Monday, October 09, 2006
She died with a toothbrush in her hand. Now I have had some pretty gross share-house experiences. Like the Great Dish Stand-off of 2004 in which dishes were piled on the floor next to the sink once we ran out of room on it, and I was the one to crack and ended up washing them using liquid hand soap (we had no dishwashing detergent), retching at the mouldy pockets of half-eaten dinners I discovered upon lifting each plate from the stack.
Then there was the Tampon in the Wind incident of 2005, in which nobody emptied the bathroom bin for weeks and weeks, and I eventually cracked and carried the piled-high bin out on bin night, only for a gust of wind to strew its contents over the street and I had to pick them all up.
None of this has particularly thrown me, apart from the initial, instinctive revulsion. But I remain troubled by the incident last night in which I discovered a pubic hair in my toothbrush.
I'd just applied toothpaste to the thing and I saw this hair sticking out the side of the brush. I pulled it out, held it to the light, and stuck it the bathroom wall with toothpaste for further inspection. My first instinct was to go, "Well, it doesn't really look like a pubic hair. Maybe one of the bristles has come loose."
And then I thought, "No Mel, it's longer and curlier than a bristle."
My optimistic side countered, "But where's the follicle?"
"It doesn't need a follicle - get used to it Mel, it's a motherfucking pubic hair! In your toothbrush!"
The thing that has really troubled me about this is that I remembered another incident in the recent past where I had thought there was a hair in my toothbrush, but I'd shrugged it off as my fevered suspicion. Now I can't help but wonder what my hipster housemates are doing with my toothbrush when I'm not there. And I can't help thnking back to when I called Tin a little while ago to tell him I was away for a week, and he went, "Oh, we thought so. Your toothbrush was missing."
For a while now, I have put up with the filthiness of the house because I fret that this will only cement my own worries that I'm old and uncool - whether or not the others think this about me. I know that everyone to whom I've told this thinks it's idiotic of me to let my general worries about hipsterism dictate what happens in my own house. But I can't help but think this toothbrush thing is a prank they've been playing on me.
Oh also, I went on and brushed my teeth with the toothbrush. Then I hid it in my room.
Then there was the Tampon in the Wind incident of 2005, in which nobody emptied the bathroom bin for weeks and weeks, and I eventually cracked and carried the piled-high bin out on bin night, only for a gust of wind to strew its contents over the street and I had to pick them all up.
None of this has particularly thrown me, apart from the initial, instinctive revulsion. But I remain troubled by the incident last night in which I discovered a pubic hair in my toothbrush.
I'd just applied toothpaste to the thing and I saw this hair sticking out the side of the brush. I pulled it out, held it to the light, and stuck it the bathroom wall with toothpaste for further inspection. My first instinct was to go, "Well, it doesn't really look like a pubic hair. Maybe one of the bristles has come loose."
And then I thought, "No Mel, it's longer and curlier than a bristle."
My optimistic side countered, "But where's the follicle?"
"It doesn't need a follicle - get used to it Mel, it's a motherfucking pubic hair! In your toothbrush!"
The thing that has really troubled me about this is that I remembered another incident in the recent past where I had thought there was a hair in my toothbrush, but I'd shrugged it off as my fevered suspicion. Now I can't help but wonder what my hipster housemates are doing with my toothbrush when I'm not there. And I can't help thnking back to when I called Tin a little while ago to tell him I was away for a week, and he went, "Oh, we thought so. Your toothbrush was missing."
For a while now, I have put up with the filthiness of the house because I fret that this will only cement my own worries that I'm old and uncool - whether or not the others think this about me. I know that everyone to whom I've told this thinks it's idiotic of me to let my general worries about hipsterism dictate what happens in my own house. But I can't help but think this toothbrush thing is a prank they've been playing on me.
Oh also, I went on and brushed my teeth with the toothbrush. Then I hid it in my room.
