Listen to this articleThe road to my room is fraught with danger and excitement.
I live in a basement apartment in an aging house. It’s a dark, creaky, spider-infested, spooky place, which is a most excellent location for an underprivileged trollop who can’t afford her own bridge. Owing to the fact that the floor of the entire apartment is covered with tile, with nary a single square inch of carpet, my queenly powers of deduction surmised that sometime in its very long history, this place had experienced some flooding issues. Through the creative use of many area rugs and throw pillows, I have been able to convert the sterile environment into a somewhat comfortable, if not terribly congested, nest. Each nook and cranny has been stuffed to the breaking point with just the barest essentials of my wardrobe necessities. A case in point, just my boobs alone take up a whole wall of shelving by themselves, leaving very little space for my 13 beehive wigs and other provisions.
My suspicions of H20 invasion came to fruition last week. Late one evening, I staggered home, barely able to move, girdle stuffed nearly to the bursting point from a gluttonous outing at a Chinese buffet. My oldest sister Hyacinth Bucket would be ever so ashamed as I couldn’t help but brush up against the walls on both sides of the hallway at the same time.
For the perfect ending to a good evening, I had just stripped down to my delicates, and was getting all set to crash onto the couch and hone up on the latest fashion trends by watching RuPaul’s Drag Race on the DVR. I stepped into the bathroom and was shocked when my stocking-covered feet landed in icy cold water. Upon further investigation, I discovered copious amount of water gushing up through the floor. The water level was rising rapidly and I had to act quickly to prevent my electrified breasticles from shorting out and electrocuting me. To add to the urgency, all my ball gowns, which hang all the way down to the ground, were in great danger of sustaining water damage. Not since the Teton Dam Flood of 1976 has there been the potential for such massive property damage. To prevent myself from melting like the Wicked Witch of the West and to insulate my feet from the shockingly cold water, I slipped into a pair of rhinestone-bedazzled opera-length hip waders (every self-respecting queen worth her tiara should own a pair) and began flood-mitigation procedures.
I investigated the sump pump, which is located in a very scary room under the back porch of the house. I grabbed a flashlight (by that, I mean one of the interchangeable nipple lights I use on my breasticles) and dashed out of the apartment door. I tripped and fell as I ascended the concrete stairway, leaving a bloody “road rash” wound on my arm. As I neared the entrance, I could smell the acrid stench of decaying flesh. Something or someone had died. My small boob light illuminated a horrific scene – 3-foot deep, pitch black water, filled with massive amounts of floating garbage, was lapping at the foundation. I was halfway expecting the cold dead hands of Shelly Winters, reprising her deadly swimming role in the “Poop-Side-Down Adventure,” to rise up out of the water and drag me under the surface to my death at any moment. I quickly cast the small beam of boob light about the room and located the source of the deathly stench. A poor, deceased kitty cat lay decomposing in the corner.
Staring death in the face, I waded into the gruesome froth, searching for the sump pump. If there was going to be any chance at all to save my irreplaceable wardrobe, I needed to get that thing pumping, posthaste. I followed some scary looking wires, leading down from the ceiling into the dark abyss and found the inoperative device lying motionless at the bottom of the fetid pool. Reluctantly, I reached my hand down into the freezing, stinking, pond of death and felt for the sticking float valve. I gave it a tug and it came bobbing up to the surface just like a lonesome turd in a swimming pool, ala Caddyshack. My desperate, panicked spirits quickly rose as I heard the sound of the pump as it started to operate.
With the waters now beginning to recede, I rushed back into the apartment, and grabbed a mop to begin sopping up the river running through it. Upon the first twist to wring out the mop, it broke. I thought of using Tampax to soak up the offending liquid, but then I remembered that I don’t use them and thus, didn’t have any lying about. So I was reduced to putting on my well-used knee pads, getting on my knees (fortunately not an entirely unfamiliar position) and sopping up the water with a pair of surprisingly absorbent panties (about a half-gallon at a time), which I grabbed from the dirty clothes hamper and wringing them, about a thousand times, into buckets.
Disaster narrowly averted.
F.Y.I., no boobs were harmed in the execution of this story.
As always, these events leave us with several eternal questions:
1. Should I place three stone statues of billy goats at the entrance to my apartment?
2. Should I have opened a slip-n-slide concession in my apartment?
3. If I employed a hunky lifeguard to supervise, could I raise the admission fee?
4. Should I move to Weeki Wachee Springs, Florida and join the mermaid show?
5. Who knew that knee pads were multi-use and could also be used in non-recreational activities?
6. If I had been electrocuted by my boobs, how would that read in the obituary?
These and other important questions to be answered in future chapters of:
The Perils of Petunia Pap-Smear
