My Cold-Water Flat

The plumbing situation in my apartment has always been a little on the what-you'd-call iffy side. I didn't realize it at first. Everything was just fine for the first several months after I moved in. When that first impenetrable clog hit the kitchen sink, though, that's when I found out that things weren't exactly as they should be. I tried everything?plungers, crystals, liquid drain cleaners, then (stupidly) more plungers. I finally had to call a plumber.

When he bent down to take a look at the situation under the sink, he said, "Jesus Christ!"

"What?"

"Did you do this?"

"Do what?"

"Install these pipes."

I guess I must've laughed a little too loudly at that one, then went over and took a look myself. It was a veritable mazework of pipage under there?pipes twisting and turning back on themselves, knotted up in strange, almost non-Euclidean ways.

"Well, I'll be," I said. "Would you look at that."

My landlord at the time, see, was a wonderful, dear old man?I liked him very much?but he perhaps too often insisted on being a do-it-yourselfer. And he insisted on doing-it-himself with whatever old spare parts he could find lying around handy in the basement. In this case, it was apparently a big ol' cardboard box full of random pipe fittings of all shapes and sizes. It seems he installed the pipes under the sink by reaching into the box, grabbing a random length of pipe and screwing it in. Then he'd grab another piece, and screw that one into the first one. The fact that he could make the whole thing eventually twist around to connect with the faucet is itself, I guess, a feat of some magnitude.

After some tapping around with his wrench (and plenty of grumbling), the plumber found the location of the clog, and unscrewed the pipe. When he did so, of course, all the lye and Drano and Liquid-Plumr I'd poured down the drain came splashing out all over his hands. Then he began screaming and jumping around the kitchen.

It was quite a sight.

He fixed things, though, cleaned out the pipe, and replaced it, telling me that I shouldn't use those drain cleaners ever again. What's more, I shouldn't use dishwashing liquid or soap of any kind, either. "It really messes everything up," he told me.

"Okay," I said.

In the years following The Clog That Started It All, I've been plagued by a series of minor plumbing difficulties. The sink'll clog up every few weeks, the hot water will disappear for days at a time. Nothing I couldn't handle with a couple plungers or a quick call to the landlord.

A few weeks ago, however, something funny started happening. Something unlike anything I'd ever seen there before.

For some time, the hot water situation was a questionable one. It'd be there in the morning, but it just wouldn't last very long before the heat went out of it. Most of my time in the shower was spent making minute adjustments to the hot and cold faucets, trying to keep the balance I was looking for. I'd eventually always have to shut the cold water off completely, and then hurry.

Then quite suddenly and surprisingly one morning, something happened. While I could get all the cold water I wanted, when I turned the hot water handle in the shower, all I'd get was a slow, cool trickle. I have three faucets in my apartment, and the same held true for all three of them.

I decided to skip showering that first morning, and called my landlord that afternoon. Thing was, I found out, that neither the apartment above me nor the one below me was affected by this peculiar hot water strangulation. Everything in those other apartments was all hunky-dory. It was just mine. Nobody seemed really sure what to do in a case like that.

Nothing had changed by the time I got home that night, so I went to bed feeling sticky, and smelling a little rank.

Things hadn't changed the following morning (I always expect things to fix themselves while I'm asleep, somehow), so that afternoon, I took a shower over at Morgan's apartment. Talking to my landlord again, it seemed that the problem had finally spread to my neighbors. I was glad to hear that?not because I thought my neighbors deserved cold showers any more than I did, but rather because it meant I wasn't just being a crank. The problem, I was told, had to do with the fact that the city was doing work on the water mains some seven, eight blocks down the street. When the water was shut down, the water guys told my landlord, all the soot and silt and crud normally carried along by the flow settles to the bottom of the pipes, and when the water comes back on, this now-settled soot gets picked up again, and quickly clogs the filters inside all the faucets of all the homes in the area.

It sounded like a water department crock to me?I'd never heard such a thing before. But there you have it.

Not being blessed with the abilities that would allow me to dismantle my three faucets, clean out their filters, screw everything back together again and expect them to work without some sort of terrible disaster ensuing, I let things be and continued to hope that the problem?whatever it was?would simply fix itself. I even learned how to take two-minute cold showers in the morning without too much screaming. Every morning, I had my own personal "Bath of Surprise." ("It'll open your eyes!" as the old Pain Amplifiers song went.)

After a few more days, the landlord told me a handyman would stop by and take care of everything. That was great news. Of course?as should have been expected?15 minutes before he showed up, I tried the faucet to make sure nothing had changed. The hot water blasted out at full force. I was filled at once with joy and shame.

I met him outside and told him everything seemed to be fine?there was no need to trouble himself with tromping upstairs and doing all that work for nothing. Whatever the problem was, it had fixed itself.

After he went away, I tried the faucet again, just because it filled me with such relief.

All I got was a slow, cool trickle.

(This is part of the reason why I don't believe in God.)

Well, now, of course I can't call the landlord again?not after I sent the handyman away without doing anything.

Ahh, fuck all.

By this time, I'd pretty much decided that the only thing to do was deal with it. I could twist and contort my body under the shower, do much of my bathing in the sink. Wear more deodorant. That's what Europeans do, isn't it? So I lived in a cold water flat now. Lots of people do, and they get by just fine.

By the time the announcement came that we were in a drought emergency, and the Mayor was expecting us all to cut back on our water use wherever we could, well, I figured I was already doing more than my share.

For another three weeks this went on. Showers used to be one of the high points of my day. I used to do all my best thinking in the shower. Now I'd have to be content with doing my best thinking while giving myself a cold sponge bath over the sink. The quality of my thinking began to deteriorate rapidly.

Then one night, as I was sitting on the edge of the tub, brushing my teeth, preparing for bed, I leaned over and idly flipped the hot water faucet in the tub. I did it every night, just to check things out. The water roared out of the pipes in a way I'd never seen it do before. I put my hand beneath it, then snapped it away?it was hot. And it wasn't fading to a trickle?it was staying that way!

I felt a light, giddy, laughter begin to bubble in my stomach.

I turned on the shower and climbed beneath the hot spray. I stood there for a while, trembling with joy, giggling and weeping all at once. It was back. The water was back. And soon?yes soon!?I would be clean again. Christ, I felt like a gypsy.