A Box of Matches by Nicholson Baker

Author:Nicholson Baker [Baker, Nicholson]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-1-4000-7633-8
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2003-08-29T16:00:00+00:00

18

Good morning, it’s 5:14 a.m., and it’s cold, and the only creature stirring is the cat: he’s just had an extended session in his litter box, scraping and scraping. He’s got one of those litter boxes with the roof and the side hole: he climbs in and is able to turn smoothly around, and then he holds still with his head out the hole, slitting his eyes, until he is finished, and then the compulsive digging begins, the scrape of claws on grey plastic.

I woke up this morning and went into the bathroom and pulled down my pajama bottoms and silently peed, shivering, for a long time. I can accumulate a remarkable amount of urine. It’s been almost fifteen years since I took to sitting down on the toilet to pee at night. Someone I worked with was complaining about her husband’s bad aim in the bathroom, and someone else said her husband sat down and always had, and I was struck by this. Just because during the day you stand, does that mean that you must stand during the night as well? Of course not. There’s no shame in sitting down, and here’s what happens if you don’t. In the middle of the night you don’t want to turn on the light, because it hurts your eyes and makes it harder to go back to sleep, so you decide to go in the dark. You think you have a pretty good idea where the toilet bowl is. So you stand there in the dark, straining for cues and luminosities, saying to yourself that it’s a very large bowl anyway and the chances are good that you’ll hit the mark. And yet of course you’re sleepy and you may have a slight nonsexual stiffening and you’re clumsy. So you let some pee down into the darkness. You listen for the sound. Is it the sound of a fluid stream hitting water? That’s good. Then you’re fine. Is it, on the other hand, the sound of a coherent fluid stream hitting porcelain? That may be good or it may not be good, depending on whether you’re hitting the porcelain of the actual inside of the bowl, around the water, or the porcelain on the edge. A doubt arises. Very probably it’s the porcelain near the water. You’ll know that it is near if you make a tiny left or right adjustment and hear the confirming sound of water. And you wonder, Which way do I adjust the aim? It seems like I might be aiming a little too much to the left. So you correct by directing the stream a little to the right, and the sound changes, and now you’re in trouble, because it’s the sound, you’re pretty sure, of pee hitting rim and maybe even floor, so you quick jerk back to what you think is your original position. But it isn’t the original position. You’ve lost your bearings now, you’re wandering in an unknown forest, and you have

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