No warning, no relief, no soap in the bathroom
Julia Fabian | Fulcrum Staff
Illustration by Brennan Bova
I SPENT MY university years breathing in the fresh sea air of Victoria, B.C., where I chose to do my undergrad. Along with the University of Victoria’s proximity to the ocean, the bunnies hopping all over its campus were a strong deciding factor for me. Also fuzzy, but less cute, were the germs I later discovered lurking in my residence, a building whose delightfully ivy-covered exterior cleverly distracted from the dark secrets hidden within.
Unbeknownst to me, I had signed myself up for the party dorm. Every university seems to have one of these: a res whose name when uttered elicits a more awed and reverential silence than Al Capone’s. I, being very much not a party student, was forced to take decisive measures.
By mid-September I had a self-enforced curfew of 9 p.m. After that time, I allowed myself minimal water intake, and I only ventured out for emergencies. You see, my room was directly across from the bathroom shared by the whole first floor, and it was after dark that the crazies came out.
If you wanted to brush your teeth while someone puked three feet away from you, or to have drunk bodies pound against the already rickety stall as you huddled helpless and pantless on the cold ceramic, or to be photographed (and later Facebooked) via a sudden camera attack somewhere near your ankles, then by all means, leave your room. Which, it should be mentioned, was not without its own hazards, giant spiders among them. They say university is a time for new experiences, but these were not high on my list as I was reading the brochures.
When alone in the bathroom I might have been spared the unwelcome company of pukers or intoxicated frat boys—in my dorm, the separation of girls’ and guys’ washrooms was a purely symbolic one—but it was then that the perhaps even more dangerous threats emerged. Over the noise of my toothbrushing, an eerie drip, drip sound only served to remind me of the showers, the corners of which displayed greenish-brown growths I tried desperately never to look at.
From outside would come the occasional distant hoot of a tipsy first year, and from inside, my strangled yell when I accidentally brushed up against the shower curtain, or let it brush up against me, because that slimy thing seemed to have a mind of its own. If it sounds bad, it was. This was a place where if you dropped your toothbrush, you bought a new one. It’s a shame I couldn’t throw away my own foot the one time my flip flop came off as I was exiting the tub.
So for all of you out there, if you get stuck in a place that is less than hygienic: make it your misson to make friends, not only with your fellow inmates who can help talk you through it, but with a little bottle called Purell. And have faith: it can only go up from here.
