Downstairs Toilet Quotes

There you go, matey!” I say, and I even move my head and pretend to follow his movements. As casually as I can, I say, “I’m just going to the toilet,” and I sort of stroll out of the kitchen, dead natural, down the hallway and into the downstairs loo. I have only got, I figure, about two minutes, probably less. Here is what is going to happen in the kitchen. Fat police lady is

The school regime refused to make it easy for us on the dress side of things, and it dictated that even if we wanted to walk into the neighboring town of Windsor, then we had to wear a blazer and tie. This made us prime targets for the many locals who seemed to enjoy an afternoon of beating up the Eton “toffs.” On one occasion, I was having a pee in the loos of the Windsor McDonald’s, which were tucked away downstairs at the back of the fast-food joint. I was just leaving the Gents when the door swung open, and in walked three aggressive-looking lads. They looked as if they had struck gold on discovering this weedy, blazer-wearing Eton squirt, and I knew deep down that I was in trouble and alone. (Meanwhile, my friends were waiting for me upstairs. Some use they were being.) I tried to squeeze past these hoodies, but they threw me back against the wall and laughed. They then proceeded to debate what they were going to do to me. “Flush his head down the toilet,” was an early suggestion. (Well, I had had that done to me many times already at Eton, I thought to myself.) I was okay so far. Then they suggested defecating in the loo first. Now I was getting worried. Then came the killer blow: “Let’s shave his pubes!” Now, there is no greater embarrassment for a young teenager than being discovered to not have any pubes. And I didn’t. That was it. I charged at them, threw one of them against the wall, barged the other aside, squeezed through the door, and bolted. They chased after me, but once I reached the main floor of the McDonald’s I knew I was safe. I waited with my friends inside until we were sure the thugs had all left, then cautiously slunk back across the bridge to school. (I think we actually waited more than two hours, to be safe. Fear teaches great patience.)

A toilet flushes, and everyone turns to see Jax emerge from the downstairs bathroom holding a Victoria’s Secret catalogue and chewing on a Red Vine. “Yo, what up,” he says, oblivious. As he looks from one face to the next he stops chewing. He swallows hard. “Everything okay?” “No,” I say.

She lined the seat with a thick layer of toilet paper, peed for what felt like two minutes straight, and then washed her hands. Took a swig from the bottle of mouthwash stuffed into the small box on the floor. Swished the cool, tingling liquid around in her mouth as she ran downstairs. After scanning the road, Lacey raced outside. She spit out the mouthwash as she descended the lopsided steps, causing whatever had taken up residence under the porch to scamper when the dark-blue liquid hit the ground.

She watches him till he disappears, feeling lighter now because the big black car has gone and a big blackness that was sitting on her has gone too. Then she wanders down the other side of the koppie, pausing here and there to look at a rock or a leaf, to her own house, or the house she thinks of as her own. By the time she comes in through the back door, a hundred and thirty-three minutes and twenty-two seconds have passed since she ran away. Four cars, including the long dark one, have departed, a single new one has arrived. The telephone has rung eighteen times, the doorbell twice, on one occasion because somebody has sent flowers that improbably turn up all the way out here. Twenty-two cups of tea, six mugs of coffee, three glasses of cool drink and six brandy-and-Cokes have been consumed. The three toilets downstairs, unused to such traffic, have between them been flushed twenty-seven times, carrying away nine point eight litres of urine, five point two litres of shit, one stomachful of regurgitated food, and five millilitres of sperm. Numbers go on and on, but what does mathematics help? In any human life there is really only one of everything.

Over four weeks of autumn between my first novel being shortlisted and finally winning the Man Booker Prize, a curious thing happened in a downstairs bathroom of my house. Butterflies would appear and fly around my head when I went in for a crap. They would come out one by one. Strange, because their season was gone, there were none outside in nature, only in that toilet. But they wouldn't appear if I went in to take a leak. Now: the door was shut, they didn't come from outside. I couldn't see where they came from, and when left the room they would stay there, flying. but the next time I came in they would be gone; unless I came in for a crap, in which case they appeared again and flew around my head. It was a mystery. If I stayed there long enough, five would come out. It became predictable enough that I took a new pleasure in going to sit and think with the butterflies. If you believed in omens they seemed good ones. After the prize I returned home to find they had gone. One day, much later, I solved the mystery: an old toothbrush mug had been exiled to the top of the bathroom cabinet. They had lived in the mug, maybe attracted by toothpaste. When the light had been on long enough—not so quick as when I took a leak—they must have thought it was their day in the sun and come out to fly around. Poor bastards.