« Roommate Dan's ultrachill friend Jessie | Main | I've caved in and made »
September 20, 2002
I miss the adrenaline-rush danger
I miss the adrenaline-rush danger of an Uzbek shower. While I lived in Uzbekistan, I went through a progression of deadly shower experiences. Showering, like crapping, varies according to the local customs. My roommate here in New York makes do with the nasty cheap toilet paper, I'm a Charmin Ultra guy. Nothing is too good for my ass.
With my first psycho family from hell, they had a small room with a 5' ceiling. I would slouch my way towards bathing Bethlehem, which consisted of two rusting drums filled with water. I had to fill both with water from the canal below the house, the same canal that was filled with leeches. One had an open flame underneath one drum, the other was rippled with condensed moisture. I would take a pan, mix it from both barrels, splash it across my body. Lather, rinse, no repeat. Shaving was an incredibly painful experience, and splashing too much risked the collapse of the mud walls around me.
After I was taken away from the scary first criminal devil family (Peace Corps gave me the standard "We're sorry we stuck you in a criminal family that actually tried to kill you" speech), I was placed with a wonderful family that had a more modernized system. It also had the two barrel system, but they were both overhead, and they both poured into one spray hose. This family was a good family, and so was the shower. It had no pressure to speak of, and the pressure from each tank was dependent on elevation. Head: Freezing. Testicles: Boiling.
That finished training near the capitol. From there I moved to the historical city of Samarkand and the enclosed home of Kurbon-aka. Kurbon and his wife were nice enough, except that they had the predatorial instinct of James Bond villains. Honestly, every time I heard Kurbon-aka speak, I expected him to say he was taking over the world with something he just digested. He simply had this really great villainous voice, especially as he was layering my soup with more dill. They had a western style toilet, but they had filled up either side level with concrete so one still had to treat it like a Turkish toilet, just more of a stretch. Their shower was like a fiendish 007 plot with this insanely modified faucet. If you turned it too much, it would break off and shoot scalding water across your whole body. Traditional Muslim families don't appreciate your scalded red body streaking out of the bathroom into the kitchen. It's just not done, even if their hot water tank just sloughed off your hide.
My final family, my family by which all others are judged, was an amazing family. My real family has always put the fun in dysfunctional, and this Uzbek family showed me this entirely different perspective. The parents didn't fight, the two sons (and myself as the adopted son) were always sure of love, and I cherished every meal with them. Every morning and every evening was spent with them, preparing food, cleaning house, huddled together for warmth. My host parents chopped and burned their fence during the heatless winter in order to make sure we had hot food, and even in the coldest times of that winter, our conversations were always warm. I still miss them.
And yet the showers were even more dangerous. This was a famous Krushchev era apartment building, which meant each shower had the infamous kalonka. A kalonka is this amazing little Soviet water heater mounted on the wall next to you. I would turn this broken valve with my pliers, light the roaring gas burner, and jump in the shower. This was not an adjustable system, it was either wildly on, or off. As I took the shower, I had to frequently increase the cold water, as the hot water continued to heat until it vaporized. At that point, if I wasn't finished, scalding jets of steam would erupt from the shower head, blistering my skin. I had a friend named Brian whose kalonka exploded, burning his ass. He had a hairy ass, or he did until the flames smoothed it.
Yet I miss it. As I was showering today, I was reminding myself that nothing in life is certain, even a shower. It's exhilirating, it could be good, it could be disastrous, it could really toast my ass. I'm still going to do it every day.
Posted by G at September 20, 2002 06:52 PM