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By Root 2372 0

floor of the lab, I was chastised more severely than for any other trespass. In the lab there was a little plastic chamber pot, colored red and topped with a yellow plastic lid that had a hole in the center of it, which was affixed by a valve to the rim of the receptacle: this was called my “potty.” It had not taken me much time to learn to expel all my bodily fluids and solids into the recess of this thing, because I quickly realized that my living area was a far more pleasant place in which to be if the floor was not, in fact, splattered with my piss and shit. After I came to understand the purpose of the potty, I was glad to acquiescently squat on the lid and deposit the contents of my bowels into its red plastic concavity; soon thereafter one of the lab assistants would swoop in to bear my waste away and would return shortly with the potty, emptied and freshly washed. This was a far cry from the disgusting conditions in the zoo, from the piss-sodden carpeting of cedar planting chips in our habitat, and I welcomed it. But when I began living with Lydia, I was introduced to the bathroom.

Lydia indicated to me that from now on, while I was living in her home, I was to exclusively use this gleaming white machine for bodily waste disposal. I examined it. I lifted the lid, peered inside, set it down again. I looked into the pellucid waters within, wondering where the hole in the curving bottom of it led to. I did not quite yet realize that the little red potty that I had learned to use in the lab was in fact designed to mimic this very device. I grasped the sides of the seat with my long rubbery hands and stared into its depths while Lydia tore a square of toilet paper—also a novel thing to me then—threw it in, and flushed. I watched, rapt in awe, as the suck-crash-thunder of the torrent of water gushing in from some unknown source caused the delicate square of tissue to spiral around and around the bowl until it was finally sucked out of sight through the mysterious hole in the bottom, and I marveled as the bowl, with a prolonged hissing noise coming from deep within the machine, refilled anew with clean clear water that trickled in slowly, rose to a certain level, and then, as if God had told it to, simply stopped—and then there was silence.

I was transfixed. I myself tore off a handful of toilet paper, threw it in the bowl, yanked the trigger, and watched the machine repeat the whole magic show. I was so mesmerized by it that I probably would have kept at it until every last square of toilet paper in the world had vanished down the gurgling throat of this porcelain beast, had Lydia not stopped me to try to explain that this new machine was expressly for the disposal of one’s urine and feces. She calmly explained to me that the next time I had to “pee” or “poop” I was to utilize this device. She asked me if I understood, and I replied—perhaps over-hastily—that I did.

The next time I felt my feces tunneling through my guts toward the light of my anus, I ran to the bathroom, and did not wait for her to arrive to supervise, to make sure I was doing it properly. By the time Lydia stood in the doorway, the deed was already done. Lydia’s face twisted up in an expression of disgust. Of course I’d simply shat on the floor, then started eagerly flushing toilet paper down the toilet. Lydia verbally rebuked me before tearing off a wad of toilet paper and used it to scoop up the little pile of shit I had made, threw it into the toilet and flushed. Then she washed her hands, and bade me to do likewise. Only then did I understand.

The bathroom is a fascinating place. Becoming human is a process of equal parts enlightenment and imprinting your brain with taboos. I too began to regard the simple biological imperatives of pissing and shitting as the ultimate acts of shame—more shameful even than sex, because while sex acts (aside from mere masturbation) necessarily require the participation and hence company of at least a second party, the expulsion of bodily waste is generally regarded as something to be performed only in abject solitude,