked out as if I wasn't revolted by navels before, but then to add his?

The human body is necessary but it's really pretty gross.

Maggie