I mashed the soap fragments together into a lumpy abomination, which I noted was roughly 40 percent smaller than a regular bar of soap.
“What the hell happened?” Rand asked when he saw it, and I told him that every time he used a regular bar of soap, a baby seal died.
Not to be left out, the adjacent toilet featured a water-saving, low-flow design. Rather than flush your waste away like its environmentally hostile counterparts, a low-flow toilet dribbles a bit of water into the bowl and slowly swishes things around. You get to watch your turds twirl about like putrid little synchronized swimmers, and in seeing this, you know that you’ve made the world a better place.
I did not realize this was the case with our toilet when I performed the ladylike act of graciously emptying my bowels into it. Presuming that it worked like virtually every other toilet in the developed world, I lowered the lid, flushed, and went out to explore the city with my beloved.
Now, in order for you to fully understand the significance of this story and the depth of my husband’s love and tolerance, I need to take a moment to describe my bowels and the contents therein. (May god have mercy on us all.)
The general consensus is that any solid waste coming from a woman, and a woman under five feet three at that, should be in the form of tiny and inoffensive pellets, like what you might find at the bottom of a rabbit hutch.
In what may be the understatement of the year, and perhaps my lifetime, let me simply say: Nope.
The point is, those of us who are smallest in stature are occasionally giants when it comes to pooping. Plato said that, I think. But let’s make it official:
Even the smallest in stature can be pooping giants.
—Plato
WHEN RAND AND I RETURNED to our hotel room a few hours later, we noticed it smelled more like feces than hotel rooms usually do, and Rand, in an effort to locate the origin of the offense, traced it to the bathroom.
“Dear god, baby,” he said. “Why didn’t you flush?”
I explained that I had, and I squeezed into the closet-sized bathroom with him only to find that our low-flow toilet had ignored my attempt to dispose of my filth. The bowl was now filled with putrid water, murky and horrific after three hours of stewing.
“Shit,” I said, stating the obvious.
I tried flushing again and heard the sickening sound of a tank filling, and nothing else. The toilet had clogged, its delicate, baby seal–friendly plumbing unable to deal with any waste that wasn’t reconstituted kale.
I called maintenance.
A few minutes later there was a knock at our door, and I opened it to find a bright-eyed young man in coveralls, holding a plunger. His nametag read “Eduardo.”
I think most of us reach that pivotal point in adulthood at which we have the chance to step up and deal with our own shit, or have someone else do it. And I am going to tell you right now that you should absolutely have someone else do it and then tip them an absurd amount, apologize profusely, and hope you never see them again.
That is what I should have done.
Instead, I took the plunger from Eduardo with a quick thank you, and, in a shockingly misplaced display of confidence, headed to the bathroom.
“Baby,” Rand said, following me at a distance, “are you sure you’ve got it?”
I nodded, but still he remained close, just outside the splash radius, his face a mask of utter disgust as I lowered the plunger into the murk with the caution of one defusing a bomb.
“Careful,” Rand said, his voice barely a whisper.
“I know, I know.”
Delicately, so as not to splash, I pressed the plunger down a few times, reducing whatever solids remained in the bowl into the unholiest of soups.
“I think that’s enough,” Rand said.
I wasn’t quite as convinced, but I so wanted him to be right that I took the plunger out, gave it a gentle shake, and laid it on a piece of newspaper I’d had the foresight to lay down in the corner.
And then I flushed the toilet.
If you are eating lunch right now, I suggest you put this book down. If your life has been relatively stress- and trauma-free until this point, feel free to skip to the end of the chapter. But if you have lived through war, or are a surgeon in the trauma ward of a major hospital, or have a toddler, then read on. You have seen these horrors before.
Water began to flow into the bowl, and the putrescent tide began to rise. I watched, unbelieving, as the water climbed higher and higher toward the lip of the bowl. I kept thinking it would stop and the panic that was rising at the same rate inside my chest would dissipate as well.
But it did not.
I lived a lifetime in those brief seconds.
I contemplated making a break for it. I imagined turning to Rand and screaming, “RUN!” We’d tear out of our hotel room and down the stairs, as the toilet overflowed and sent a brown wave crashing after us.
We’d reach the street and continue to race through Midtown New York, into the lights and noise of the human pinball machine that is Times Square. We’d try to blend in, to erase the panic and horror from our faces. We’d change our names and start a new life, never speaking of that hotel and the things we’d seen inside.
What better place to start over than New York City? If we could make it there, we could make it anywhere, provided there were industrial-strength toilets.
ALAS, THIS WASN’T EVEN THE first time I’d been in this kind of situation. In December 2001, when Rand and I had only been dating a few weeks, I found myself alone in his apartment. I was still in school; he’d just dropped out and was working full-time.
Rand had already left for the day, leaning in close to my ear and whispering that I should sleep in before kissing me goodbye. I curled up in his fluffy comforter and scooted over into the warm spot he’d left on the bed.
