Saturday, September 23, 2006
It is amazing the power of perspective. I am tucked away on the outskirts of a teeny village in the south of Belgium. The kind of place you might see in a movie but would never actually find yourself. The village itself is lovely – old stone architecture with small chapels fronting some of the older houses. Just 4 miles from the border of France, it may as well be French instead of Belgian. English is unheard of here and when the young men of the village aren’t mountainboarding or rock climbing they are playing ping pong or getting high on booze or buds. There is not one town drunk; there are several. Unemployment probably rights more support checks to the townsmen than companies. Yet there are also beautiful houses with lovely kept lawns and friendly people who will greet you with a wave and a Bon Jour. The countryside is not stunning in beauty so much as peacefulness. Evergreens cover the rise and fall of hills, sheep graze on the grass of the fields between, a dog’s bark echoes for miles, and in the woods it sounds as if the wind is actually speaking to you. The only interruption to nature’s song is an occasional car. .
I have left the cabin only twice and only for short walks. I thought a solid week with an internet connection would be enough to catch up. It wasn’t. My fingers ache from typing 12-15 hours a day. But for all that is left to do, I have accomplished a lot as well. The only downside here has been that there is no way to bathe. Jero is still renovating the cabin and the shower in the bathroom is still standing in the middle of the bathroom, unattached. I’ve learned it takes just three little days for your own body odor to annoy you. After five days, you are ready to break up with yourself...
So Saturday morning I headed for the mountainboarding park where Jero told me they would let me use the shower. I picked up the key and headed down the hill to the little building behind the playground and adjacent to the mobile park home. I opened the door and was almost knocked over with the smell of mildew. Imagine the worst damp basement smell you can think of then fill the basement with clothes that were forgotten in the washer for a week or two and you might come close to the power of this stench. If it weren’t for the fact I had enough oil in my hair to fill up a quart-low car, I would have turned tail and promised to love myself for better or worse body odor.
I stepped through the door into a small rectangular room. There were puddles of water on the concrete floor which dropped down six inches in the middle of the six foot wide room. At the drop down two partial tile walls separated the shower side from the non shower side. Not that it made a difference since both sides were soaking wet. I set my stuff on the chair across the room, leaving the door open, and then began to look for the light. There was none. Shit. Not only am I going to walk out of here growing mold but sprouting mushrooms as well. I was debating risking a shower with the door open when I spotted the row of candles on the sill above. Okay. A candle lit, mildew shower. Great. Of the 14 candles, only three were dry enough to light. I lit them.
Self-flagellation reared its ugly head. What am I doing??! What am I doing here? Taking a shower in a room that could be deemed a biohazard, after not having showered for a week, in the middle of nowhere, with $100 in my bank account, and no fucking job. I hate that voice in my head – the one that sounds like my mom on a bad day after I made a B on a test. “Oh Jesus Christ Sherry, what do you want, to live at The Hilton? Turn on the fucking shower and shut up.” I love that voice. I call her The Coach – she’s empathetic when something is really wrong and will put me right in place if I’m just whining.
I take off my clothes, hoping there really is only one key to the room, and choose the shower head near the door where the two foot divider wall will at least partially conceal me if someone comes walking into. I pull the chain on the flathead antique shower head above. Nothing happens. Hmmm. It’s cold. I look on the wall. Nothing. Hmmm. I pull the chain above again. Nothing. Then I spot two valves sticking out of the far wall that resemble the garden hose spouts off the back of a house. Okay. I walk across the cold, wet concrete and turn one. Water comes coursing out of the shower by the door at the other end. Within seconds it is hot. Do you know what happens on a rainy day in a cold wet concrete room if you turn on boiling hot water? It looks like someone set off a dry ice bomb. Within seconds I can’t see my own hands for the steam.
Now this is going to be interesting. How do you adjust water temperature with water controls on one side of the room for a shower on the other side of the room when you can’t see your own hands? It took a few minutes but I finally got the temperature adjusted and the steam lessened from being thick enough to cut with a knife to requiring a fork as well. (Okay so the metaphor doesn’t work but I thought it was kind of funny.) I stepped beneath the old shower head gushing water in a way that resembled a bucket of water dumping out more than a shower head. It felt delightful! The steam turned the room into a sauna and the candle light permeated the mist like country streetlights on a foggy night. You could pay a hundred bucks for a sauna-steam-shower-and-facial at a spa! I laughed to myself. It was actually quite lovely. I closed my eyes and drifted into a heavenly reverie that had lasted almost a minute when suddenly it was pierced by a flashback image of Friday the 13th. Didn’t one of the girls get murdered in a steamy camp shower? Didn’t it look just like this one? I leaned out to check the door and caught a glimpse of the scared look on my face. I had to laugh at myself.
I talk a lot about Americans and their inability to see how immersed they are in their own mindset and their lack of awareness much less appreciation for how good they have it. As with that sentence, I generally do so in the third person rather than the first. It suddenly dawned on me how much I had looked at the shower with American eyes. Damn, one third of the world doesn’t even have hot running water, many places don’t even have potable water, and I’m whining because the floors on the non shower side are wet and the room smells like mildew. A trailer home and a few degenerates brings on worries that I might not be safe taking a shower in a public playground. I was probably taking a shower in one of the safest places in the world but because the room wasn’t pretty and clean and tiled and well-lit I felt vulnerable. When did we get so scared of dirt and darkness?
Suddenly the fear and disgust and self-flagellation disappeared. I leaned back again and closed my eyes, inhaling the steam (which actually masked the mildew smell), and luxuriated in the sensation of hot water pouring down my naked body in this candle-lit room in paradise. It was one of the best shower’s I have ever had.
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