12:35 pm genoa

My shower has not been draining properly. In fact, it has hardly been draining at all – for the last week I’ve been practically up to my ankles in water before the water even gets hot. Today, matters reached a tipping point, when I could no longer take it.

“But, what did you do?” I hear you ask. I did what any contemporary American would do – I decided to call and complain. No sooner had I made this decision, though, than I thought better of it and decided to solve my problem myself, to get back to that pioneer spirit that made America great and ruined the lives of thousands of unsuspecting indigenous people, some of whose descendants now can have their revenge by stealing our pensions in state-licensed casinos.

The first stop on my tour was the cleaning closet – I thought perhaps there would be some ‘il Drano’ or the like. There wasn’t. There was, however, a white bottle with a red cap and some words on the side. Words like ‘caustica’ and ‘provoca gravi ustioni.’ Let’s not forget the all important, ‘consultare immediatamente il medico.’ Inside were some small white crystals. The label said I shouldn’t mix it with ‘prodotti acidi liquidi’, but it didn’t say anything about water, so I thought perhaps I’d mix myself up a solution and pour it in the drain to see what happened.

This was, I have to admit, probably not my brightest idea ever, especially given the fact that I can’t for the life of me remember any of the chemical properties of idrossido di sodio, which I took to be Sodium Hydroxide, NaOH. Is this a base? Is it an acid? Who cares! The little rabbit on the side of the bottle said, ‘prodotti di qualità,’ so away we went. It is worth noting that you should never, ever do something like this yourself. This was in some ways the stupidest thing I have ever done in my life.

In the toothbrush holder from the bathroom, I mixed up a few crystals and some water – I did wear gloves to do this, and frankly was already feeling somewhat leery about the whole endeavor so I didn’t exactly go whole hog on the crystals front. After stirring cautiously with a knife (which I subsequently rinsed, washed with soap, and rinsed again four times, all while wearing gloves) I gently poured the now somewhat milky solution (unclear whether the result of the crystals or toothpaste residue) into the drain. I should repeat, for those skimming – there is no possible reason for ever doing this. I have no idea what madness seized me at this point to provoke me to lunacy in this way, but mixing up unknown chemicals and pouring them into drains is a bad, bad idea. Bad. And yet, I mixed. And I poured.

Nothing happened.

I waited.

Nothing happened.

I put some water in the drain.

Nothing happened, besides the usual slow draining action.

After all of this, I opted to go even further back to my roots and forego chemicals and tricks for old-fashioned elbow grease. With a small plunger, I plunged the drain of the shower. A bunch of nasty black junk that smelled terrible came vomiting up out of the drain. Keep in mind, I was sort of freaked out by my earlier experiment, so I had flushed the drain with water twice and waited fifteen minutes in between the first and second drain-repair attempts out of fear that I might cover myself in some kind of caustic or toxic sludge and be forced to quit graduate school and begin plotting to destroy the world. I let the water and crap go back down the drain. I tried putting more water in it. Still slow. I plunged it again, with similar results. More out of a sense of wanting to do something than expecting any real improvement, I repeated this process for the next ten minutes or so. After the first few plungings, other fixtures in the bathroom began to gurgle when I plunged – first the bidet, then the sink. Undaunted, I persevered.

Yet, wonder of wonders, it actually worked! Brute force prevailed where “scientific” “knowledge” availed me nothing! The drain works again, the foul smelling stuff is gone off to god knows where (probably out ruining the environment somewhere) and I showered for twenty minutes without the shower filling up more than a marginal amount. I’m tempted to call this a victory, but it probably belongs more properly in the (newly minted) ‘losses averted’ column, rather than an outright win.