Dexter Petley Toilet

Once, I was a toilet. A white pan of vitrous china, black plastic seat, black lid, high-level black rubber cistern and chain with a rubber pendulum. I lived in the cubicle at the public convenience next to Bethnal Green Underground Station.

How my life began I’ve no idea. There must have been a beginning, there must have been a life. My first memory is night, cold, the janitor locks up and I’m squatting against the back wall of the cubicle instead of the toilet. There was no toilet, just me in the empty cubicle. I’m wearing a shabby suit. I had a brain so I guessed the circumstances immediately. I looked for a way out. This was simple anyway. I mean, I knew I wasn’t thinking like a toilet, but neither was I acting like a man who’d just been born moments before in a public shit-house. The janitor’s office was locked but I prised open his little window and found the tea money, plus the takings from the door locks. Coupla quid altogether. The only way outside was through a window no bigger than an air vent, but I squeezed through and there I was, standing outside the pub. I must’ve been there before because I recognised everything. In the pub I thought I’d have time to think but this girl starts talking to me. What could I say? I had no past. What did I look like, how old was I? I managed to see my face in the bar mirror. I recognised myself. I was about 25.

What’s your name? she asks.

Hector, I said, because I knew it was.

Whatdyer do? she says.

I’m a writer, I said.

Why did I say that? I could’ve said I was in waste disposal or local government. And I said all this before I realised I was a man, chattin up a bird. But I didn’t know where I was actually from. That foxed me so I said, mysteriously, that I came from the place all GENTS come from.

What, she said, Tunbridge Wells?

By saying I was a writer I evaded history. It seemed to her a natural thing for a writer to cast a few veils on his life. Her name was Daisy, and deep down I accepted that I’d become stuck between the fictional and non-fictional world, and that Daisy was a character from biography, while I was imagined. I even walked her home, and promised to meet her next day, same time in The One Bell.

When you don’t know what day or month or even what year it is, finding out can be a dangerous event. I was the nutter in the chip shop for a moment, and managed to escape with my bag of chips and the knowledge. February 9, it was. Didn’t look too good. I was in for a cold night, wandering under the trees in Victoria Park then up and down the canal trying to think things through, staggering under a load of questions. The most philosophical of them all was: why am I so ready to accept that I was a toilet until a few hours ago? How can I accept the transition to writer? If I had been a writer, who turned me into a toilet? Have I been published? Or is there an invoice in a council filing cabinet with my delivery date from the Public Works & Sanitation Dept? Was this birth or death? Had I been spared or chosen? At which stage in the cycle had my consciousness re-emerged? And the biggest question of all: was I MAN for the rest of my life now, or would I return to the GENTS?

Well, the returning instinct is a strong one in all of us, from eels, salmon, swallows, criminals and writers. So, what choice did I have? At first light I was back outside the Public Conveniences, ducking from sight as an early bus with shift workers came by, faces yawning in the window. I knew then I wasn’t human. I was an escaped prisoner climbing back over the spiked black railings into his cell, refastening the window behind me, taking up my former place in the empty cubicle. For a second as I swung open that door I Daisyd I’d see another toilet in my place, and wake up or feed greedily off the revelation. But the cold hollow sounds of dawn gave way to muffled daylight, dripping taps, urinal wash sprays in a rising chorus, the recognizable shanties of my native country. Soon came the homely jangling of keys like milkman’s bottles, the black iron gate swings open, the familiar whistling of my father-cum-keeper coming down the steps. This is my last moment before I pass away without remorse or bitterness back into a toilet.

