The Transformation, part II

originally posted April 11, 2007

The morning brought sounds of his departure, off to his job at the piano store. He'd spend the day in the back room of the store in the guitar department, jotting down observations of the goings-on as he'd done for many years, consuming a forty ounce bottle or two of Olde English malt liquor as he did it. His dedication to his craft was far reaching, as was his secret stash of mostly empty bottles behind the furnace in our basement. He cherished the romance of the alcoholic writer, so much that he broke from this routine at the store only to venture out to the bar next door for an off-site drink or two. This may have been a third reason he was a bad writer, this inappropriately timed drunkenness. It most certainly contributed to the reasons he was a bad husband.

Later in the morning, while in the kitchen cleaning up the remains of the previous evening's foiled sexcapade, I heard a noise in the basement. Going downstairs, I discovered him in his office, a dingy room next to the disgusting bathroom in which he hid odd magazines and Preparation H. His libido and anal happenings were mysteries to me, and I suspect this helped to keep the romance alive. I found him naked again, squatting on the couch, chewing on a small tuft of sofa innards.

"I didn't expect you home so early. Who have you been reading?" I asked. His response was atypically non-confrontational and seemingly sober. He looked at me silently, a small fluff of his snack stuck to the corner of his mouth. He then bolted from the couch, bumping past me as he ran out the door to the darkness beyond the furnace, knocking bottles over on the way. I looked around the room for another naked person, hoping his strange behavior could be explained as an attempt to remain nonchalant in the face of an adulterous discovery. There was nothing else unusual in the room except for a vague sewer smell.

I followed him to where he crouched behind the furnace, surrounded by toppled bottles. Some of the newer additions had overturned, and from them dripped the usual stuff, a sticky mixture of old malt liquor, chew spittle, and urine. I don't know why my husband pissed in bottles and hid them behind the furnace. I imagined he either intended to save it, drink it, or pour it on someone. I knew that some of the contents of the bottles had come not from him, but from his brother. This was also perplexing, as I didn't know why a person would piss in bottles at someone else's house. My attempts to keep a handle on this had long been abandoned, but now I wished I'd been more proactive about the whole thing. Sitting naked on the dusty floor, he slowly licked the splattered contents off his arm.