As some of you know, I live in the wing of a former student housing facility that is no longer used as a dorm. It is now used as a conference center/hotel for the university. A given number of rooms are set aside for random people to rent out on a regular basis. I enjoy this particular housing arrangement because it is extremely cheap, conveniently close to school and I need not deal with a roommate.
There are certain quirks about living in such a place, though.
Take, for instance, the bathrooms. There is no bathroom in the individual rooms, so you have to use the communal ones at the end of the hall. Just like a dorm.
Given my in-built disposition toward germophobia, I’m actually surprised how much this arrangement does not bother me. I always have high-pressure hot water and the facilities are cleaned on a daily basis. Plus…they have hand dryers! My public bathroom credo is: the less I touch, the better.
However…there is one trend that disturbs me.
I like to think that I’m not one given to basing my perceptions of groups of people upon stereotypes. Stereotypes have their good and bad aspects, but I try not to go into social situations assuming that someone is going to act a certain way based on certain characteristics. That said, I think women may be onto something when they indict men for not flushing the toilet.
Let me state this clearly: flush the toilet. Just flush the fucking toilet.
I’ll even give you the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps you’re like me…maybe you’re saying, "Boo…I want to flush the toilet, but that means I have to touch one more thing in a public restroom. That’s yucky."
I hear you brother! I hear your voice loud and clear, crying out from the wilderness! I feel your pain. That’s why I would like to introduce you to a lovely instrument called…the foot. I cannot remember the last time I have touched the plunger lever on a toilet with my bare hand. I’m proud of that. I’m even prouder of the fact that I flush the fucking toilet every time I use it.
Just flush the toilet. There’s no reason I should have to walk into the bathroom and screen the toilets for the one that looks the least disgusting. Maybe some people just find their piss and excrement pretty – I don’t know. But if that’s the case, they should just keep it in a jar in their own damn room. I don’t care if you’re doing some kind of turd fermentation experiment. Do it in your own room and let me know if you happen upon anything interesting. Just flush the goddamn, blessed toilet.
This trend has gotten so bad on my floor that management has deemed it necessary to mount a sign on the outside of the toilet stalls that says, "PLEASE FLUSH TOILET AFTER EVERY USE." I would have perhaps chosen, "FLUSH, YOU STUPID FUCKER!"
Another oddity of my residence is the people who live around me. They’re very quiet, and for the most part, this is good. I love the fact that I never have to worry about being disturbed at inappropriate times. They could, however, work on saying hi.
When leaving or approaching my room, one has to walk down a long, narrow corridor. If you pass someone in the hall, you come within 3 inches of him. Maybe this is just my insecurity speaking, but I think a person should at least be able to work out a head nod in this instance. At least that way I know you’re not just operating on a brain stem or you’re a zombie or something. I’m not asking you to blow me.
The truth is, it wouldn’t bug me so much except for the fact that there is one person on my floor who seems to be on a mission to simply ignore me when I pass him in the hallway. It’s not like he averts his gaze down or sideways or anything, he simply stares straight ahead and doesn’t acknowledge anyone is there. In a word…prick.
There is an African resident – and by African I don’t mean African-American, I mean he’s right from Africa – who is very friendly and smiles and says hi every time I see him. Apparently, I’m as much a foreigner to these parts as he is because neither of us has learned that we’re supposed to be aloof assholes like some of the other people who live in the building.
Then there are people who are just a bit daft. Enter the Drunken Master. The Drunken Master is a mysterious little Asian man who lives at the end of my hallway. He’s mysterious because I don’t seem him very often. He’s the Drunken Master because every time I do seem him he either looks like he’s suffering from the world’s worst hangover or he’s been locked in a sense-dep chamber for the last 24 hours. Any sighting I have of him usually takes place between the door to his room and the bathroom. If I were to exclude conjecture and go solely by my experiences, I would have to assume he never leaves the floor on which we live. When I do see him, his graying hair is disheveled, he has a five-o’clock shadow and he’s typically wearing some bizarre, mis-matched out fit like a windbreaker with assorted pastel colors and a pair of blue sweat pants. He just sort of hobbles about in an less-than-focused, slightly confused manner. And this is what he looks like every time I see him.
In any case, I’ve come to think of him as the mascot of the residence hall. His style is just as motley as the people who live here. He stays in his room and works on finding a chemically-paved road to nirvana. I imagine he moved in here years ago and so many people didn’t give him the common courtesy of a greeting that he just stopped existing in the eyes of most of the residents. Management forgot he was here. Only my African friend and I can see him.
