AMERICAN STANDARD SIZE TUBS SUCK or: HOW I ALMOST DIDN'T SURVIVE MY BATH
(Quick CW: minor mention of blood and very minor injury, some description of depression/anxiety)
Okay strap yourselves in for this one:
It’s 0500 or 5am. I had just spent the last 12 hours in some sleep fugue state from some medication issues trying to get my brain back on track. Nevermind the extremely vivid dreams that included training to be a samurai in some dude’s house, stealing slushies from some labyrinthine cafeteria/buffet in the underground of a hotel, flying with my arms and meeting the cast of Good Omens (I still have yet to watch it yet), and trying to contact Lupin III for help while a family laughs at me for failure to eat some rapidly melting chocolate cup thing; (And those are just the ones I remember) my body feels like it just got run over a dozen times.
As I'm debating if consciousness is really worth it at this moment, my adorable cat Truffles decides that she is insulted that I ignored her all day by sleeping and wants my attention right MEOW. I'm too sluggish to want to move, so she gives me a defiant nip and runs off. Ouch.
(she's lucky she's so darn cute)
So I haul myself out of bed to make sure she has food and water and immediately bash my toe on my chair, partially breaking my nail.
Double ouch!
So by the time I'm done helping her, it's understandable that I am dizzy, shaky, my mind is still foggy, I'm in pain, am ravenously hungry and dehydrated, and completely resenting my existence at this moment. I almost just give up right there and toss my carcass back into bed, but thirst drives me to throw on my robes and shamble out of my room like the crypid I am.
(Mothman has nothing on me)
I get some water from the kitchen and debate if I want to warm up the food my BFF got for me while I was dead to the world, or if I just want to shuffle back to bed and ignore life for a few more hours. However, I've also just spent the last 12 or so hours sweating intermittently in bed. (my temp goes even more haywire when I'm having med issues) No matter what I end up doing, I really want to wash up. I still feel pretty miserable, but I know it'll be worse until I'm at least clean.
I debate a shower when the sudden idea of a bath springs into my mind unbidden. I haven't had a bath for years. I consider it when depression decides to try to rear its ugly head. I remember clumsy past baths, body image issues, etc. I almost give up entirely right here.
No! I grit my teeth and fight it. I have extremely bad depression and anxiety as of late but I know if I let it constantly win at all the small things, how can I get back on my feet with the big things?
Bath time it is.
So first of all, my BFF is asleep. Her door is just one away from the bathroom and while she has the weekend off and is usually good once asleep, I don't want to wake her up. That means pulling both her door mostly closed as well as the bathroom door mostly closed and hoping it won't be too loud. (Only partially because her cats need to reach their litterbox or food in different rooms, and Truffles will want to make sure I'm still alive with all that water noise.) Her husband and our other roomate are awake downstairs, so I don't need to worry about them.
I take some medicine for my headache, put bactine on my bite and toe and start up the bath. While it's filling, I go back to the kitchen to get water and the BAWLS energy drink I got earlier. (Probably not the best to do on an empty stomach, but whatever.)
(I love joking about the fact I have to get two every time we go grocery shopping because I am very mature)
I even remembered to get a plastic cup from the kitchen to wash my hair with! (I was proud of remembering this detail) Back to the bedroom to get my phone so I can relax and watch Youtube or read some fan fic and I hustle back to the tub.
Remember the title?
I just needed to set the stage first, right? Things had been rough for the little bit I had been conscious. And here I was, about to settle in and feel accomplished.
I sort of did at first even. Climbing in, I managed to find a decent bit of water to soak in. Most baths really don't fit me (more on that in a bit), but it was alright, and I was prepared to enjoy it anyway.
This is what a typical bathtub looks like here, though most I've seen have a slant in the back for "resting" though I have no idea why they bother. Perfect for a kid, and I'm sure some people can fit alright in these. I, however, cannot.
Look up tubs online and you will see some of the most magical things out there. Massive jacuzzi tubs, couples tubs with bubblers, beautiful giant tubs that look like they were carved out of stone, or super high tech looking ones with lights all over.
If I ever can save up enough money in my life, I am getting a nice tub, or at least a nice soaking tub.
Now I know that I am a larger gentleman, and that certainly doesn't help, but I can barely sit with my legs folded and I've never had a bath actually cover my whole body, or even most of it. More than anything, they feel like convenient driptrays for showers. They are also terrible at heat retention! (This is extra irritating since many studies have shown that hot soaks serve so many health benefits, it's not even funny) So if you want your water to stay warm for any length of time, you better crank that dial up so that you can cook for a while until it's something more pleasant. (I know I'm a little bit of a heat baby, but it's worse when half of you is boiling and the other half is freezing) And I'm not just talking a little bit warm, I'm talking let's try to resemble a sulfur pool (not the nice spa resort ones), or just cut straight to volcanic lava.
(hey at least I'd know I'd fit here!)
A lot of tongue and cheek, and a hefty bit of complaining was really to add emphasis to what happened only about 5 minutes into the bath.
The water was already growing cold.
