#bathroomlife

As a child I always wanted to be poor and black. As an adolescent I was criticized for this seemingly preposterous desire, but if anyone thought about it, it was quite logical. All of my heroes were poor and black: Rappers, many favorite actors (and the characters they portrayed), and most athletes (prior to signing their contracts) were poor and black. And what child doesn’t want to emulate their heroes?

Growing up my family was “comfortable” by white, American standards - filthy fucking rich by planetary standards. We didn’t attend private school, nor summer in the Hamptons, but my brother and I each had our own bedroom and Mom didn’t have to work. If you can claim the same and are under the impression that you’re not rich you’re probably a bad person.

 In 1994 the tides turned as Dad was let go by his company, who discovered a “loophole” in his contract that would transform his promised $100,000/year pension into a $0/year pension, and the house wasn’t close to paid for. Mom had to go to work, Dad had to go back, and if I ever wished to again be “comfortable” I’d have to earn it, which is hardly something to whine about, still a factor in my reality.

 I’ve lived in a million shit holes. In 1998 I was paying $440/month on West 15th St.

 Do you know what you get for $440 on W. 15th Street? A room, literally nine feet by six, that happened to offer a great view of the Empire State Building. It was an “SRO” – single room occupancy, which means no kitchen or living room, no nothing, but a miniature refrigerator if you’re lucky, and a dingy-AF bathroom in the hallway to be shared with whatever other college kids or miscreants caught in some life transition (or perpetual non-transition) happened to live on the floor. At the time I was the former, in love with alcohol and psychedelic drugs, and it was the best time of my life. One night my friend, Tre got locked out of his car and had to sleep over, which we executed brilliantly, each of us curled into fetal position at opposite ends of my futon single and I’m confident no spooning took place. Tre decided to take some magic mushrooms from my stash, leaving crumbs of them on the sheets as if they were late night cookies, but the next day he claimed they “didn’t really work.” Incidentally, I got a better night’s sleep than I probably would now by myself on a king-sized pillow top. Ah, youth.

 Eventually I upgraded to another SRO on 13th and 3rd Ave. for $600/month, which boasted over twice the square footage, and Tre ironically coined, “The Palace.” The Palace was (barely) able to fit a full-sized futon, parallel to a “coffee table” and perpendicular to a single bed, which made Tre’s sleepovers twice as comfortable and ten times as frequent. Infestation was worse than at the previous domicile, if for no other reason than the aforementioned law of probability as it pertains to literal space. What are the chances of mice and cockroaches as much finding their way into a box as specific as 54 square feet in a New York City building? We’d mostly hear the mice shuffling at night in the dark, but ironically saw roaches in the light, fearlessly perusing the sink or climbing the walls, and I don’t think I’ll ever again laugh as hard as I did when Tre pointed one out and muttered in a weed-smoked stupor: “Room service is here, nigga. You wanna place an order?”

 Summers in SRO’s were tough, as air conditioners were forbidden, because capitalism works and life is fair. I’ll never forget one morning the heat was so intense that it woke me up early, so I got up, grabbed my things and bought one ticket to an early morning showing of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. I’d already suffered through one showing of the cinematic vomit, but figured the air conditioned theater with an awfully uninteresting dialogue and plot as backdrop was the perfect setting to finish my night’s rest. I was right.

 No doubt the most interesting part about my time in The Palace was the ongoing mystery of who on my floor was responsible for the intermittent appearances of explosive diarrhea sprayed across the shared bathroom’s walls. One day they would be perfectly clean (relative to SRO’s), and the next day, Wham (literally)! It was everywhere, on the wall behind the toilet and beside it, on the floor as well as the trashcan, and at the still unshakeable age of 22 I was often as impressed by this poor soul’s range and diameter as I was grossed out by it being all over my home. The one thankful, but equally disturbing part of it was there was almost never any shit on the actual bowl. Who was this fascinating beast, first of all with some great gastrointestinal power, that insisted on ruthlessly shitting all over his own home and the home of others, but simultaneously considerate enough to never filthy the seat that his neighbors had to share? We had our suspects, but never got a conclusive verdict.

 I graduated from SRO’s to futons in friends’ living rooms, one of which was directly above the loudest and most volatile gay bar in Chelsea, The Rawhide. Instead of unbearable August humidity, it was techno music and the sounds of masculine rejoice that disrupted my sleep, sometimes from below, other times from my best friend’s room. He was more successful than I with drunk girls at parties, thus serving as an in-house reminder of my failures and frustrations in the middle of many nights. The majority of our time at The Rawhide was okay, though it ended poorly, with a break-up from my two best friends (Tre included), typical when cramming three besties into a two bedroom for four years.

 I’ve lived everywhere, dawg.

 For a few years I had my own studio apartment on one of Washington Heights’ most drug-infested blocks, which is kind of like saying the “most volatile gay bar in Chelsea.” One time a girl I was dating asked me to go outside and find her a bag of weed and I didn’t even make it to the bottom of the staircase before scoring. Location, location… I then moved cross country into a studio in the heart of Hollywood, Los Angeles, then to a dark and dirty converted two-bedroom with two Filipino women in Koreatown for two years, and to this day I have no idea whether or not they were a gay couple. It didn’t matter if they were; I just thought it curious that after all that time and interaction I remained curious. The worst part about that spot was just having to regularly concoct white lies about why I couldn’t join them at weekly Bible study, and each morning waking up to the sounds of urination through the thinly constructed bedroom wall.

