Dear World: I Am in a Duel With This Toilet

Andddd, the farmhouse wins AGAIN

I’m Ash, and I’m a writer, traveler, nonconformist & nomad, and every week I’m sharing funny field notes from around the world. Currently, I’m in America writing about what it’s been like to return home to my small town, twenty years after living abroad.

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Well now I’ve gone and done it: I took a wrench to the toilet.

I should warn you that you should never do this while drinking (mostly because holding a toilet rim and then holding a beer and then putting it up to your mouth is foul), and definitely not do this activity while sexually frustrated.

But, you see, I AM IN DESPERATE NEED OF REMOVING MY TOILET SEAT. This toilet seat and I are having a duel. I have never spent more time in front of a toilet, and that includes during my college years. (Then again, I was varsity.)

Have you ever unscrewed a toilet seat before??????????? The screws on this thing are as long as a 2x4. You really gotta get in there and use two hands: one to hold the nut (oh god), and one to twist the screwdriver (into eternal submission).

This means that your face is going to be precariously close to the bowl—and let me tell you, the smells embedded into that porcelain are hallucinatory. I blame this on the previous owners of the farmhouse, who must’ve had a bear urinating in here.

Alas, it’s not just the seat that needs castrating, so much as the entire operation. You see, I am trying to install the world’s greatest invention, an invention so great, most of my contemporaries aren’t even aware of its greatness yet.

I am trying to install a Tushy.

I told this to the girls the other day, and they looked at me as if I had just told them I was installing a chair with a vibrating dong. But then I helped them see the light by explaining the joys of a bidet this way:

If I were to smear horse manure on your cheek, are you gonna wipe it off or wash it????????????????

I REST MY CASE.

I had one shipped to Costa Rica a couple of years ago when I lived there, and it was a hit. Couldn’t go to the bathroom without it. Number one, number two, period time, post-romp. This thing was my ally. I had the freshest fanny around. Even house guests, whom I would peer-pressure into trying the beast, would come out—how should I say?—satisfied.

So naturally I needed one for the Pennsylvania farmhouse. And naturally I decided on the upgraded version: the Tushy Spa 3.0. But, wouldn’t you know? Toilets are fickle little ass urchins. And this one, in particular, had a funny little hose with a funny little connector—which I discovered after laying horizontally in ancient piddle residue for thirty minutes straight.

Not one to be easily deterred, it was off to the hardware store I went. Alas, a whole section dedicating to toilet hoses! It was like Christmas, really. I grabbed about forty-seven different ones, figuring that at least one would work. Right? Just buy the whole lot, you sloppy carnivore.

And I came back to my house, and I went back up the stairs, and I unscrewed it all again, and I turned off the water again, and I unhooked the hose again, and I proceeded to play a game of musical plumbing chairs: which one will fit?!

None of them fit.

You knew that was coming, didn’t you.

So I screwed everything back together, defeated yet again, unsure about my fate, or my future, or everything I thought I knew as a 39-year-old mediocre home owner.

That’s when I got the genius idea to log onto the Tushy website and see: there must be an adapter! And adapter, there was. You should’ve seen the relief in my beady little brown eyes.

I waited three painfully long days, using innumerable amounts of cucumber-scented baby wipes that will forever change the way I feel about cucumbers.

Finally, the notification arrived. It hit my email and I pulled on my olive green muck boots and raced to the mailbox. There it was in all its glory: a package. The package. My savior.

I sprinted to the bathroom. Wielded my wrench! Brandished my screwdriver! And then, with a slow and nefarious theme song playing, I, Ash Ambirge, was destined to win.

Until I pulled out the hose.

And I looked at the hose.

And I saw that the fucking hose.

Was the same fucking hose.

As the forty-seven other hoses.

I had already purchased.

This was right about the time I started laughing. You know that delirious, maniacal laugh that comes when you’re tired? The one where you sound like a hyena on morphine? The one where you cannot stop? This was me, at the top of the stairs, doubled over on the bathroom floor. I laughed, and I laughed, and I laughed, and I laughed, realizing I could probably learn how to pilot an aircraft carrier faster than I could a bum fountain.

Maybe installing a chair with a vibrating dong isn’t such a bad idea, after all.

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In other news, I screwed up something else this week extra good. Walked into the garage, which is ice cold, and then entered the creeper room, which is what I call this one area of the garage that was sectioned off for the previous owner to paint. She was an artist, and needed a little studio. The only problem is, the studio gives off serious pedo vibes. There’s something very Flowers in the Attic about it all. (The padlock doesn’t help.)

So I walked into the creeper room, because this is where I keep all my power tools (like the hillbilly that I am now), and said out loud to no one in particular: “Wow, it’s actually kind of warm in here.”

And that’s when the horror took over my face.

I walked slowly to the other side of the creeper room. Bent down. Said a prayer. And felt the electric baseboard heater.

It was on.

Both of them were on.

Which meant that both of them had been running, non-stop, all this time, to heat the outside.

Which, in part, explains my $1,000 electric bill.

And also WHY I AM STILL LAUGHING.

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Maybe that’s why today I did something unthinkable: I left a plate in the sink. Not just any plate, but a plate covered in pigheaded egg yolk sludge. There is no greater domestic offense than leaving a plate covered in egg yolk. And yet, maverick that I am, decided that today I will not be tamed.

This has been happening more and more, the longer I’ve been here: a loosening of my compulsions. A sliding of my need for control. A softening of my uptight, self-imposed Type A rules (which includes never leaving a plate in the sink with egg yolk).

Like the other day when I went to the hardware store? I went without wearing makeup.

Yesterday I went to the brewery in joggers.

Right this very minute I am typing with cockroaches coming out of my armpits.

Overall, the pressure to be perfect is less here. There’s more emphasis on real. Real people are respected, whereas done-up people are suspected. This seems reverse of the worlds I’ve been living in, in cities and metropolitans around the world: there, your appearance is your capital.

I worry, of course, that this is a slippery slope into “man, she really let herself go—what, with those overalls.” But at the same time, I will tell you: this feels good. Life here feels good. It feels good to be able to be yourself. It feels good to be natural. It feels good to be wholesome and genuine and free.

Ironically, I would feel more confident getting on TikTok with this naked face, and these extra pounds, and this L.L. Bean pullover right now, than I ever have in the past, completely done up with perfect makeup and on-trend jewels and the perfect blouse, with the perfect background.

Maybe this what it looks like when you’re finally comfortable with yourself.

And maybe being comfortable with yourself comes, in part, from being comfortable in your environment, and comfortable with your decisions, and comfortable that you are doing everything you can in order to be the best version of yourself there is.

Regardless of what you’re wearing.

Or if there’s egg in the sink.

Or if the heat’s been left on.

Or if you can’t figure out the toilet.

Because none of that matters when you are being true to yourself, and you’re having fun, and you’re filled with hope, and you’re eyes are bright, and your fridge is full—and your life is, too.

But you definitely still need a Tushy.