Thursday, 09 July 2009

  • No Regrets.

    Wrote this a while back, must've been April - back before I made many of my questionable decisions.  Thought up the idea while -- surprise, surprise -- cleaning a bathroom, specifically the shower.  It is, as all good stories are, based somewhat in reality, things that actually happened to me - not all of it, obviously.  Angry Cleaning Story is a file name more than a title.  And No Regrets is more a blog title than a story title.  Not sure what to call it.  Not sure how to edit it.  Would greatly appreciate feedback! 
    Thanks kiddos!

    xx r.

    ps. make sure you check out Sex Blog.  Had far too much fun writing it!



    Angry Cleaning Story.

     

                Scrub, scrub, scrub, scrub, scrub, scrub, scrub – Toni scraped the sponge over the floor of the shower again and again.  

    Scrub, scrub, scrub, scrub, scrub.

    “Out damned spot!” she muttered.  Sponge, green scrubby side down, moved forward, back, forward and back in her cold, chapped hand.

    It felt like she’d been working on that shower floor for ages and it still would not come clean.  Scrub, scrub, scrub . . .

    Toni leaned back and rested on her knees.  She wiped her forehead with the back of her hand and considered the shower floor.

    It hadn’t been washed in months, gross.

    In a house with five people and one shower that really wasn’t acceptable.  There had been a layer of dirt and scum all around the bottom of the shower walls.  Mold, soap scum, mildew had been sitting for weeks and weeks.  In a fit of frustration Toni had just pitched the shower curtain.  Well, less thrown in the trash and more she just dumped it outside fully intending to actually do something about it later.

    She’d have to get another one before everyone else got home.  Toni’s roommates were avid extreme sports enthusiasts.  Today they were mountain biking in mud and rain and were guaranteed to return home filthy ready to mess up the nice clean shower.  If only she could get those last spots out of the floor!

    Toni was not an extreme sports enthusiast.  Even so she rarely found herself the only one in the house.  There were generally two others home while two others were rock climbing or sky diving or bungee jumping with rocks in their pockets.  The ones that were home were generally just returned from such an activity and were high on endorphins wanting nothing more thatn to be loud and talk, talk, talk . . .

    No that Toni didn’t talk, but sometimes she found she tired of talking and trying so hard to think.  Which is exactly why she liked cleaning.  One doesn’t have to pay attention to what one is thinking while cleaning, one doesn’t have to try so hard.  She could just let her mind wander.  She thought about everything from what she was doing to that thing about that scientific discovery that happened recently that she’d heard about on the radio earlier.

    “What was that?” she mused, pausing in her endeavor.  “Hm, I can’t remember.”  Toni shrugged and went back to work.

    Scrub, scrub, scrub. . .

    What had she been thinking about?  Ah, yes!

    James.

    “That was dumb,” she thought.  She never should’ve gone out that night in the first place.  But she’d been invited by a girlfriend to the club.  It wasn’t her fault he’d been there looking far more handsome than she’d ever noticed before.  He’d been wearing a light blue button shirt and jeans; his hair had been brushed to the side the way she’d once told him was his ‘best look’.  And he asked her to dance, for the record!  She may have pushed it a little bit and, clearly, she wasn’t opposed, but it all certainly was his initiation.

    “Stupid men,” she muttered and scrubbed harder.  “Stupid spot.  Fuck you both!”

    It had been his hand on her leg in the cab and it had been he who leaned over and kissed her and yet, it seemed, she was the one who was feeling guilty.

    “And for what?” she thought.  “Because two consenting adults had a little fun?  What’s so wrong about that?”

    Scrub, scrub, scrub . . .

    Then there was Lydia.  The only person she really wanted to talk to about it and couldn’t.  Lydia had once dated James and was still slightly hung up on him.  If she discovered that her best friend . . .

    “Fucking spot!” cried Toni chucking the sponge at the shower wall.  She leaned back against the opposite wall.  The goddamned spot was never going to come clean!

    “At least James had been honest,” she thought.  And yet, somehow, it was more frustrating when men were open and honest about these things.  It made it impossible to be angry without being the one who ended up looking like a jerk.  If he had just blown her off she could have some guilt-free anger, some female sympathy and she could move on.  But, no, he had to the right thing!

    What gives?!

    Toni looked at the spot on the shower floor.  Had it gotten larger?  No, right?  That’s impossible.  It must’ve always been that size, the strange reddish stain.  Toni kicked the fallen shower curtain rod out of her way and crawled back to the shower stall, spray bottle in hand.

    Spritz, spritz, spritz; scrub, scrub, scrub . . .

