Free The Thong Also Rises by Jennifer L. Leo

bathroom.
    While I might have fallen for the sleeping under the stars schtick, they really pulled a good one over Adventure Girl by neglecting to mention that the bathroom is actually broom-closet-size, all-in-one shower, toilet, and sink. Myhusband marvels at the economy, noting he will be able to wash, urinate, and shave all at the same time. I, however, am noting the sensation of my behind pressed against a slick, wet toilet bowl while peeing. I am also sighing with a fond remembrance of the bathroom from last year’s luxury hotel we snagged for a song on the Internet. While admittedly not nearly as efficient as the Polynesia ’s accommodations, it did boast a sunken marble tub equipped with a remote-control television. Perhaps the playful, lurking threat of being electrocuted while flipping channels in the bubble bath is adventure enough for me.
    With the wind slowly leaving my sails, I unpack while my husband christens the head with an inaugural whiz. As he finishes, we bump sideways past one another and I squeeze my extra large toiletry bag into the tiny, three-sided wire grid shelf hanging on the bathroom wall. While I may have been willing to forego makeup, it is downright ludicrous to think I might survive without my assortment of Clinique moisturizers and creams.
    I was beginning to feel like the only woman in Egypt who wore out her underwear from both sides. I’d wear it right side out during the day, and turn it inside out for the evening. Sometimes, by the time I retired, I was afraid it wouldn’t be dry by early the next morning. Each night, I’d anchor my bra and panties to the table on my balcony with ashtrays—hoping that the same breeze that was aiding them in drying wouldn’t blow them over the balcony, and down the Nile.

    â€”Bonnie Mack, “A Loaded Suitcase but Nothing to Wear”
    â€œArgh,” I cry in my new pirate voice. Theweight of my bag is too heavy for the little shelf and under pressure it bursts away from the wall.The translucent, mesh-clothed bag tumbles and plunks like a lead anchor directly into the toilet bowl, which, in turn expels its water all over the little broom closet bathroom floor.
    Just as my quivering hand retrieves the bag, which is now spilling liquid from inside-out all over my legs and feet, my husband happens to mention he neglected to flush. I am no longer that soft, cuddly Jack Sparrow of a pirate. I am Blackbeard and I am out for blood.
    â€œWhat do you mean you forgot to flush the toilet!” I shriek, as this seems—at the moment—to be an act of insanity on par with suffocating small kittens.
    â€œIt’s a small ship and I wanted to help conserve water?”
    On dry land, when I am not dripping in a puddle of someone else’s pee I might find this response endearing. Instead I manage to use the word “fuck” ten times in one sentence.
    He promises that if I will just come out of the bathroom, he will rinse everything with disinfectant, but I can’t move. I am paralyzed in pee.
    â€œI am not coming out and tracking pee all over the carpeting all over this room!”
    â€œWell then let me come in,” he pleads patiently, hoping to placate a urine-soused lunatic.
    â€œYou can’t come in. First of all, we probably both can’t fit in here, and second of all, then we both are going to track pee.”
    â€œ Hon ” he sighs. Do I sense the weensiest bit of exasperation in his voice? “There is nothing wrong with urine. It is completely sterile. There are people who actually drink urine. There is even such a thing as urine therapy—you can look it up on the Internet.”
    I can’t stand the way he keeps referring to it by its formal name, like he is paying homage or something. And therapy ? I have now lost all sense of rational thinking and am convinced that while I may be a crazy germaphobe, my husband has, at best, turned into a dead ringer for the Professor from