Joseph P.

I confirm, as a single man who owns a house near Galena, Kansas, that I have a secret underground lair under my house. The guy I bought the house from showed it to me. I’ve enjoyed it and I want to keep it secret. I won’t give you my address, “Joseph P.” is not my real name, and I’m using a computer to disguise my voice. But in the interest of understanding these things, I am sharing a few thoughts about my lair.

First of all, I’m not a superhero. I’m a normal male, over thirty years old, but under fifty. I work for International Harvester. You don’t need to know anything more about that.

The previous owner fixed up the lair as a regular apartment with a den, bedroom, bath, and a small kitchen. I think he was a contractor. The place is very comfortable. The A/C system keeps the humidity down, but I let the temperatures approach the normal ground temperature. It’s a great place to cool off on a Sunday afternoon in the summer.

Actually, I don’t do anything in my lair that I don’t do upstairs. I exercise, watch TV, browse the internet, drink beers. Normal guy stuff.

My lair connects to a natural cave. There’s a steel door in the kitchen. The other side of the door is fixed up to look like normal part of a rock wall. Out there are stalactites, stalagmites, and a natural stream. The cave environment is delicate, with its salamanders and rare species of mussels, so when I go out there, I’m very careful, and just try to take in the weird and awesome magnitude of nature’s secrets.

I think everyone over the age of thirty has a few things that they don’t talk about. Maybe your psychiatrist wouldn’t agree, but I think this is a healthy aspect of a person with depth. Not everything about him is all on the surface. Nor should it be.

I’ve never been tempted to share my lair with anyone. I’ve gotten used being by myself, and I’m very comfortable with the isolation, the silence.

This is one thing, if I were asked, that I would lie about.