April Shower

This April, I hope, I am going to have a new shower.

I moved into my used house a year ago, knowing that it had been an abandoned wreck for some time. When I bought it, the ceiling was falling in, the roof needed repairing, the paint had all worn off, the floors and walls were a mess.

Once a family vacation home it had fallen into disrepair when it became a rental and all of the value was sucked out, in the form of rent, by disinterested descendants. Finally, it was no longer habitable and this humble little home was left to decay in the elements.

When, after some years, sitting vacant, it went on the market, I bought it. It was in a sad state, but it rests on a really fine five-acre parcel with a seasonal watercourse and mature trees in the riparian zone -- and it was cheap.

Anyway it was a wreck. So new ceilings, new paint, new roof, new floors, new doors and windows, new walls. I ran out of money before I got to the bathroom, which was functional. Anyway, I have a vision for this shower and I needed to find the craftsman who had the time and the proper artistic sensibility, not an easy chore out here in Green Acres.

But finally I found him, a gay man just the age of my son. I got a little money together and now I am in the process of fulfilling part of my great femme dream. I am getting the shower I have dreamed of for twenty years. Lots of people, of course, get a new shower, but not many need one as desperately as I needed one. Let me explain.

The archeology of the scene we uncovered showed that to accommodate the existing bathtub drain someone had installed a new tub atop a raised platform; getting in and out of it was a high hurdle act. Worse than that, the siding on the house had been broken when someone tried to insulate the water pump; pack rats had found a way into the house in the break and had been living for generations under the bathtub.

For a year I had been sleeping with the radio on to drown out the sound of the rats gnawing at the platform at night. I slept poorly even though I believed there was no danger that the rats would gain entry to my living space.

The smell of the bathroom and the sound of the gnawing sickened and horrified me.Work started and on the second day the tub was pulled up. After years of bucolic serenity for those rats, their seventy-pound nest was exposed to the light of day. The stench nearly caused me to pass out and my contractor scrubbed the floor on his hands and knees like a Saint of the Highest Order.

Half a day, three pounds of oxygen, and a quart of bleach later, the three by five-foot space under the tub was scrubbed clean. Next, fifty years of bathroom linoleum was removed and the whole concrete slab floor was laid bare and disinfected. Then came the coat of sealant, designed to encapsulate whatever foul odour might still remain below the level where product could reach.

The job is now slightly stalled out. (New York is where I'd rather stay.) The plumber, who suffers from severe brain damage had a bad spell and wrecked the main shower valve. (I get allergic smelling hay.) A three-hour round trip to the nearest supplier was required to replace it so the work could continue. (I just adore a penthouse view.) In the meantime I have had to learn how to plumb and solder to get the work done. (Darling, I love you but give me Park Avenue.)

With luck the job will only take a few more days. I can bathe in a bucket for a while more. But whatever the outcome, I will be okay because the rats' nest is gone for good and the siding has been repaired with a sheet metal underlay; they will never return in my lifetime. Despite the image my boi put in my head about this little rat family, bindlestiffs over their shoulders, wandering aimlessly looking for a new home and I am sleeping much better these nights. Good luck, little guys!!