Adventures in Bathing, Sitting

Still backlogging:

A few months ago, back in Chicago, I made a list of simple, easily-learnable skills that I clearly should have but lacked. Driving a stick shift was on there. Also knitting, using a sewing machine, whistling really loud through my fingers, double-dutch jump rope, and a few others. I've been making slow progress down the list since then, trying to beef up my pitiable practical skill set.

It was revealed to me this morning that this skill set might be even more feeble than previously realized. I had noted yesterday upon checking in that my room's bathroom featured the dreaded squat toilet, which seems to me to require yoga master levels of balance. What I had not noted, however, was that the hotel lacked any sort of running water. This fact was cleverly concealed by the presence of three taps in the bathroom, which I will kindly assume were placed in anticipation of future running water rather than simply to mislead visitors.

So then, this morning, I was posed with the question of how, exactly, to get clean. (Or at least acceptably close.) I faced an array of three buckets of water. Buckets 1 and 3 had been sitting out since my arrival the previous day and contained chilly, early-morning temperature water. They were different sizes - 3 was bigger, with a wider brim - and seemed to have been carefully positioned. Clearly there was some obvious method implied here that was completely unknown to me. Bucket 2 had arrived this morning outside my door, full of recently boiled water and still steaming as it sat in front of me on the tiled floor. Also present was a mini bucket with a pour handle, about the size of a sandcastle mold that kids use on the beach.

Obviously the time for asking for some sort of guidance had long since passed. Not only was I not going to ask my 65-year old male coworker for advice, but the very need to ask for guidance was embarassing. People had done this for centuries. How could I not know? So consarnit, I would figure it out. I am 26 years old. This couldn't be that hard.

But I didn't even know where to start. Was either bucket 1 or 3 waste water? Was I supposed to actually stand in bucket 3, the wider one positioned almost exactly beneath the non-functional showerhead? Did my lack of washcloth hinder me, or was one not actually necessary? Did I really have to choose between chilly water or scalding water, or could I mix them? If so, how? I tried dipping a corner of my towel into bucket 2 and dabbing rather ineffectually at myself, but the water was still so hot that my body dried in the time it took the towel to cool between dabs.

I hadn't felt this incompetent in a long time, possibly since I had to ask my roommate Adrienne how to boil eggs when I first moved to DC. Between the toilet and the bathing, this bathroom was nothing but a series of blows to my ego (and hygiene). I eventually gave up on the hot water and turned to bucket 3, thinking that perhaps I could just splash the cold water onto myself, soap up, and resplash. That seemed like it'd be quite a mess, but I reminded myself there was a drain in the bathroom floor - clearly some sort of mess was expected.

Using my patented Splash Method, I managed to get my arms and legs "cleaned" and moved onto the problem of my hair. I decided to cut the hot water a bit by adding mini-bucketfuls of cold water, making bucket 2 tolerable, and positioned myself for head dunking. As I hunched there to dip my head into the bucket, naked and upside down, I thought of how glad I was that the bathroom door at least had a lock.

Hair wetting and shampooing went fine, but rinsing was a failure - turns out it you can't really desoap by dipping hair into already soapy water. Finally, I just grabbed the minibucket, filled it with hot water and dumped the whole thing over my head. This, I can tell you, felt awesome. I emptied the whole of bucket 2 this way, giving myself a sort of uneven hot shower, and I suspect this is what I was supposed to do all along. C'est la vie. I'm not sure how clean I actually ended up, but at least I was warm and vaguely presentable, with dignity mostly intact.

Adventure!