I stared at the ceiling and smiled. I liked him. I liked him in spite of myself and that deep-seated desire I had to be miserable and alone. I liked him even though I didn’t want to. I finally got out of the warm cocoon of bed to use the bathroom, relieved that he was not around. In those days, there was still mystery left.
And then I flushed.
The water did not go down. Instead, it began to rise, a vile broth inching higher and higher toward the lip of the bowl.
I panicked. If the toilet began to overflow, I reasoned that I could just run. Grab my pants and shoes from the floor of his room and just leave. I wouldn’t call him again.
Rand would wonder, of course, what had happened. He might even start to worry. But then he’d think of the carnage in the bathroom and know that it was all for the best.
But I didn’t want it to end like that.
“Stop,” I pleaded desperately of the toilet bowl. “Please, just stop.”
Miraculously, the septic gods heard my prayer, and the water stopped rising. With a few desperate thrusts of the plunger, the clog was dispatched. The toilet flushed.
He never knew about the carnage I could create until we moved in together. And by then it was too late. We’d already combined our CD collections, and in the early 2000s there was no greater sign of commitment.
And now there he was, in a cramped hotel room with me in New York City, staring at the contents of the bowl with thinly veiled horror. It soon became clear that unlike the bathroom in Rand’s apartment all those years ago, this toilet had no automatic shut-off. It was going to overflow.
“Trashcan,” I said to Rand, with uncharacteristic calmness. He needed no other explanation. In one smooth, fluid motion, he grabbed it (it was, miraculously, not wicker or made from repurposed magazines, but composed of sturdy, dolphin-choking plastic), dumped the contents on the floor of the bathroom, and handed it to me.
And then, much as my ancestors did, I began to bail the water out of the toilet and into the shower.
As I did so, Rand had maneuvered around me and taken the lid off the top of the tank. He’d discovered the source of the problem: the chain had
caught on some small apparatus that had been placed inside the tank to save water. The toilet would have filled indefinitely.
He delicately unhooked the chain and was able to stop the rising toilet water, but not before I’d bailed several trashcans full into the shower. As quickly as it had begun, it was over.
We stared blankly at each other, the last two survivors at the end of a horror movie. We’d done it.
Of course, the toilet was still clogged, and there were now turds clogging the shower drain, but honestly, that could be said of most hotels in Midtown, right?
No? Okay, fine.
I asked Rand to bring me some cleaning supplies.
“From the hotel?” he asked.
I shook my head. If the soap was any indication, the housekeeping staff probably had to clean the bathrooms with lavender oil and crystals.
“I need bleach,” I said.
I should note: Rand tends to get sick a lot on the road. In addition to the pain in his leg and back that constantly bugs him, he interacts with so many people at meetings and conferences that he often ends up with a miserable cold. At that moment, he was suffering from both. And so, in the middle of the night, my poor husband, who was already feeling dizzy and feverish and unsteady before any of this had happened, rushed into the madness of Times Square to locate cleaning supplies.
This left me to tend to the postdiluvian bathroom, with the still-clogged toilet. I decided that I was going to really plunge the hell out of the thing.
And it is at this point in the story that my logic ran out. (I am my mother’s daughter, after all.)
Since I didn’t want to worry about splashes, I figured I should remove all my clothes, save for a pair of black underwear (because I reasoned that plunging a toilet while totally naked would be weird). And since I didn’t want to get my hair dirty, I put on a shower cap.
And then, for reasons that still escape me, I decided to put my shoes back on.
I plunged. And I plunged. I splashed water with abandon, which landed pretty much everywhere, including onto the shoes that I was inexplicably wearing.
That was the scene that Rand returned to, and to his credit, he said nothing. That’s one of the great things about marriage. At some point, your beloved will inevitably find you mostly naked, shower-capped, and furiously plunging away, and they’ll just hand you a bag of cleaning supplies without comment.
I realized that, in using those products, I’d officially destroyed the hotel’s eco-friendly status, but it could be argued that that had happened hours before when this entire debacle began. Besides, I was sure I’d be hard-pressed to find someone who felt that bleach wasn’t required.
And so I cleaned. I polished the floor, where the water had splashed, I cleaned the toilet seat, and then I tackled the shower.
I sprayed the cleanser throughout, scrubbed with paper towels, every action a wasteful crime against the planet. I turned the water in the shower as hot as it would go, and when I was through, I did it all again. And then I did it a third time, just for good measure.
When I was done, the bathroom sparkled.
And then I finally stepped into the shower myself, scrubbing my skin with the nub of misshapen soap, until my body squeaked with cleanliness.
I emerged from the bathroom, which smelled of chlorine and antiseptic, to find Rand curled up on the bed, half-asleep. I lay down next to him.
“Baby,” I whispered, “it’s done.”
I felt like an assassin, having cleaned up after that one final job.
Rand’s eyes fluttered open. He looked at me for a long time before he spoke.
“Sweetie?” he asked.
“Yeah?”
“What the fuck.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah.”
And then we went to sleep.
The preceding story should immediately disqualify me from dispelling advice on most topics, and possibly from being allowed to rent a hotel room in the Tri-State area ever again. I can barely dispose of waste in a device whose sole purpose is to do just that. Do not ask me where to stay in New York City. I have no answers to that riddle, which has plagued humanity for so long.