 “Why don’t you just borrow money from your parents and get a better place?” a friend asked in one of the classic erroneous assumptions made by privileged people:

1.     Everyone may not have money, but their parents do at least. False.

2.     Hard work = financial success. I’ve never taken a vacation and I have nothing, which is half the reason why I’ve never taken a vacation.

3.     Intelligence = financial success. Donald Trump is President.

 I moved back to New York with the same complete void of resources that I’d gone to L.A. with, but got hooked up with a room in a real 2Br in Harlem for $678/month! No contract and right in my price range! What was the catch?  

 Never in my life had I seen such infestation.

 I’ll repeat that for the cheap seats and ears deafened by our over-stimulated society of idiots exploiting non-literal superlatives in order to garner attention: Never in my life had I seen such infestation. This includes homes I’ve lived in, as well as every one I’ve ever visited or even passed through just to get a quarter pound of weed in 1995. In my first week there I would come home at night, turn on the kitchen lights and see anywhere from 3-10 of the filthy insects fleeing for safety across the sink and countertop, in much greater numbers and more cowardly fashion than the apathy with which room service used to creep up The Palace walls. Roaches were so much tougher in the 90’s.

 Thankfully I barely ever saw them in the bedroom, but they absolutely owned the kitchen and bathroom. We were just renting, mere visitors in their home where they ruled, they roamed, and I didn’t bother to inquire as to whether the roommate would mind if I doused the place in bleach, taped and calked up all cracks in the floors and walls, and bought a new kitchen garbage… With. A. Cover.

 Within a month I was victorious in defending the wall, and the wildling little creatures were gone. I’ve been on HBO and Showtime, won comedy festival competitions and earned a Master’s degree in Chinese Medicine, and this was truly one of my greatest achievements in life. Unfortunately my new abode’s other obstacle would prove an impossible hurdle, and one I’d have to stand down to for the 15 months to come: El Bano.  

In order to successfully flush I had to hold the toilet handle down for anywhere from 5-12 seconds, making for the longest I’ve ever had to hold a toilet handle down for. Some toilets are stubborn, requiring a hold of 2-3 seconds, max. The next time you flush a toilet hold the handle down for 12 seconds. It’s an eternity.

 The seat was disgusting and I immediately decided that no square inch of my skin would ever come into contact with it. To be honest I didn’t even like the idea of my anus hanging above it. I thought about purchasing and attempting to install a new seat, though my brother brought up a good point.

 “Considering the apparent hygienic standards of your roommate, will you freely sit on the bare seat if you buy a new one?”

 “No.”

 “Okay then.”

 To cover up the impenetrable stains of funk and musk I instead resigned to spray paint the seat white, and continued to cover it with paper each time I sat down.

 Supposedly we couldn’t call the super for repairs, as part of the reason our rent was so cheap was because the apartment was rent controlled from a time before even my roommate lived there. Neither of our names were on the lease. The bathroom would remain as is, which could only be described as fucking disgusting.  

 I don’t know that I’d ever before smelled the smell, “putrid,” or even “rancid,” and if I had it was only in passing, only in that split second of sensual recognition before we clench our orifices in sheer panic and flee the scene for cleaner air, greener pastures. The smell emitted from my new, old bathroom’s pipes was putridly rancid, and if it wasn’t the worst thing I’d ever smelled it was at least the worst I’d ever smelled regularly. Many times while going to the bathroom I would try covering my nose with my shirt, but the thin layer of cotton was no match for this entity that surely required some kind of exorcism to defeat its demonic potency. Googled gimmicks such as baking soda and vinegar offered only brief reprieve, and for the first time in my life I was brushing my teeth everyday in the (newly exterminated) kitchen.

 Unfortunately, neither the odor nor the Zen toilet flusher was my biggest gripe with the room. I would have easily tolerated either of these were it not for the worst Goddamn shower I’ve ever taken in my life. I took 500 of them if I took one.

 The water dribbled out in pathetic pressure and took forever to get warm, and these were the unit’s only two familiar flaws from prior shit holes. Additionally delayed was its response to temperature adjustment, so if I came back after waiting the allotted 5-10 minutes and found the water to be scalding hot I couldn’t just adjust the knobs and expect it to adjust. There was a consistently inconsistent wait time between turning the cold water knob and when the water actually got cooler, or if it got cooler at all. Often times I’d get impatient and make it too cold before the defunct pipes were able to catch up and the water suddenly turned to the opposite extreme. Every shower was a non-stop guessing game, concurrent with a waiting game and usually a physical dance, as I’d err mostly hotter instead of colder, and had to dance in and out of the stream to rinse off suds but also avoid getting burned. The worst instances that brought me to exclaiming expletives while naked, wet and alone were surely at the end of long workdays in the winter. I’d bend over to wash my legs and feet and suddenly the erratic unit would turn from a tolerable temp to either ice cold or boiling, spraying my lower back, transforming what all my life had been a relaxing, therapeutic experience into a frustrating battle; a daily reminder of the impoverished outcome of all my hard work. Who’d ever think showering would become something I’d dread?