High Society

Posted by John

Owning a home is a major milestone in anyone’s life. Personally I love having a house. It gives me an endless supply of projects to occupy my time that would otherwise be spent watching Jersey Shore. But there are times, especially in an older house, when being a home owner is like showing up on a blind date only to find out it’s Snooki – the worst thing ever. Like having your heater go out two days before Thanksgiving, or finding mold growing rampantly through your garage, or like the other day when our shower drain clogged up and it took over an hour for the bathtub to drain.

It was one of those situations where you hope if you ignore it long it enough it will just go away. So that’s what I did. I ignored it all day Monday until Tuesday morning when the bathtub filled up again and took two hours to drain. Apparently the clog hadn’t fixed itself. So I ignored it again all day Tuesday until Wednesday morning when the bathtub filled up again and took four hours to drain. Apparently the clog hadn’t fixed itself yet again. So I ignored it all day Wednesday until Thursday morning when the bathtub filled up again and then didn’t drain at all. I thought to myself, “Huh, this is strange. I’ve been ignoring this issue for four days now; I would have thought it would have fixed itself already.”

At that point I had a decision to make: I could either get under the house and fix the problem myself, or call a plumber and have him fix it for me. On the one hand, I’m a man and my house is my domain and I should have complete sovereignty over my domain, including the shower drain and any clogs therein. On the other hand, it was a disgusting shower drain, it was under my house, and it was 20 degrees outside. So I relinquished my domain (and my checkbook) to a plumber.

The plumber came out right away Thursday afternoon. When I opened the door upon his arrival I was met by a man who was clearly hardened by decades of hard labor and maybe even some hard time, reeking of cigarettes and coffee. He said, “You call zee plum-er?” In the thickest Russian accent I’ve heard since I last watched a Matt Damon movie. Seriously, I thought I was staring into the face of one of the bad guys from the Bourne films or John Malkovich’s character in Rounders. I was taken aback and paused long enough that he said again, “You call zee plum-er?”

Uh, I called a plumber, not Teddy KGB… “Yes. Yes I called a plumber.”

“Where is zee probe-lem?”

I ushered him into the bathroom where I explained there was a clog in the shower drain. He took a quick look at the standing water in the bathtub and then he did this thing where he raised his eyebrows, scrunched up his nose, stuck out his lower lip, turned the corners of his mouth down, shrugged his shoulders and rocked slightly from side to side. It was an expression he repeated several times throughout his visit that I came to realize was Russian for, “Well, you’re screwed,” or “I’m about to screw you over,” or “If you screw me over, I’m going to kill you.” So he did the expression, rocking from side to side, and said, “It eez clog.”

Oh, really? Well thanks for that diagnosis, Teddy. With your powers of deduction I’m fucking amazed your career in espionage for the Kremlin was cut so short.

I just stared back at him and said, “Okay?”

“Uhh… I go under zee house.”

So he disappeared under my house to either inspect my pipes or wire up some C4 explosives, then came back a few moments later and put on that same expression, rocked slightly from side to side, and said, “It eez clog…”

Ahh, fucking-a, man; I am so glad I called you.

“I feex for you for two-twventy-fiv…”

“Two-twenty-five? Did you say $225???”

“Uhh, yes… two-twventy-fiv.”

Listen here, Teddy KGB – I will admit it was impressive how you screwed Matt Damon out of those two stacks of high society in that poker movie, but I am not about to let you screw me out of $225 to get a fucking hairball out of my shower drain. “I’m sorry, I can’t justify $225. I’ll fix it myself.”

Then he did that expression again, rocked from side to side a bit, and said, “No?” in a manner that made me realize I may have just asked him to shank me with a shard of metal. “No two-twventy-fiv? Vell… I cut you deal. Two-hundred doh-lars…”

Oh, Teddy, really you’re too generous. $200? Wow. I was thinking along the lines of $50, but $200 is a much, much better deal. “No. No I can’t justify that. For $200 I’ll fix it myself.”

Then he did that expression again, rocked from side to side a bit, and said, “No?” in a manner that made me realize I may have just asked him to shank me with a shard of metal again. “Vell, how much you pay?”

How much I pay? Honestly? Are we negotiating here or are you extorting me? ”Listen, I appreciate you coming out, but I’ll take care of it myself.”

“Zoot yur-self. Eet is no hair off my back.”

Alright, dude - It’s “no skin off your back”. Skin! Fuck it, whatever; just get out.

Having wrestled the domain of my house back from the Russians, I was forced to fix the problem myself, so I suited up in the worst work clothes I could find and went to the most godawful place on earth – the crawlspace beneath my house.

Cramped beneath my house in the freezing cold I tried about 8 different things to free the clog from the drain without any success. Finally I got pretty aggressive and archaic and grabbed an old broom handle because it was a smaller diameter than the drainpipe and just start violently ramming it through the drain in effort to dislodge the clog as if I were packing ammunition into the barrel of a canon. If that doesn’t sound gross enough, as I was forcing the clog down the drain I was also simultaneously violating a very basic law of fluid dynamics; a law that quite honestly should not be violated in that type of situation. As I was ramming the clog through the drain I was compressing all the water and air downstream of the clog  causing it to build up a lot of pressure in the pipe so just as I pushed the clog to a point where the pipe expanded  and the clog was free, suddenly all that pressure was released, unleashing a torrent of shower drain waste back through the pipe and out onto my face, shirt, and pants. I almost threw up. I realize it was my shower waste, but it was still pretty fucking disgusting. Looking at myself covered from head to toe I expected to turn around and find Mike Rowe from that show Dirty Jobs crouched behind me in the crawlspace. He wasn’t.

When it was all said and done at least I had the satisfaction of knowing I had fixed the problem myself, maintained sovereignty over my domain, didn’t give any money to the KGB, and hadn’t been shanked by a metal shard. All in all the only loss was some otherwise perfectly fine work clothes that were covered in shower waste that had to go directly into the dumpster… right next to an otherwise perfectly fine suitcase covered in cat shit.

The overall lesson here is, you can ignore a problem all you want and hope it fixes itself but when the bad guy from a Matt Damon movie shows up to fix it for you, it’s time to get off your ass and get to work.