Instead, make your queries about something I can actually answer: feces.
No, wait, no. That’s wrong. Relationships. Ask me about those. Because if you want to know the key to making one work, the solution really is simple. You just need to find someone who will help you deal with your shit.
8
LISTEN TO YOUR HEART, EVEN IF IT TELLS YOU TO STEAL THINGS
OTHERS, WHEN DESCRIBING the alchemy of a happy life, do not speak of poop. They likely do not speak of urine or revenge, either. I don’t do things properly. I’m trying to accept that.
I’ve always had trouble reckoning with my own mistakes, which is unfortunate, given how prone I am to making them.
For examples, please see Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapters 4–7, that time I pierced my belly button, that time I thought Scotland was an island, that time I ate a salad I bought in an airport, that time I went on the Gravitron, every haircut I had between 1988 and 2004, those two years I spent doing hot yoga. The time I purchased those glorious black ankle boots, wore them exactly once so as to render them unreturnable, and then realized they were the wrong size. That time I put the wrong soap in the dishwasher and flooded the kitchen with suds (I lied before when I said it was Rand). The fact that I never once told that boy who lived next door to me in the dorms sophomore year that I thought he was wonderful. The fact that it took me so long to realize that Rand was.
Some of these mistakes haunt me. On sleepless nights, plagued by jet lag, I stare up at the ceiling of my hotel room and replay scenes from my past. I cringe. This is a thoroughly unproductive exercise, and I am the reigning world champion.
I think about the day I screwed up the time of a reservation for a fancy dinner we’d already paid for in Edinburgh. We were supposed to go with our preternaturally laid-back friends Wil and Nora, and I’d spent so much time fretting about the dress code that I got us there three hours late (in my defense, who eats dinner at 4:45?).
Nora shrugged, Wil insisted he wasn’t even hungry, and Rand tried to comfort me as I stood, shockingly overdressed with absolutely no place to go, and struggled not to panic.
All I’ve ever wanted in life is to feel that I knew what the hell I was doing. That I’m in control. And travel offers the exact opposite of that experience. Every trip is just an opportunity to screw up on a grand scale. Every trip is an exercise in handing the reigns over to someone else, or letting them go altogether.
I think, if I were a better person, I’d be more accepting of that fact. I’d be more forgiving of myself and others. I’d have some perspective on the matter and wouldn’t respond to my errors the way I do—which is, generally speaking, with either a panicked freak-out, some weird act of passive-aggressive revenge at whatever other culpable parties I can identify, or both.
And I’m trying to come to terms with that, too. Sometimes, you just need to accept that you aren’t perfect—that you screw up, that you can be petty, that you can be vengeful and small, ideally in a country where your fingerprints aren’t on record.
It’s something I’m still working on. But I’d like to think that I’m making progress.
It was the fall of 2011, just a few short months after the flood of putrescence we narrowly avoided in New York. Rand had a conference in Barcelona that October, and I, still thoroughly unqualified for most fields of employment and content to let my sole houseplant die, went along with him. (RIP, dear peace lily. You never knew the tranquility promised by your name.)
Two of his coworkers—Kenny and Joanna—were with us, and since I liked them and didn’t want word to get out that Rand was, in actuality, married to a hastily shorn ape in skinny jeans, I was determined to be on my best behavior. I wanted to show them I knew what the hell I was doing.
I didn’t actually succeed, mind you, but I tried, and that’s what’s important.
Most of the time, though, I got stressed when speaking with locals and resorted to one of two phrases:
“Dónde está el baño?” (“Where is the bathroom?”) This phrase is not only useful but gives you an opportunity to easily leave whatever conversation you’ve gotten yourself into. The only downside, you’ll soon realize, is that you won’t be able to understand the directions given to you in reply. You will then have to pretend that you weren’t the one who peed in the broom closet.
“Creo que esto fue un error.” (“I think this was a mistake.”) Inexplicably, this phrase (found in the “Nightlife” section of my phrasebook, under the heading “Cooling Down”) remained stuck in my head for much of the trip. I couldn’t ask for a doctor in case of an emergency, but I was totally ready to express regret should I happen to have a one-night stand with a Spaniard.
Fortunately, the mechanics of this particular trip meant that I needed to use very little of my abysmal Spanish. Instead, we took a bus tour and spent the better part of the day gawking at the incredible architecture in the city.
That’s one of the best things about Barcelona: you’ll head down an inconspicuous tree-lined street, and the buildings will all be quite formal and neoclassical until—BOOM—you run into an apartment building designed by Antoni Gaudí that looks like a very elaborate seascape with a giant iguana sleeping on top. Or you’ll find yourself face-to-face with an enormous sculpture by the artist Joan Miró that resembles a half-digested chew toy.
And we tourists will stand and marvel and take photos while the Spanish just shrug it off as if it isn’t a big deal and carry on with their day, heading into office buildings that resemble two giant mating mollusks.
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