Now part of this was totally my fault. It'd been so long since I'd last had a bath I forgot how fast it cooled. So when I set what was pretty warm to me for a shower, I was inviting disaster. It didn't help that I forgot to bring in a different kind of soap, so I was stuck in lukewarm water with little chunks of moisturizing, exfoliating soap faeries and two little blood clot faeries from the noosebleed I had, had right before I entered. Not at all the relaxing bubblebath I was planning on.
But this could be fixed! A quick drain and I could refill and grab a different soap!
So I shuffle painstakingly slowly so as to not accidentally soak the entire bathroom floor and discover that I am just a bit too chubby to completely reach the drain easily. Ahh well, I'll just get out and do it that way!
Then I realize I have no idea how to haul my handsome flub out of this tub. The next couple minutes are spent in what had to be the most hilarious slow-motion (can't flood the room!) gymnastics in which I contorted every which way and slowly filled with dread that I might need to call for help. The prospect was not just humiliating, it meant calling my BFF out of sleep, or texting the husband downstairs. I'm a trans man so while I know none of them would be rude, this was going to be awkward at best.
(actual footage of me contemplating my impending doom)
However, I was filled with great determination and managed to haul myself onto my knees with only the tiniest bit of splashing and was able to shuffle around to face the drain. Now able to reach it much more comfortably, I turned to pull it open.
Nothing happened.
Okay, maybe I just forgot which way I had turned it and it was more complicated than just pulling. I know shower dials are complicated affairs, so maybe this was similar.
Nothing happened again.
I tried turning all over, I tried yanking, I tried turning /and/ yanking, I tried thinking at it very strongly and tried yanking even harder!
Again nothing happened. My headache was returning...
I began to feel a sense of exhaustion and despair. I tried again and again and started to berate myself internally for even trying a bath. For five minutes of lukewarm soaking, I was now tired from my water ballet, sore, still not clean yet, (I forgot it's best to kind of shower first then soak when you're less grungy) and I was facing a half full tub while hungry and cranky.
I couldn't be on my knees any longer since they were getting to cramped. I had to perch on the edge of the tub and kept at it for another ten or so minutes. At a few points I swore I could see a little space under the drain head, so I figured that maybe it was just very slow and I marked an old scar on my leg to compare water level by and waited.
Still. Friggin'. Nothing.
I had a headache, was hungry, still slightly out of it from my day of recovery sleep, and was feeling pretty miserable at this point. I tried looking up some solutions on my phone. Oh! Maybe it was clogged! One guide recommended using a plunger. Welp, if I used that I certainly needed to be out. I tried the plunger a few times and nothing changed. Or rather one thing had! The water was now absolutely gross between the soap, blood, and now possibly some remnants of plunger waste. So if I was going to ask for help, I needed to get some of that water out so they didn't have to touch so much of it.
So I slap on my robes, shuffle out grumbling under my breath and found a big enough plastic tub to help. I shuffle back, heaving the quietest of heavy sighs (my roomate is still asleep), and I start scooping out the water into the toilet for the next 5 or so minutes.
Sweating, exhausted, I finally message the husband on discord and ask him if there's some magical trick to this tub. He admits it had been ages since he'd last used it as a tub and says he'll be right up.
(Oh you hellish little monster)
Husband arrives and starts trying everything I did. I may not have the greatest upper body strength, but it quickly proves that strength isn't the issue. He chuckles and says that he remembers having an issue like this when he attempted a bath about a year ago and had simply avoided baths in this tub ever since. Finally he asks for a butter knife from the kitchen and we strike up chatter while he pries.
"I had headphones on so I couldn't hear anything specific, but I kept hearing all these thuds upstairs." He chuckled. "I knew it wasn't from the kitchen and it didn't just sound like footsteps so I was beginning to wonder if you were okay."
I couldn't help but laugh at that. The idea of me flopping around like a seal out of water and then the dozen or so times the toilet automatically flushed as I poured water into it must have sounded quite confusing. Now we've both worked overnights, so the time wasn't that odd to us. But I've tried to stick to more daytime-ish living to make sure I didn't wake my BFF, could spend more time with people, and generally didn't try to tromple all over the house. He adds that American bathtubs just suck and I agree wholeheartedly with him.
And then, the sweetest music came to us. An unmistakable sound.
DRAINING WATER
Turns out the little plastic or rubbery rim of the drain cap had become hyper sealed to the bottom part. It was starting to lift, yes. But the water pressure was so powerful, it was preventing anything from going down the drain and additionally not allowing it up high enough to change the pressure so it /could/ drain. I don't know all the science, or even all the right words to use. But the fact is, it worked and the tub finally fucking drained.
We shared a laugh and he told me not to worry about it, that it was definitely something up with the drain and nothing I had done. (I think maybe I accidentally made it worse with the plunger, but I'm not sure and the problem was at least there before it) I thanked him, he headed out to wash and get back to gaming and I finally had a working drain.
So I took a fucking shower.
Struck by how amusing this ultimately was in retrospect and needing to sit for a few before I thought about food, I decided that I needed to write out this story so I could just link it to friends and let them laugh with me. At least that would soothe my frustration.
Just for good measure, I had a much better intro, but Tumblr erased it all somehow while I tried to move the window and I had to start all over.
TLDR: American standard sized bathtubs suck, medication snafus / depression / anxiety sucks, and butter knives are the heroes of the day.
I give you the hero of today, my good people
