5/10/2014

My room has a nice view of the street, of a gorgeous old church and an always-occupied basketball court.  This is nicer than a view of the six feet separating our building from the next one over or the barbed-wire fenced courtyard, but there is a price to be paid for this luxury:  In order to see if the bathroom is available, I have to walk through the kitchen and peer down the hallway.  These six steps have caused nothing but trouble.  For while I am usually pretty good about social situations--I have no problem calling takeout, for example, and can ask for directions unashamedly--I am sometimes irrationally shy, and this type of journey is exactly what sets that anxiety off.  

Now, most of the time, this is no problem at all.  There’s no one in the kitchen and the bathroom door is open and I can complete the circuit without having to perform for anyone.  But I find myself inventing all sorts of other reasons that I might need to leave my room anyway, just in case someone is in the kitchen and sees me turn around after the bad news of the occupied bathroom is discovered.  It is safe to say that I have done more than my fair share of dishes--the sink being a beautiful place to stand and wait for that glorious sound of the humidity-swelled bathroom door thunking open.  (The last few bites of cereal take an exorbitant amount of time for the same reason.)

But the journey truly can be treacherous.  Wearing my short shorts and t-shirt and needing desperately to pee and to shower, I was confronted by a roommate whose name I don’t think I’ve forgotten, I think I never knew it to begin with.  “Sean,” she said, “do you have an iPhone 5?” --she needed to borrow a cable.  I was happy to lend it to her, but less happy to realize I’d forgotten to come up with a plan for retrieving it.  This would have been relatively simple if I knew her name--to any of the roommates, I could ask, “Hey, have you seen Anna?” or “Do you know if Catherine is around?”  But you know how it goes.  Instead, I had to hope I would bump into her on my way to the bathroom while my phone’s battery hurdled toward zero--the same path the got me into this mess was my only route of it.