Photo by Claire Mueller on Unsplash
Aunt Norma and Uncle Jerry’s ranch house in Valley Stream, Long Island, had low ceilings, even viewed by an undersized seven-year-old, and apparently there was something equally foreign to me about the dimensions of their toilet, for when I sat on it to poop (which I thought was going to happened but did not) and pee, and stood to pull up underpants and pants, I realized that both were soaked. What Do I Do and How Did This Happen ricocheted around in my head as I unrolled a handful of toilet paper to dab at my underpants and pants, and studied the structure of the toilet, hypothesizing that I had peed through the gap between seat and basin, and that while that gap may have been a bit wider than in other toilets of my experience, the responsibility fell to me for not being more scrupulous in pointing my penis straight down once I was seated. (I vowed this was the last time that item would not be checked off in my pre–seated-urination checklist.)
Twin observations: 1) My dabbing was doing no immediate good, the fabrics having done a superb job of absorption, and 2) the visible wetness seemed limited to my underwear. Thus, I might survive the evening if (another twin observation): 1) I could keep the soaking wet underwear from continuing to soak through to my pants, and 2) the smell didn’t give me away.
As I stuffed more toilet paper between underpants and pants in an attempt to manage item 1 of my second set of twin observations, I sniffed the air around me to determine the risk of item 2 of my second set of twin observations, which yielded a final heart-sinking-to-my-shoes realization: I smelled nothing, but there surely was a smell, and therefore I was unable to smell the odor of my own urine. (I did not at the time make the next logical step from not being able to smell the odor of my own urine when soaked into my clothes to realizing that I can’t smell my own bodily odors more generally, resulting in a life-long low level of self-odor anxiety, but at least not as intense as that evening’s anxiety, and one I apparently share with my mint-sucking, deodorant swiping fellow people.) I would have to risk it.
Back in the family room, toilet paper padding my crotch and butt area, I kept to one side of the gathering, wishing the room were bigger so that more neutral air surrounded me, but glad that we weren’t in the confined space of the car, a horror that I knew awaited me for the 45-minute drive back to Brooklyn, where we were staying with my dad’s parents, and where a fresh pair of underwear and the fortress of bed awaited.
As the gathering shifted position in the house, slowly, slowly, like the sleeper in the Andy Warhol movie, I rotated my own position for maximum distance, remaining standing to avoid the possibility of pressing wetness both into my pants and into a fabric-covered chair or sofa. I looked for any signs of odor-related reaction in the faces of those around me—Aunt Norma and Uncle Jerry, whom I felt horror in possibly offending with my filth; Mom, whom I did not want to give fresh ammunition for her view of me as a generally ridiculous and unsupportable individual; Dad, wanting to bank his succor for some more significant occasion (this one seemed about as bad as it gets, but even in its midst I knew worse was to come someday); and older brother Paul, who would do his big-brother job of teasing me if he knew. My hyperactive, autistic younger brother Steve was, alas, behaving well for a change, as I could usually rely on him to take attention away from me.
No signs from anyone, but would there be? Norma was too kind. Jerry’s nose was enveloped in cigar smoke. Mom looked at me with a sour expression no matter what. Dad’s eyes were cemented into an expression of kindness and patience. Paul, no reason to suspect me, was as oblivious as every nine-year-old has a right to be. (But not this seven-year-old…goddammit, why didn’t I push my penis just a tiny bit further down while sitting on that toilet.) And smells were not among the stimuli that sent my brother Steve dashing and lurching around a room.
Without any definitive evidence to the contrary, as the evening wound down, I allowed myself to believe that I had escaped the infamy that my behavior so richly observed (pending successful completion of the car-ride home), when my Aunt Norma tossed a glance in my direction as I stood near the front door, tilted her head down a quarter of an inch, transformed the glance into a stare, and said with the throaty voice that, along with her hugs and girth, I found so deliciously exotic, “You’re leaking toilet paper.”
I looked down to where her glance seemed directed, and sure enough, toilet paper was hanging out of the right leg of my pants. I imagined myself pulling at the hanging piece and it emerging like an endless handkerchief from a magician’s breast pocket.
Raising my eyes, I saw this: My Aunt Norma, a woman I knew even then to not be especially worldly but to have wisdom and goodness far more valuable than anything to be gained by a night in a West Village poets’ café or a hike in the Himalayas, and whom I knew also snuck a cigarette from time to time, looked back at me with this expression: I’m confused as shit, but I’m not going to enter the cave that is the absurd, private predicament of a seven-year-old boy.
I tore off the exposed paper and stuffed it into my pocket.
Robert Fromberg has published fiction and nonfiction in Hobart, Indiana Review, Colorado Review, and many other journals. He taught writing for 17 years at Northwestern University.