CHAPTER FIFTY–BATHROOM BATTLES
“Gary! Hey lunatic, you can’t just monopolize the bathroom for…for whatever fresh hell this is! Some of us actually need to get ready for real human activities like work, ya know!”
There came no response except for a sudden intensifying of the whale bellows, now seeming to reverberate against the very walls of their tiny apartment. Jasmine recoiled, one hand clapped over her ear while the other continued its assault on the door handle.
This went on for what felt like hours, though her wrist–watch later told her was only twenty intensely maddening minutes.
Just when Jasmine had nearly resigned herself to shattering the flimsy door with a well–aimed kick, the whale sounds abruptly cut off once more. A minute later, the lock turned…and the door drifted open on a fresh billow of fragrant sandalwood steam.
“Ah, much more centered and prepared to face the day!” Gary proclaimed, emerging from the bathroom enshrouded in a hazy cloud of vapor.
Despite his calm demeanor, he looked utterly bedraggled; his hair stuck up in wild tufts and his robe hung askew, as if he’d just wrestled a deep–sea leviathan himself.
He also seemed utterly oblivious to Jasmine’s dumbstruck, slack–jawed expression as she stared between him and the hazy bathroom behind him.
“…you….wha…?” she finally managed to sputter out a token attempt at a verbal response, too stupefied to even be angry at this point. Gary simply patted her on the arm with an infuriating look of patronizing sympathy.
“I realize it may seem like an…acquired taste, my unorthodox little regimen,” he said matter–of–factly. “But once you’ve opened up your spheres of perception to the harmonizing effects of immersive audio- therapeutic sensory stimulation combined with–”
“Aaaand that’s quite enough crazy for one morning, I think!” Jasmine abruptly cut him off, pressing the heels of her palms against her temples as if to physically restrain her brain from melting out her ears. She shot him an exhausted look from beneath lowered brows.
“Look, I don’t pretend to understand whatever transcendental new age gobbledygook you’ve got going on in that overstuffed cranium of yours. But if you expect me to just roll over while you start waterboarding the apartment with whale noises during your mega–baths, you’ve got another thing coming bucko!”
Gary opened his mouth to protest, affronted indignation flickering across his face…when Jasmine abruptly wheeled around and shoved past him, storming into the bathroom and slamming the door behind her with a resounding bang.
“Hey, I wasn’t finished…!” His muffled outrage filtered through to her, nearly drowned out by the rush of the shower she’d preemptively started.
Jasmine just cranked the water as hot as it could go, her entire body slumping back against the door as the torrents of steam began to fill the room once more
Her gaze fell on Gary’s meticulously arranged “ambiance” accoutrements – the sea salt scrub bars, the sanitized loofah mitt, the precisely leveled shampoo and conditioner bottles with their measuring lines…
Oh, was he in for a rude awakening now.
From that day forward, within the confines of their tiny apartment.
a silent but vicious war eru
Petty sabotages, acts of domestic treachery, and out–and–out territory disputes became the norm as
Jasmine fought to reclaim even a modicum of bathroom time from Gary’s obsessively regimented routines.
First there was the Incident of the Beet Powder–Pranking, where Jasmine switched out Gary’s trademark lilac bath salts with an entire vial of luridly crimson beet root powder.
His enraged shrieks could likely have been heard all the way out on the street below as he emerged from his perfumed tub looking like a freshly slaughtered pig.
Then came Jasmine’s short–lived victory in the Bathroom Occupancy Schedule wars, when she pre emptively printed out official–looking laminated schedules allocating herself a luxurious four hours of uninterrupted pamper–time every evening.
Gary retaliated by triple–confirming her allocated slots with a protractor and completely ignoring her posted schedule in favor of his own.
It couldn’t go on like this, Jasmine knew. What had started as a few harmless hijinks was rapidly spiraling into the ninth circle of domestic cold war – one that would inevitably burn what tattered shreds of sanity still remained in their living situation to cinders.
She lay awake one night, glaring up at the ceiling as Gary’s nightly routine of whale calls and smudging rituals thundered through their paper–thin walls as usual
How had it come to this two grown adults engaged in ceaseless tit–for–tat, sinking to puerile new lows on a daily basis just to one–up each other over…bathroom time?
The realization crept up on Jasmine slowly, an icy trickle of mortification slithering down her spine. This was no way to live- not for her, but certainly not for them together under the same roof.
Sooner or later, one of Gary’s meticulously choreographed zen–outs was going to send her caregiver into a frothing, straight–jacketed frenzy.
Or she would find herself crossing an unforgivable line in their escalating cold war, provoking her unhinged roomie into finally unleashing the full unbound powers of his insanity upon her.
No, it was time to put a stop to the madness. One way or another, they needed to work out a truce–to compartmentalize their individual quirks and obsessions into some sort of livable compromise.
Jasmine would be damned if she let her already tenuous grip on stability slip through her fingers over something as trivial as a bathroom schedule.
Which brought her to the next morning, arms folded and hip cocked as she planted herself squarely in Gary’s path on his way to his morning routine.
The man himself seemed utterly nonplussed by her uncharacteristic repose, merely quirking an eyebrow at her over his amber shades.
“You’re blocking the path to enlightenment and inner peace,” he remarked mildly, as if commenting on her being in the way of the refrigerator. “Was there something you needed, or…?”
Jasmine fixed him with her firmest look, one she’d long practiced in the mirror to skip over “determined and land squarely on “brokering no further nonsense.”
She only hoped her hastily implemented plan would work as intended – though if her read on Gary’s psyche was even half–accurate, she hopefully wouldn’t need to resort to any underhanded tactics.
“Cut the guru act and take a seat, Gary,” she said, nodding towards the living room. “We need to have a talk. A real one, just two adults working through some differences before things get…even weirder around here.”
For a long moment, it seemed her to balk at the very notion, his lips thinning into a
te was go
petulant frown.
