By Benjamin Kissell
What makes a Gay Heart Weep like an Extrme Home Makeover candidate with [closet-case] Ty Pennington's arms wrapped around his shoulders? Why, it's the need for home rennovation or repair - simple words which can strike a cold, dread fear into a Gay Heart's ... uhm, gay heart.
Now, don't get me wrong - many a Gay Heart is more than proficient in working power tools [outside of the bedroom at that] - but, we ALL know that any home repair project will take 2-10 times longer than estimated and make everyone involved suffer like a Rebecca Black music video [and if you don't get that reference, be oh-so-very glad].
After my adventures with the Panic[bath]Room in LA, you'd think I'd have had my fill of bathroom hi-jinks. Which is why this completely caught me off-guard yesterday morning.
........................
Still groggy [read: late night with editing and reading british chick lit with a Guinness chaser], I shuffle into my shared bathroom - my roommate's cat nipping at my fuzzy-pink house slippers - at an unGodly hour [okay, so it was 9am, potato/po-tah-to] still in my pajamas. Exhausted, the 3 foot walk from my bedroom door to the bathroom door is interminable.
With the cat solidly placing herself on my foot - belly up, demanding love and rubs - I nudge the door open and am greeted by the softly filtered light through the blinds. My morning ablutions wait for no man and soon I am sitting on the [closed, I'm not that crass] toilet letting my morning face-wash clear my pores when I hear a strange sound ...
#plunk
This piques my interest, but not enough to open my eyes. Soon, it is joined by a second and third ...
#plunk - plunk
By the time I'm washing my face-wash off in the sink the quiet plunk has almost started its own band. I pop open my eyes ... and see nothing amiss. Reaching for the handtowel I dry myself off and tilt my head backwards.
#plunk-thunk-blecht-FUCK
That? Was the sound of a steady stream of water pouring straight down in a series of "small" drips on my face from THE CEILING. Ceiling water in a bathroom translates to toilet-pipe water. Toilet-pipe water just fell all over my Just. Washed. Face.
Repressing the urge to scream [in a totally butch and manly way, of course], run and hide under the covers muttering "PlagueAin'tGonnaGetMe", I frantically wash my face in the sink until my face is sore - I shall be clean.
Washing my face almost-raw, I'm trembling with unease. Looking in the mirror, my eye catches onto something: what appears to be a large bubble directly over the shower-curtain bar.
Slowly, I turn. [Cue the horror-movie theme music.]
The bubble? Is the bowed-out drop-ceiling tile.
Being the smart, college-educated and well-read person brimming with common-sense I do what anyone with 2 functioning brain-cells wouldn't do ... I poke it with my fingertip.
The ensuing deluge of toilet-pipe-water streaming down and loud string of expletives were seen coming by anyone-other-than-me a mile away.
The next hour found me scoured [again], dressed nicely and calmly down at the apartment complex' main office where I politely [I know, I'm surprised, too] told the owners about my little "bathroom ceiling troubles". Being the efficient and on-the-ball people that they are [I'm not being sarcastic, for once] they promise to deal with it and by the time I got home from my erranding, I was greeted by this:
They promise the job (something to do with replacing 3 major pipes) will be done in 2-4 days. Who's betting on 2-4 weeks?