ham fisted theatrics

Someone keeps peeing in the corner of our bathroom.

Someone has to be one of my four suitemates. And it sure as shit ain't me, unless I'm pulling some late night alternate-personality Tyler Durden shenanigans, and if that were the case I'd like to think my alternate personality would be more creative than just pissing just slightly to the left of the toilet, resulting in an impressive puddle where the aging tile depresses as it meets the wall, which greets me some mornings (afternoons) when I rise.

At first I thought it was the guy that sleeps underneath me in the bunkbed in our room, whose name I'm almost certain is Joe. (My other roommate is Kevin. I know that for sure. He is from Nebraska. We exchange friendly sentences on a near-daily basis. Joe and I are also on good terms, I've just forgotten his name is all.) My suspicions arose 'cause Joe drinks anywhere from three to six 20-ounce cans of Bud Light (he switched from Bud to Bud Light right around the time I started finding copies of Men's Fitness everywhere) per evening while watching either TV with Kevin or DVDs on his mini-DVD player. He buys 'em from a deli on his way home and we don't have a fridge, so he's not an alcoholic so much as he is a conservationist of cold. Then he falls asleep. One night while I was hunched over at the laptop in a dark room clackin' away (hey! Like now!) he leapt out of bed and screamed. Kevin across the room woke up. We asked what was up. He mumbled and kept motioning to the bed. I thought there was a rat or a roach or something; he kept acting as though he was going to explained then feigning embarrasment and a "you guys wouldn't understand" type motion. Then he went back to sleep. No memory of this the next day. Sleepwalking, I figure. Sleepwalking plus wow a lotta booze before bedtime equals bathroom misadventures, right?

Two people live in the adjoining room. All rooms including the bathroom open up on an antechamber. One of the guys (Lance) who lives in the other room I see every day 'cause we keep similar hours. The other guy I saw when he moved in a week after I did, then again last night, a month and change later. I was sitting in a dark room all typin' and shit (You may be sensing a theme. You won't believe me that this time I'm describing now and the time Joe leaped out of bed were the only times I was ever on the computer all late at night, and that every other second I was eating, sleeping, acting, working, or putting my penis in something with a modeling career, but it's true) when some shirtless dude stumbles in (I leave the door open 'cause it helps the breeze blow through, we don't have A/C), looks bewilderedly at me, then stumbles out. Suitemate sighting number two. Could he have been sleepwalking? He looked like it.

This morning: puddle. Not a record-holder but certainly nothing to be ashamed of when telling stories around the fire down at the Gentleman's Society For Errant Micturation.

I want to believe the cornerpisser is my mystery man suitemate. For reasons it's probably not too hard for you to get, I don't want somebody who sleeps anywhere near me to have a loose cannon for a urethra. Plus, Joe's a nice guy. He likes good movies. Sure, the one time I've eaten dinner with him he used the phrase "from an insurance standpoint" several times in the course of telling me how his day went, but that makes him boring, not evil.


Other than that, my living situation is ideal. Like a lot of people, I like, on a nightly basis, to be faced with the choice of leaving my door open so air can come in through the windows off Fifth Ave. and make my room somewhat liveable and sleepable, or closing the door and not having potsmoke and loud drift in from the antechamber because my suitemate and his friends can't smoke out in his room because cornerpisser is trying to sleep. Luckily whatever choice I make I pretty much get the best of both worlds, because it turns out they can be loud enough to penetrate walls and the smoke seeps in anyway.

Also, when I moved in I requested that said suitemate (the one I see) stay in his room all day with his eight fans and his shirt off displaying one of those bodies that is fat but could also kill you, playing EverQuest, listening to music that seems, creepily, to be all from like 1999 (Eiffel 65's "Blue," "Pretty Fly For A White Guy") over and over, and occasionally come into our room to steal things and realize that people are there. He has more than fufilled these requests; I couldn't be happier.

Now I'm gonna go brush my teeth in a bathroom that smells like Mexico and go to sleep and hopefully when I wake up all my stuff will still be here! Oh 1210-B, you didn't invent "zany", you just perfected it with a shitty grace all your own.