Tonight I've had to cross a boundary I'd hoped never to cross. I finally had to step up and ask a roommate to please shower. The gentleman checked into the room a few days ago. I pay very little attention to whom I share a room with as they change so often. Currently, I have a gregarious Ohioan, up to battle his ex-wife for custody of his children, with whom he claims she absconded ("claimed" being the operative word). At any rate, aside from the gregarious Ohioan there is this gentleman, this man from Russia/Ukraine.
When not working or walking around, I typically am in the cave that I have constructed out of my bunk. I reside in the lower bunk which is in a corner so two sides are blocked and the other two sides I have blocked, from this infernal 19 hours of daylight, with a sleeping bag at the end and a poncho along the side. Here in my little cocoon I do my emailing, web-surfing, and general dawdling. Two days ago, in the midst of my dawdling I was overwhelmed and thought to myself, "Dear God! I reek!" I flipped out of my bunk to get myself to the shower post haste. Emerging from my womb, I was hit full- blast with a snootful of stench that nearly brought tears to my eyes. Sitting in the chair at the foot of the bunk sat the gentleman. I scurried off to take a shower, though no longer from fear that the stench emanated from me, but rather to ensure that it gained no hold or contaminated me. When I came back in the room, I was hit by the wall of funk, but I scurried over and, as delicately as I could, I thrust open the window nearest me. Fortunately I departed for work soon thereafter. Though it has been in the low fifties each night I have prefered to keep the window open and wake up with blue feet rather than risk a warm contagion.
This evening, after coming back from a movie, I took a deep breath before entering the room, praying that the gentleman would not be there. He was not, but his sleeping bag was in its customary place. I died a little on the inside, and changed into my hostel costume of basketball shorts and a long sleeve t-shirt. The Ohioan entered and, as he is wont to do, started in on the details of everything that had happened to him. Though I have never shown much interest other than courtesy required and even had to go about deliberately ignoring him, he has been sure to give me the blow by blow of his custody case and all manner of unnecessary detail of his daily whatever. He did stop, mid-sentence though, after I had done my usual scurrying into my cave in the hopes of my dissappearance giving him the hint to be quiet, to comment on our gentleman. "I tried to give him the hint and pointed him where the showers are. I don't see his bags. Maybe he's gone for the night?"
"No dice," I told him, "His sleeping bag's still here."
The Ohioan went off to catch a movie (on my suggestion as I wanted quiet), and I stepped out of the room for a moment. When I returned, I smelled the gentleman's presence before I had opened the door enough to see that he was there. Enough was enough.
"Sir, I don't mean to give offense...and I don't really know how to say this politely...but could you please take a shower?"
"What do you mean? I take a shower every day," he said in thickly Slavic-Something accented English.
"Um...yes...well...again...I don't really know how to say this properly but there's a smell..."
"It is the room that smells." He was getting angry.
"Um...well...yes...but...it's you."
"I don't smell it."
At that point I didn't really know what to say. I really didn't want to say, "The reason you can't smell anything is because you've gotten used to smelling like a deer and it's so powerful that it's blocked out everything else that doesn't smell like decay and bacteria."
I decided that evacuating the room was the best course of action as he fumed, both in mood and odor, and took a book to the lobby for a while. When I returned, he left and I ratcheted the windows back up. He stopped in momentarily to ask me when I would be leaving the hostel. I don't think he liked my answer of August 6th. If he's going to be here with me, I don't think I liked my answer either
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It's only taken until now for people at work to finally gather that I really, truly am not staying in Alaska. I have told nearly everyone that I'm a law student and just up here for the summer, but so many of them have said that they only ever intended to come up for a summer and then ended up staying that they couldn't fathom that I'd really go through with my plan of leaving. I don't know if it's from the fact that they're somehow going to miss the goofy guy with the ridiculous facial hair or, like crabs in the pot, they don't want to see anyone escape, but they are not happy and are trying to convince me to stay. The general manager has already tried to intice me with a managership and repeatedly says, "by the time you're ready to leave you'll be able to run this place." The other managers merely say, "well, you'll be good to go when you come back next year." When I mention that I'll be studying for the bar the joke has become "you can study for the bar at the bar."
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I saw my first moose the other night as I walked home from the grocery store. There, in the athletic field complex along my route, was a she-moose idly stumbling along in a little- league outfield. A moose is a damn big creature and looks, as nearly as I can tell, like a retarded horse. It has a large, misshapen head and spindly legs with knobby knees. It stumbles rather than walks. It is not a gracious animal. For some reason, I'm under the impression that they're not the friendliest of creatures either, so I was pleased to be on the other side of the fence and I scurried back to my Room of Funk. If I'm going to deal with a smell like that, I'd rather it come from an animal that couldn't trample me to death.
And All This Without Upper Sinuses...
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