Poe’s story, the lumps conceivably taking on the shape of Montressor’s enemy stashed away for good.
The toilet seat was green too.
It was scraped through to the wood in various places, in swirls that looked like segments of a circle edge. Around where the crotch rested mostly, the paint worn off by endless sitting people and their eroding groins.
He thought of all the different kinds of crotches that had rested there on that toilet seat. A history of groins that stretched back through the years crossed his mind. Dirty and scabrous and diseased groins most probably; the house was a hang-out for the refuse of the city.
He used to worry about getting diseases from sitting there. He used to pull off reams of toilet paper and wipe the seat clean with brisk motions. Then he pulled more paper off the rack and spread it over the worn word of the seat and sat down gingerly lest he push aside one part of the paper covering and come in contact with the germ-laden wood and they pounce on him.
Now he just sat there and thought about all the ugly people who had sat there before him, emptying their bowels and their bladders. He thought of them as a vast, faceless army of defecators and urinators, totally without name or personalities; exuding vegetables.
He sat there and thought of them but only vaguely, without caring. Way down underneath he was thinking about something else.
It had a unique smell, that bathroom.
Like some rare kind of gas, some new subtle odor that some deranged munitions maker had devised to unhinge the reason of enemy troops. Blended of old urine and old excrement and old tobacco; the piquant and delicate amalgam hanging in the air.
Bathroom
. Half his mind on the fantasy of it. That would be a good name for a perfume. Sell it to misanthropes and anti-sexual old maids.
Bathroom. Eau De Urine. Essence of Shit. Fragrance of The Crotch
. All these and many more. The names crowded his brain. It was a true and frightful discovery.
He listened to his urine dribble down and join the swill-heavy water below. His eyes were fastened on the toilet paper.
Palmer’s No Waste
, said the rack, proudly. You pulled at the paper and it snapped back sharply and cleanly. Disappoints a man, he thought, he cannot find surcease for sorrow.
But only thought of it in small part. Most of his brain, the inside part, the important part, was working on something else.
A problem.
He stared at the bath tub with his flecks of green pupils.
The bathtub was designed for a midget who had no legs. The base of it was green. The faucets were almost green too but not because they were painted green. They were a discolored green, stained brass.
He looked at the tub and wondered if anyone had ever bathed in it. Had anyone ever actually stripped naked in this dingy, wall-undulating cubicle, run hot water and sat down in that dusty enamel bin and washed away the grime of the city?
Never. No one. The people who lived in this house didn’t care for cleanliness of the body. It meant little.
No, he had to take it back. Maybe the old lady scrubbed off her parchment flesh at periodic intervals, then leaped out onto the dirty bath mat so she wouldn’t dissolve and go down the drain with the rest of the lost and the used.
He looked around still, his brain working on something else. The problem.
Crooked. That was the keynote of the bathroom. (And his room and the house too, everything was crooked.) The towel rack there on the door and the mirror and the sink and the floor.
He looked at the floor.
The little tiles were six-sided. Like the paving in the zoo, he thought suddenly, brain still at work.
It made him sit up straight for a moment and forget the other thing. It was strange to find as if by accident that his brain was still alive with memories. It made him shake his head. It was a strange unnatural feeling. He felt as a prisoner might who, after twenty years, is returned to the world and the people he knew. An unfamiliar, strange,
The toilet seat was green too.
It was scraped through to the wood in various places, in swirls that looked like segments of a circle edge. Around where the crotch rested mostly, the paint worn off by endless sitting people and their eroding groins.
He thought of all the different kinds of crotches that had rested there on that toilet seat. A history of groins that stretched back through the years crossed his mind. Dirty and scabrous and diseased groins most probably; the house was a hang-out for the refuse of the city.
He used to worry about getting diseases from sitting there. He used to pull off reams of toilet paper and wipe the seat clean with brisk motions. Then he pulled more paper off the rack and spread it over the worn word of the seat and sat down gingerly lest he push aside one part of the paper covering and come in contact with the germ-laden wood and they pounce on him.
Now he just sat there and thought about all the ugly people who had sat there before him, emptying their bowels and their bladders. He thought of them as a vast, faceless army of defecators and urinators, totally without name or personalities; exuding vegetables.
He sat there and thought of them but only vaguely, without caring. Way down underneath he was thinking about something else.
It had a unique smell, that bathroom.
Like some rare kind of gas, some new subtle odor that some deranged munitions maker had devised to unhinge the reason of enemy troops. Blended of old urine and old excrement and old tobacco; the piquant and delicate amalgam hanging in the air.
Bathroom
. Half his mind on the fantasy of it. That would be a good name for a perfume. Sell it to misanthropes and anti-sexual old maids.
Bathroom. Eau De Urine. Essence of Shit. Fragrance of The Crotch
. All these and many more. The names crowded his brain. It was a true and frightful discovery.
He listened to his urine dribble down and join the swill-heavy water below. His eyes were fastened on the toilet paper.
Palmer’s No Waste
, said the rack, proudly. You pulled at the paper and it snapped back sharply and cleanly. Disappoints a man, he thought, he cannot find surcease for sorrow.
But only thought of it in small part. Most of his brain, the inside part, the important part, was working on something else.
A problem.
He stared at the bath tub with his flecks of green pupils.
The bathtub was designed for a midget who had no legs. The base of it was green. The faucets were almost green too but not because they were painted green. They were a discolored green, stained brass.
He looked at the tub and wondered if anyone had ever bathed in it. Had anyone ever actually stripped naked in this dingy, wall-undulating cubicle, run hot water and sat down in that dusty enamel bin and washed away the grime of the city?
Never. No one. The people who lived in this house didn’t care for cleanliness of the body. It meant little.
No, he had to take it back. Maybe the old lady scrubbed off her parchment flesh at periodic intervals, then leaped out onto the dirty bath mat so she wouldn’t dissolve and go down the drain with the rest of the lost and the used.
He looked around still, his brain working on something else. The problem.
Crooked. That was the keynote of the bathroom. (And his room and the house too, everything was crooked.) The towel rack there on the door and the mirror and the sink and the floor.
He looked at the floor.
The little tiles were six-sided. Like the paving in the zoo, he thought suddenly, brain still at work.
It made him sit up straight for a moment and forget the other thing. It was strange to find as if by accident that his brain was still alive with memories. It made him shake his head. It was a strange unnatural feeling. He felt as a prisoner might who, after twenty years, is returned to the world and the people he knew. An unfamiliar, strange,
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