The Basement | 2 August 2022
“That is exactly why we don’t go into the basement,” he said while slamming the door behind them.
BNR Response
Prior to that early August evening, Lucas had had fond memories of the basement: playing Jax with Logan and his little friends, his first make-out session with Suzanne Kennedy, and working out with Boo with the set of free weights his Dad had had since college. He hadn’t suspected that any of that would change when Leto had started talking about the basement during dinner.
Leto was the kind of older brother that made it easy for Lucas to be the middle: he was honest, kind, and always passing on his hard-earned knowledge. Lucas loved summers and the sense of change they brought with them. This year, Leto was home from UC Santa Cruz working a part-time job at the surf shop, Lucas was preparing to start his first year at Cal Poly, and Logan was readying for Freshman year at Redwood High.
This year was even more a time of transition than normal. Sure, each boy continued their inevitable march toward manhood, but Dad had also just quit his job of 20 years at the Firm to pursue something “that more closely resembled [his] passions”, and Mom was having hot flashes. Their parents had been making all kinds of updates to the house: taking over Leto’s childhood room for an extra sitting room replete with wet bar, adding an outdoor lounge area with an exposed shower and seating for almost 15 guests, and getting ready to turn Lucas’ room into a guest room with beds enough to sleep four.
That night, Leto and Logan found themselves in a rare occasion: home alone in the big house, Lucas at a sleepover and Mom and Dad next door at Cheryl and Dick’s house for dinner and game night. They were talking and finishing the bologna sandwiches Leto had made them when his big brother suddenly changed the subject from college talk to domestic life.
“Hey, dude, you been down to the basement a lot this summer? I mean, you been down there lately much?” Leto winced, wiping crumbs from his mouth and taking a swig of milk from the carton.
“I mean, I did my laundry yesterday, so yeah…” Lucas responded, suspicious of the rapid topic change, “Why?”
“Yeah, bro, we can’t go down there anymore. And you definitely can’t let Log hang out there – especially not alone. Or with his friends. Or alone.” Leto’s seriousness was at once terrifying and laughable. He had always been a prolific prankster, and this had all the trappings of one of his lures.
Lucas agreed to follow Leto down the old wooden stairs they’d grown up playing on – passing first the threshold where Mom had marked each of their heights every birthday since they moved here when he was five, then walking underneath the Boy Scouts flag Dad had hung from the rafters leading down the steps, and finally reaching out for the string attached to the exposed lightbulb at the foot of the stairs. Lucas was ready for it – for someone to jump out, for loud music to blast when the light went on (one of Leto’s classics), or for some new torture.
Instead, Leto breezed past him and began to pursue a different scare tactic: a tour of the “refurbishments” Mom and Dad had started in anticipation of another son leaving the nest. Nothing jumped to the eye, but Leto began pointing out all kinds of modifications that were right below the surface.
He started off small. Behind the family collection of DVDs was now a second layer of content: old VHS tapes with thinly veiled creepy titles like, “Shannon Rides Shotgun” and “In the Tanner Sisters’ Shady Thicket”, and a new VHS player accompanied them. Lucas shuddered at the thought that Mom and Dad might have dug up some old porno stash from the 90s, but he realized it could’ve been worse. And it was worse.
Leto continued the tour through the House of Sexual Horrors, increasing in speed and revealing greater density of subject matter as he went. The game closet now had a drawer devoted to all manner of sexual accessories, ranging from the relatively innocuous (when not parent-adjacent!) lube and nipple clamps to higher-ick-factor items like sex toys of alien shapes and anal beads.
“Just ripping off the Band-Aid, buddy,” Leto said, a pained expression on his face as he circled the room, exposing video equipment and strobe light in one corner, then a clothes closet full of pony play and Brony costumes, finally to reveal how the boys’ squat rack had been modified to accompany sex restraints and new tests of physical endurance.
Five minutes felt like an hour, and Lucas had seen enough. He bolted up the stairs, swiftly followed by Leto who forcefully shut the door behind them, as if locking a monster down in the dank and restoring safe to their sanctuary upstairs.
Lucas had been apprehensive about all the change and heading off to SLO that Fall to study towards his Bachelors in marine biology. He had contemplated taking a gap year, staying near home or at home, doing an unpaid internship at UC Davis maybe, and helping Logan make the transition to high school.
Little did they know it, but Mom and Dad had helped their middle baby grow up just a little more that day – and he was finally really ready to start college.