Up close and
scatological

Some call it subversive, some call it porn, but
Charlotte Roche’s Wetlands is at least memorable

by JULIET WATERS

“Eat, Pray, Queef,” if you didn’t catch it, was the April 1st episode of South Park. A play on Elizabeth Gilbert’s mega selling memoir Eat, Pray, Love, the episode centred around the double standards of fart humour. Terrance and Phillip are pre-empted on “The Canada Network” by Katherine and Katie Queef, two sisters who can’t get through a simple pap smear without queefing in their OB/Gyn’s face.

The Queef sisters are a massive international hit. They appear on talk shows, children’s choirs are assembled to advance their feminist cause, and little girls start queefing freely in the presence of little boys. Finally, the fathers of South Park must gather together to bring decorum back to the school.

Though not quite the comedic masterpiece of “Fishsticks” (with its incomparable Kanye West/Gay Fish montage) “Eat, Pray, Queef” makes an important point. So does Helen Memel, the 18-year-old narrator of Wetlands by Charlotte Roche, a former VJ for Viva, Germany’s MTV competitor, and a self-proclaimed non-reader turned international sensation. “At some point, I realized that boys and girls are taught differently about how to keep their intimate regions clean. My mother placed great importance on the hygiene of my pussy but none at all on that of my brother’s penis.”

Few people would argue that there is a double standard when it comes to how freely women are allowed to claim their stinky smells. Framed as a meditation on sex and hygiene, Wetlands, however, takes this way farther than farting. Helen claims “hygiene’s not a major concern of mine.” And then she launches into 200, often entertaining, and just as often disgusting, pages of pathological obsession with bodily fluids.

“When I jerk somebody off, I always make sure that some cum gets on my hand. I run my fingers through it and let it dry under my long nails. That way, later in the day, I can reminisce about my good fuck partner by biting my nails and getting bits of the hardened cum to play with in my mouth; I chew on it and, after tasting it and letting it slowly dissolve, I swallow it. It’s an invention I’m very proud of: the memorable-sex bonbon.”

And that’s only page 20. By the time Helen is reminiscing about the black hookers she hired because she much prefers the colours of their pussies, we’ve learned more than anyone needs to know about ways you can intentionally rub yourself on toilet seats to test your hypothesis of bacteria transmission; and the emotional significance of a chocolate dip: “a real sign of affection. Anal sex without cleaning my ass out in advance. It takes a lot of trust to let someone decorate his cock with my crap.”

Pretty racy stuff for an 18-year-old. Or depending on how you read it, pretty contrived. Still, if we take Helen with a grain of salt, and as a somewhat unreliable narrator, there’s an energy to her hyper confession that’s memorable at least.

Sales for Wetlands have been huge. It was the bestselling international book in March of 2008. But reviews, needless to say, have been mixed. Some critics have labelled it a classic of subversive literature. Others have called it prurient pornography. Audience members have reportedly fainted at readings.

This critic will admit to retching at least once. (No one would ever call me hung up on hygiene. But sniffing a friend’s used tampons? Not something I could do, let alone write about in great detail.) I wouldn’t call it either literature of pornography. Wetlands reads more like performance art, so it’s no surprise that it’s already been adapted for theatre. It could use more character development, and it can get tiresome.

But I will say one thing in its favour. The translation is great. If only more European women would hire Playboy editors as translators. When it comes to my European porn-oirs, I’ll take a 100 pages of hardcore scatological activism any day over its equivalent in squirmy pseudo-erotic lyricism.

WETLANDS BY CHARLOTTE ROCHE,
HARPERCOLLINS, PB, 228 PP. $22.99