Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man

First Door

It’s time to go. He’s had to pee for hours, but it’s always the last thing he wants to do. The problem — that’s what his parents call it—the problem is that if he goes, meaning, to the bathroom, he won’t actually be able to go. In the way he describes it to himself then, it hasn’t built up enough yet. There isn’t enough pressure. He will wait a little while. Wait until dinner is over, when no one will notice if he’s gone for too long. Sometimes it takes as long as an hour. Sometimes he can’t do it at all. And sometimes it only takes a few minutes. He never knows until he’s there.

It’s after dinner and he’s standing in front of the avocado green toilet. Noises happen behind the closed door — a dropped ice tray, cursing, breaking glass, louder cursing, a phone ringing. The house swells with urgency. From somewhere inside these sounds, a voice that will always remind him of wind chimes calls, Billy, are you all right?

Billy…, his mother calls again, but her voice fades.

Nothing for a few moments. Just the green toilet. Hurry, he thinks. Hurry. His hands work furiously over the end of his penis. A loud knock at the door. Then two. A different voice. His father’s. Jesus, Willie, don’t make a career out of it in there.

Little-guy cords — usually navy blue, sometimes green — bunch at his feet. Fruit of the Looms wrinkle just below his knees. He’s been in there for over half an hour. He’s come close at least three times, but each time it doesn’t work. Doesn’t happen. He knows it’s going to sting — like bits of glass trying to push out — but he just wants it over with. He shuffles in front of the bowl — left, right, left, right — and squeezes the end of his penis. Rubs it with both hands. The pressure builds and his brow is sweating. He has a terrified sense that if his parents find out, there will be trouble. His father has told him that he has to stop taking so long in the bathroom. When he asks his son why he jumps around and makes such a big production of it all, the boy doesn’t have an answer. Cut it out is what his father tells him, and he wishes he could.

He runs the water in the sink to cover the sound. The shuffle becomes a dance, the kneading becomes a fevered pinching. From a faraway room he hears his older sister, Kim, crying. His father yells her name. A door slams. His mother calls out. A kettle of boiling water whistles from the kitchen. None of these sounds have to do with him. But someone — he can’t tell who — is knocking at the door now. Just knocking, no voice. The boy is a panicked animal — jerking and jumping and pinching before the bowl. He braces for another knock. There is more shouting from down the hall. The sound of something breaking. His hands, his legs — his whole body riots around the pressure at his middle. He’s sure his parents can hear him, convinced they will come bursting through the locked door at any moment. He tries to stop the jumping but he can’t. It feels as if the whole house — his parents, his sister, the cats, the whistling kettle — has gathered on the other side of the door.

In a moment — the one he’s desperate for but can’t create — none of it will matter. In that moment, he won’t hear the slamming and banging and yelling. As the stinging pressure crests and his body flaps away from him, he won’t hear anything. In that streaking moment when he loses control and everything fades out in a flash of pain and relief, he will spray the wall, the floor, the radiator, himself.

He doesn’t see any of the mess until the little oblivion passes and he’s able to steady himself and direct the pee into the bowl. He aims toward the back to avoid the ruckus of water and it goes on forever. He sees there’s a big clean-up job to be done, and he’s already anxious about what to say when he’s on the other side of the door. Once he’s finally finished peeing, he begins pulling yards of toilet paper from the roll, spools that ribbon around his feet and begin to soak up the pool of urine on the tile. He wipes down the toilet and the walls behind and to the side. He gets on his hands and knees and begins sweeping the damp away in long wide arcs. He pats his pants down with the tissue until it pills and crumbles in his hands. He puts too much toilet paper in the bowl and it clogs and the water rises. He knows to put his hand up the drain and yank the paper free to avoid another mess. He plunges his arm in, tugs frantically at the clog, and, like an answered prayer, the bowl empties. Just as this happens the knocking begins again and now it’s both parents at the door. His pants and underwear are still bunched around his ankles. He hasn’t pulled them up yet because he knows that beads of blood have sprung up at the tip of his penis and it will take a few dabs of tissue and a minute or two for it to dry before it’s safe. Often he rushes through this part and will have to throw his underwear out later as little brown spots of blood bud and dry in the white fabric. He’s tried stuffing toilet paper in there, but it usually slips to the side and doesn’t work. Sometimes he forgets and tosses the underwear in the hamper and sees the dryer-dried briefs folded and spotty in his dresser drawer days later. His mother never says a word to him about the briefs, about the peeing — about any of it. This has been going on for as long as he can remember. He has no memory of standing at a toilet and peeing when he wants to.

What are you DOING? thunders from the other side of the door. His father again. The boy calls out that he is coming, just a minute. He mutters to himself—Please God, please—actually, he’s been muttering this to himself since he locked the bathroom door over forty-five minutes ago. He will never be more specific in his plea. His pants and shirt are soaking with water, with urine. He pats himself down one more time with a wad of toilet paper and puts it in the wastepaper basket under an empty tissue box and a used toilet paper roll. He wipes everything down, again, just one more time — the radiator, the bowl, the toilet seat, the floor. He scans the room again for signs of his time there. He wipes, with his hand, the sweat dripping from his brow and pats his hair carefully into place. He breathes in, murmurs another quiet prayer, turns off the light, and hopes the light in the hall is off so his soak-stained clothes aren’t obvious.

He calms his breath, palms the doorknob, and braces for what’s on the other side. He is five years old.