The Transformation, part IV

originally posted April 13, 2007

I quarantined him in the only other bathroom, the one with the nice towels. This seemed like the best place to stash a mysterious naked man, and was the last room my husband would go into should he show up unexpectedly to pick up his trombone or dab cream on his furtive anus. As I mentioned, my husband's anal affairs occurred downstairs in the grimy basement bathroom under a cloak of secrecy, at least when I was around. In five years of marriage I had acquired no evidence that my husband produced any solid waste, and I was unclear whether he even possessed the organs required to make this possible. All I had to go on was his clandestine collection of tubes of hemmoroidal ointment, which only suggested he might possess an itchy, swollen opening of some sort, but nothing more. Why was it itchy and swollen? Things coming out, things going in, it's hard to say. In any case, the upstairs bathroom was a safe bet, with its small dimensions, high window, and imminently disinfectable surfaces.

The trip from the basement required a second banana, two pieces of turkey bacon, and several stops along the way in which my naked visitor demonstrated a keen eye for filth. Pausing here and there, he would locate and sample the various drips of our existence, consuming a chocolate chip discovered on the floor near the sink, a small shred of cheese near the stove. He also located several dried spatterings of what was most likely semen. My husband's commitment to the secret secretions of his body was not as well developed where his penis was concerned, and so in addition to the piss bottles, I also had to contend with the aftermath of poorly concealed acts of masturbation scattered about the house. His world was one in which the semen flowed freely, falling where it may. It was clear he did not remember where the paper towels were kept in this world of his, as his attempts to clean up after himself were generally limited to swiping at the doorframe with a sock, which I would later find, crunchy beneath the bed. If confronted with this evidence, my husband would deny knowledge, or claim the sock had been soiled in a different endeavor, like noseblowing or the making of homemade paste. Looking down at the naked man patiently licking away the residue, I felt satisfied.