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Downstairs | Dec 28 2001

The first time it happened, I swore I’d never do that again. I hadn’t expected it, hadn’t even known it was possible. I was in the downstairs bathroom—which wasn’t downstairs at all but on the main floor—and immediately stopped what I was doing. I was shaking.

The second time was less memorable.

The thing I did to make it happen—the first time, I mean—I don’t do anymore. As it turns out, it’s not a very effective method for doing that.

Of course at the time I wasn’t trying to do anything, since at the time I didn’t know that anything could be done, so this thing I did could hardly be considered a method, a method implying intention.

I believe I was twelve.

Later the process became more directed.

There was another bathroom all the way upstairs which we called the upstairs bathroom.

When I was sixteen, a woman walking her dog surprised me in the park.

I was in my secret place, where no one went, so you can imagine my surprise.

I stood and ran, holding my pants with one hand while running.

Looking back, she must have felt badly, and I believe I frightened her dog.

If you were all the way downstairs, you went upstairs and used the downstairs bathroom.

It wasn’t a wrong thing to do, exactly, it was just something you could never under any circumstance tell another person about and would therefore hold inside yourself in the so-called silence of your thoughts.

Like most things.

One time—I’m embarrassed to admit this—I did it in a way that involved the downstairs couch.

The couch was black and had two large bottom cushions. I waited until everyone had left, then carried the cushions into the downstairs bathroom, which as I’ve noted was upstairs.

In truth I did this more than once.

It felt best when certain muscles were stretched tight, so I experimented with ways to stretch them.

That remark was unrelated to the cushions.

Naturally I had to return the cushions before anyone came home because otherwise someone might see the couch without its cushions and wonder where the hell the cushions had got to.

My mother called the basement the den. It was where the television was.

I’m still not sure what a den is.

The bathroom floor was made of little square tiles which I used to note how far the farthest bit went.

The farthest bit being the first bit.

More than once I was in the bathroom with the cushions and thought, My god, that’s the car in the driveway, only to realize it wasn’t.

Oddly, and this is still true, the farthest bit always landed somewhat to the left. I would look for it in the middle, then remember.