Ye Olde Really Long Story Involving My Bathroom:

If you didn’t come here to read about my plumbing woes, I suggest you leave now, while you still can. Maybe my next post will be about Topanga and McSweeney’s and indie rock again, but right now, it’s about my toilet. If you love me, you’ll read it.

Somehow, someway, my Ked-laden landlord unclogged the toilet. For 24 hours, there was much rejoicing. My bathroom smelled like fresh tulips and the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds played whenever you flushed. Everyone danced and laughed and shook their hair in the sunlight, in slow motion. Bathroom life was bliss.

And then lo! the dripping started.

A slow drip at first; no reason to alarm. The wood floors were still safe. I notified my landlord just in case, wedged a bowl under the back of the tank, arranged a towel underneath, and went along my merry way. But the next day, the dripping became more insistent, more intense. It could sense my anxiety. I cancelled plans to appease it. I had to change the bowl once an hour. There was talk of sacrificing virgins. Leaving my house was a thing of the past.

So I called my landlord again. His wife answered. “Oh, he came out last night while you were gone to look at it, hon. He didn’t know how to fix it. Is it still leaking?”

As if focusing his eyeballs on it for 4 minutes would have stopped that.

She agreed with me that the toilet needed to be replaced. She assured me that “Randy” would be over today. “He’s tall, real nice, real good with the plumbing,” she said. She paused. “But he’s probably too old for you.”

What the fuck? This is why I cannot get my plumbing taken care of, people. My landlady is too busy trying to set me up with a 50 year old man named Randy—whom, I might add, was also too fierce and mullet-headed and Freebird for me.

Randy showed up, as promised. He pretty much wrested my toilet from its resting place with his bare hands. I was impressed. Then my landlord showed up (no Keds this time, but get this: Guess jeans!) with another toilet he apparently had just lying around somewhere. I don’t know; maybe this is normal landlord behavior. I’m obviously not the person to ask.

New (well, new to me) toilet was installed. Much jubilation! Then Randy tried to shut the door.

It wouldn’t clear the seat.

I remained calm. Surely there would be another toilet. A new one, even. I’m not paying this much rent to have a bathroom door that won’t close.

Randy asked how I felt about a curtain, or maybe those doorway beads. I laughed. So did Randy, and my landlord. I was beginning to like Randy. He was capable. He had tools. He wasn’t wearing Keds.

Then Randy eyed the door. He eyed the toilet. “You know…,” he began, pulling out his measuring tape. “We could just put the door on the other way.”

I laughed. No one else did.

This is where it gets really depressing.

I now have a hole in my bathroom door, custom-whacked by the not-so-great Randy. This hole is two inches wide and five inches long. It is not a notch. It is not a chip. It is a not slot. It is a fucking hole. Sure, all you can see is maybe part of someone’s leg, but what about the sounds? What about the sounds?

I am not ashamed to tell you that I cried.