I Dont Wanna Go Potty

…..this entry is not for the squeamish or anyone in the middle of their lunch……

I just had several harrowing days trying to deal with the communal bathroom. I'm not a picky person when it comes to that sort of thing. You give me a hole and a target sign and I'm good to go. I've lived with all kinds of shared bathrooms: college dorms, hostels, camp sites, bushes, litter boxes, etc... No big deal....until now.

I didnt think it would bother me (that faint constant urine odor in the hallway). But eventually it started driving me nuts. Not to mention every time I would open the bathroom door, I would get hit in the face with a cloud of organically generated ammonia and mental images of how a bathroom could be driven to smell THAT bad within hours of being cleaned.

I used the good smelling bathrooms on the 4th and 1st floor and figured walking a couple of flights was an acceptable trade off.

Then on Friday night I heard a woman screaming about something in the hallway. When I awoke on Saturday morning, my two clean potty alternatives were locked! Oh the horror!

I decided I wasn’t going to let the potty win! I began with chlorine tablets which freshened up the hallway, but left the bathroom still largely gross. I was undeterred. I bought handy wipes and would just do whatever necessary. Then horror of horrors! I went in with my little handy wipes and began wiping down the seat when some dark streaks on the back of the toilet seat started coming off. Through what contortion magic can you possibly leave thin poopy streaks on the back of the toilet?!

KO. It was official. The potty had finally won.

I decided that on Monday I would call the super and tell him to either get me a key to the first floor bathroom or I was calling the health department.

On Sunday morning as I made the long and painful 6 foot journey from my apartment to the stinky bathroom, my fabulously gay neighbor stopped me and asked if I want to use “our” bathroom. What?! What?! What?! Our bathroom?! “Yes, but you have to keep it clean and locked”. I was so overjoyed, I had to restrain myself from humping his leg. He then opened the door to what I thought had been a storage closet leading the way to a wondrous and odorless potty world with fashion magazines, a decorative vase and a little mirrored cabinet. This must be what Alice in Wonderland must have felt like.