    The James thing would sort itself out.  At best no one at work would ever know and everything would return to normal.  At worst she’d be down a couple friends and if that happened then they weren’t very good friends to begin with.

    Back, forth, back, forth.

    Besides, James and Lydia had ended two years earlier and both had dated other people in the interim.  Lydia even claimed she was ‘in love’ with the current one.

    Scrub, scrub, scrub, pause; what was this stain?  Scrub, scrub, scrub.

    And then there was the whole Michael thing!

    “One cuddle and he thinks there’s something there?”

    Scrub, scrub, pause, scrub.

    Michael had been Toni’s best male friend for the past couple years and she loved him dearly, but like the little brother she’d never asked for not as a lover!

    It was partly her fault.  During the first drinking binge after Pete, her boyfriend of a year, broke up with her, there had been a Toni/Michael cuddle session.  Michael seemed to be under the impression that cuddle meant more than it did.

    Scrub, scrub, scrub . . .

    She couldn’t be sure, but Toni could’ve sworn the stain was growing.

    “Perhaps I’ve been cooped up in here too long,” she said climbing to her feet.  Toni reached for the window latch and shoved it open; the wet, spring air whooshed in.  Toni breathed deeply hoping to get the choking taste of cleaner out of her lungs. 

    She turned her thoughts back to Michael as she turned back to the problem of the shower she had forgotten however, about the problem of the fallen shower curtain.

    Suddenly Toni was falling closer and closer to the floor.  Instinctively she put her hands out in front of her and caught hold of the edge of the shower.  Her nose inches from the large red stain. 

    “Damn it,” she said struggling to her feet.  “That could’ve been bad.”

    Toni shoved the rod further away from the shower.  Safely repositioning herself, Toni started to scrub again.

    Scrub, scrub, scrub . . .

    She’d forgotten about Michael in the meantime and her thoughts, instead, returned to James.  His rugged features, his pretty eyes, his highly inappropriate sense of humor that nearly always made her laugh in spite of herself.

    “Stop it, Toni,” she commanded.

    The problem was: she liked him.  Not in some dire, school girl, fairy tale fantasy sort of way, but because she admired him.  He was fun, laidback, accepting of other people and passionate about his job which he did very well.

    Somehow his girlfriends always seemed to be strung out, high maintenance bitches.  But James had picked her that night and, mistake or not, she didn’t regret it.

    Scrub, scrub, scrub . . .

    No, she certainly didn’t regret it.  He was her pal and always would be, and she loved him as a pal.

    Scrub, scrub, brrr . . .

    It was getting chilly.  Toni turned to close the window, but when she turned around she saw it was closed.  Standing she discovered it was also latched.

    “I thought I . . .” she started pointing at the casement, accusing it of deceiving her.  “I could’ve sworn I opened that,” she said again, out loud.

    Toni looked down at her feet.  The fallen curtain rod was also not where she thought it should be.  Instead of across the room it was, yet again, under her feet.

    “Déjà vu?” she asked almost expecting an answer from the metal rod.  She kicked it away again, when the rod didn’t answer, and knelt before the shower stall.

    Her head was hurting now.  Her head hurt, she could taste cleaner, she was getting colder and colder by the minute and the stain was beginning to look even larger than before.

    “What is this?” she asked again.  Unconsciously she reached out and touched the stain.  It was a little tacky, sticky.  It definitely didn’t used to be.  What was this substance?  Where was it coming from?

    Toni leaned back, a little scared now as well as confused.  She landed, bottom first, on the shower curtain rod.

    “Will you not stay over there?” she asked angrily.  “First you fall on me, now this?”

    Wait . . . the curtain rod had fallen on her?  Toni tried to think about it, when had the curtain rod fallen on her?  While she was cleaning the shower floor, she realized slowly.  And it had hurt, too.

    She reached a hand cautiously to the back of her head.  There was a tender spot at the top of her neck.  But the front of her head hurt too.  She felt her forehead for another tender spot.  What she found there alarmed her less than she ever would’ve imagined before that day.  It was still warm, still sticky the blood that was seeping from her forehead.  She marveled at the sticky red mess on her palms and forearms.  How had she not noticed that before?

    She noticed the spots where her hands had been in the pool on the shower floor.  More out of curiosity than anything else, Toni leaned over and lowered her body down.  Her forearms rested on the floor and she placed the hurt part of her head on the floor between her arms.  Her body, she thought, should’ve felt pain in the awkward way she was positioned.  Instead she felt nothing.  Not even the cold anymore.

    “Well,” thought Toni as her face pressed to the floor, as her eyes started to glaze over and as everything started to go out of focus and one last synapse flared, “At least I have no regrets.”

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