As night fell I was humanized once more and assumed the events of all previous days had repeated themselves, only this time I found a wallet on the floor hidden down the back of my ... bowl. It must have fallen from a client’s pocket as he sat down on me. Or used the communicating suck-holes at cock-height. Yes, hits you, doesn’t it. I hadn’t thought of this before, exactly. And what did I do? I ran from one cubicle to the next to see if my brothers were there, and they were all lifeless without a consciousness no matter how I implored them to rise and throw off their flushing chains. I felt so angry and disgusted. I unbuckled my trousers and yes, sat on one and mudded. So this was my life. Sat here all day, dumped on, pissed in, or other things the evidence of which the janitor no doubt obscured zealously. I was just a gateway to the sewers. Sodom’s ambassadeur. I looked for signs of hurt in this black and white brother of mine, but a good flush and all was normal. And then I wondered how you tell the actual gender of a bog. Could it be my sister? Were the LADIES next door getting out and going into the pub? Daisy, was she a bog-woman?

There were a few quid in the wallet and a bus pass so I bought Daisy a drink and suggested we get the bus to Hyde Park. It was nice. We walked about, held hands, window shopped. Kissed her goodnight too. How did I taste? What was going on? I mean where could this go? Marriage of public convenience? Unless she was the toilet in her own home, we were incompatible, not en suite, only she didn’t seem to mind that my conversation was remote and unconnected. Nor that I took exaggerated interest in her dull job in a Turkish raincoat factory, or that my face flushed every time she mentioned my name or said she had to nip to the ladies to spend a penny. She wasn’t ashamed of living with her parents though. Ambition’ll come when it come, she said. Like when she met the right bloke. She wasn't throwing her life down the toilet, she said.

I should’ve anticipated this. I should’ve said I was working dawn to dusk and couldn’t see her I was so tired. But I started plotting, scheming to get away with it. Any fragment of a chance was better than the lost whole. I could tell her I worked in a top security establishment, a job I had to get because the writing didn’t bring much in. Oh, money. I wouldn’t be earning any money would I, unless I kept finding wallets. And I’d have to leave the house seven days a week, dawn till dusk. No honeymoon, no holiday, no day trips. I’d never be able to hold ordinary conversations with the in-laws and her relatives. So much of the language taboo. Me ole China … flipped his lid … house like a squat … never spends a penny … streak o piss … chained to his job … pull the other one!

In the event my future was decided rapidly. You need more time to pursue happiness than I got, but this was probably the best way to avoid disappointment. One evening Daisy took me to meet her parents. Her old man wasn’t interested in my job, but he made sure I was interested in his alright. Know what I am? he says. No, I say. What are yer? Yeah, he says, didn’t think I’d seen you in there. In where? I says. In the Public Bogs, Bethnal Green Tube, son. Where do you piss, if yer don't mind me askin, like ...

Yes, he was the bloke who wiped the smears from my mouth every day. The man who scraped the piss off my face and unblocked me when I choked on newspaper and chip wrappers. My jailor. All the self-revulsion. All that hate. But what he had to say decided the course my life has taken. At first I thought he’d really recognized me, that he was warning me off his daughter. After all, being a bog he might’ve excused me. That is if I’d been a bog in the House of Lords or Harrods’ showroom. But down there in his fucking East End cesspit, what had I done but committed the ultimate incest, cross-functioning, pipe-bending, every kink in the book. What sort of grandchild would I produce? Little flush junior. Vitrousina who goes on S-benders. Granny knittems you a lickle woolly seat warmer then?

So, according to grandad the toilets in the cubicles were old. Bin there twenty-five year and needed replacing. He’d bin onto the inspector of works the last twoyears, he had. Got the bloody message at last. They was gonna replace em. He’d even bin darn there to see the new toilets. Cor, nice shiny white with stainless steel chains. Real lookers, classy. (Just right fer 'is daughter then.) Puttin em in at the weekend, they were. Poo Palace it’d be come Monday morning. He’d be the first to try it out, he would.

I had three days to live. Daisy came to the door in tears as I pushed my way out mumbling about next week, couldn’t see her, big job on ...

It’s dad innit? she kept sayin. Don’t mind im, e’s just like that ... Christ I’d never run so fast. I reached the canal in tears and walked out to the River Lee Flood Relief, finally sitting down to think. What could I do? What could I do? Nothing. At dawn I slid back in through the window and took my place ...

