There’s nothing I hate more than being cold… except being wet and cold. I’m sure this all stems from the time I was a competitive swimmer. Competitive swimming means swim practice all year long, and at the time I happened to live in Florida. Swimming in Florida means swimming outdoors, because why would you need an indoor pool in Florida? And although you may think, BFD, it doesn’t get that cold in Florida, let me tell you that it does.
In Florida, in December, when the sun has gone down, it can get down to 30 degrees or so. When you’re practically naked and barefoot on cement, you feel it. When you’re practically naked and swimming in a large body of unheated water for two hours at a stretch, and you can’t feel your toes or your fingers, and the only way to warm up momentarily is to pee on yourself, it’s pretty damn cold. The worst thing to do in this situation (besides thinking about how many other people are urinating in the water) is to stand above the heater. Those few seconds of warmth are glorious, but the second you have to move, it’s excruciating.
I think one of the reasons that I left my ex was because I was so damn cold. We were living together during the second winter of my unemployment. Come to think of it, I lived with him during the first winter of my unemployment too. Him, his five roommates, their dog and me all lived together in a 300-year old house. During the day, everyone would go off to work, and to save money on heat, they would shut it off while they weren’t home. Guess who’s unemployed ass was home during the day. I didn’t want to get out of bed in the first place, but when you shut off the heat in a house that only gets to a max of 60 (they literally wouldn’t set the thermostat higher than 68) degrees in the winter, you definitely want to stay in bed all day (in your pajamas, a sweatshirt, two pairs of socks, slippers, a hat, and two quilts).
I used to think those old claw-footed bathtubs were romantic and beautiful, until I had to live with one. Let’s do the math here: Porcelain tub + Drafty Victorian House + Huge Glass Window + Flimsy Curtains + Cheap Ass Roommates who Refuse to Pay for Decent Heat + Tile Floor + Five Minutes of “Hot” Water + Dead of New England Winter = My own personal hell.
Not only was all this loveliness going on, but also the showerhead was European style, which means handheld, AND there was no hook to hang it on, which meant for the five torturous minutes twice a week that I forced myself to peel off all my protective layers and stand in this filthy, freezing “shower,” at no time could both my head and my feet be warm. So if the water was on my head, the rest of my body was freezing, and if I tried to warm the rest of my body, the water on my head started to freeze. There was little time between shivering and cursing for soap or shampoo and there was NO time to shave before the water turned ice cold.
Living conditions, if you could call them that, were, as you can see, miserable. One day, the shower actually made me cry. There I was, stiff, naked, freezing, hugging myself, standing on my tip-toes and holding the trickling lukewarm water above my head and sobbing because I was sooo cold. My body still tenses up at the memory of that shower. So I kicked its ass to the curb. Amazingly enough, that shower isn’t the worst thing that bathroom ever did to me, but that’s a whole other story.
My new shower is amazing. First of all, my rent includes heat and hot water. And the water in my building gets scalding hot- just the way I like it. Don’t even get me started on my showerhead (three speeds). While Scarlett may have vowed to herself that she’d never be hungry again, I promised myself that no shower would ever again make me cry.
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