Tasty tincture of tepid tumescence.

Last night I came home to find that my roommate had invited several of his close friends over to watch something police-related and eat pizza and get [sorta] smashed. They looked fairly underwhelmed by the entire experience; perhaps it was because of the cheap beer coursing through their veins, but it's probably because we don't have the world's most exciting apartment.

Or so I thought.

Now, I'm not an intellectual sadist. I'd like to think that I am not elitist. Hell, there are very few words that end in -ist that I think describe me. [rapist! communist! purist! tourist!] With that having been said, the moment I saw my roommate and his friends moments away from picking nits out of each other's hair with yet another inane police drama blaring on the Stonehenge-sized television my roommate propped up in the living room a la a Hindu altar, thankfully bereft of the flowers and the gallons of ghee, I hastened to my room with only a cursory look back. [pillar of salt!]

Of course, since our living room is the size of a Good N' Plenty box, that meant that I had to dodge the TV trays, the empty pizza boxes filled with rapidly cementing cheese and the very limbs of the attendees. I greeted all of them by name and fled to the Boy Cave, where, once I was safely ensconsed, I put something that would make me not want to kill (again) into my computer's CD player. Shortly after I flung my weary carcass onto my bed for a moment of rest, there came a knock.

Taptaptaptaptap.

I sat up a little too quickly; as the blood sang through my ears, I realized that the knock wasn't on my door. It was on my bathroom door.

Now:

As you are all [now] aware, I have issues with bathrooms. My bathroom is my refuge, the place where I can be as animal as I need to be, and the thing that makes it delightful is that it is my own-- y'hear? my own! -- for Tony has his own as well. When I am in there, I do what I wan'. Needless to say, unless you are my friend, family, or someone I am lovin' on, you don't belong in my bathroom.

The issue at hand:

Tony's bathroom contains the mouldering skeletons of those who've attempted to use it. On one hand, there's a "good" reason for it; nay, two reasons: come to think of it, three.

1) Tony has no colon. No, I am not joking. He had colon cancer and had to have it and much of his large intestine removed.

2) Tony is a boy.

3) Tony is a boy who was raised by a very fundamentalist Christian mother as an only child.

So you can imagine what his toilet looks like. Come to think of it, don't. You might want to eat again someday.

Now:

Since Tony's friends have a b-b of intelligence rolling around in the tuna-cans they have embedded in their heads, they avoid his bathroom as one might avoid consuming a putrid flea-ridden marmot whilst frolicking in Mongolia [Black Death!] Naturally, when Nature (bitch!) calls upon them, they answer her call in my bathroom. When I feel that Tony might have guests, I always close my bathroom door as a passive-aggressive sign from me that hey, you should clean your mothertouching bathroom so that YOUR guests can use YOUR effing bathroom; I'll lend you my flamethrower and machete, if need be.

Thus, the knock. The male guest thought that someone was in there, and he was right: my shower-monkey was watching him the whole time with beady, black painted eyes. But no, there were no humans to speak of in there.

The door closes.

*Sounds emanate*

Well, I have to give him this: he washed his hands. Anyway, he comes out and he says to Tony:

"Wow, your roommate's weird."

{!!!!!!}

Uh... what? What...the...eff...? He continued; apparently the look on Tony's face begged further explanation.

"He has an upside-down pink Virgin Mary nightlight and Hanukkah towels. Is he religious?"

I think Tony and I both stifled giggles at the same time. Tony, because he, too, thinks I am weird; I, because I was imagining what his friend might say if he were to come into my room.

" Does your roommate worship Kali, Ganesh, Durga, Shiva, Lakhsmi, the Buddha, Waheguru, Confucius, Allah, Poseidon, Athena, the Great Spirit, Quetzalcoatl and his ancestors?"

I just happen to have a mildly Judeo-Christian bathroom, that's all.

Oh, and in case you were wondering: the Virgin Mary nightlight? She's upside-down because the sockets in my bathroom are upside-down, and that's the only way that the prongs will fit in. Not a statement. [But oooh, what a statement, if I were!]

*sulfur*

I remain, as always,

Dom