One night left to live, then I’d be ripped out the floor, off the wall, unbolted and thrown on the back of a council lorry, driven to the dump, smashed up with a sledge hammer and ground to dust. Against that certainty I had to take a chance, or subdivide the chance: I might be dumped intact, in some corner where I could humanize unseen and escape the guard dogs, returning every morning to go green and become a sanctuary for insects or Jenny Wrens. That would be nice. I’d like that. But supposing I wasn’t a toilet at heart, that it was environmental. Surely I should discover this first. Stay away, find a hideout and experiment, come to some conclusion about myself and my options. My Daisy was that I was self-created and would change under enforced conditions. Then I’d have the chance to discover what it was I’d written about. And when I’d even done this fuckin writing.

So that night I searched across the Hackney Marshes for a hideout and found the old, disused Victorian Sewage Treatment Works. It was well hidden in the dark, with several brick bunkers and four green ponds.Under a huge concrete slab I found a recess, room enough to conceal and protect myself. And even if anyone did find a toilet, what would they bother it for? They wouldn’t think ugh there’s a writer let’s kick the shit out of it, would they?

So I watched the stars and smoked dog ends, clawing at the will to live, the will to remain human. The hours passed like any watch, and I gave in to that passing after a hard fight. Night sounds dispersed over a waking city, and the dawn chill brought shadows and a sunrise, which I felt warm my new body.

Should I have been happy? Yes. But look what’d happened. I’d entered the struggle. I was homeless. I’d be judged as any human is judged now. They might be interested in paintings done by cows and pigs, but not novels written by toilets. I would have to start a past like others start the future. I’d have to start both. I’d have to re-create myself without knowing how I’d made myself into a toilet. I knew nothing for ever. Or supposing I’d simply cheated fate and was in remission? I might turn into a toilet in five minutes time, or five weeks, or five years. Every second could be my last. I might turn into a toilet in my sleep or on a crowded bus, or even worse, when sitting on another toilet. How could I earn my right to be human? Was it even possible to make amends? Who, or what had I offended? Had I been cursed for something I’d written?

So you understand, the only place for me was where these questions were irrelevant, or where everyone asked these same questions. I almost went to Daisy, to persuade her to come with me, to help me. And what could I have said? Prepare to find a toilet in your bed one of these fine days? No. I got a night job in a factory easy enough, racing back along the towpath at dawn on my bicycle in time to crawl into my crevice. Soon I had money for my search. I’d joined the library and read about every remote culture I could, deciding that the mountainous regions of Asia Minor were best suited to my purpose. At least people there might understand me as an object in transcendence.

I rooted and searched among the old suitcases and piles of junk in the East End markets and second hand shops till I found a birth certificate for a forty-year-old man; by then I looked forty. I got a passport no trouble. I set out on foot across Europe and into Asia Minor, working as I went, hiding each morning as the sun rose, waiting for the change which never came, calculating time zones even, cross referencing the change points as they might have occurred.

I met a traveller in the Armenian foothills who told me of this village, where outcasts come to settle in peace, unmolested after lives of derision and victimization in their own communities. It took me three years to find. ou’re the first traveller I’ve seen, the first person I’ve ever told about what it’s really like to be a writer in England. Villagers never leave here, of course. Who do we have here? Well, there are Georgians with dogs’ tails, black Russians with three legs, Laps with eyes in the back of their heads, feral children, simian women, a man who sees everything in red, a woman who sings but can’t talk, and behind the village an Englishman-toilet.

And did I ever find my writing? you ask. No, that’s just the point. I know I am a writer, that I’ve written, with great commitment. But since humanizing I’ve written nothing and’ve never remembered anything I supposedly wrote. My longing to write is always accompanied by my longing to be a toilet. So, the toilet was the writer wasn’t it? That makes me the writer’s block.