Dona E. Bowens

My grand plan to turn my airbnb into my permanent residence has fallen through and I’m good with it. When Augusto sat down with me and said, “I have something to tell you,” I knew he was about to render me homeless in a month. He had good reasoning. At 80 years old, the airbnb is his hobby. If he took on a long-term tenant, what would he do with himself? By the time I got into the taxi to take me to airbnb #2, I was smiling and saying to myself, “It’s all part of the adventure, Dona.”

Also, I got confirmation that I’ll be starting with my first Uruguayan students, online, in October. So I was joking with my friend Rosa that I have the potential to be the first person in history with a job, money in the bank and homeless! Wouldn’t that be some shit? I’m in airbnb #2 for a little under a month…that’s how much time I have to work out the housing situation and I’ll start on that this afternoon. I’m surprisingly calm about it all. I won’t really let myself become homeless in a foreign land, but I would like to stop pissing away money on airbnbs.

And as far as airbnbs go, this one I’m in now is so new that I had to unwrap the pillows, comforter and sheets and take the label off the skillet before I used it. The neighborhood is called Punta Carretas and supposedly it’s the bougie zone. I walked a couple of blocks and fell into a Mexican restaurant where the waiter told me (in English) that the barrio is popping until the wee hours. There does seem to be much more of a cafe life compared to my previous neighborhood of Pocitos—though I can’t see the beach from where I’m sitting. Checking google maps, it looks like I can maybe walk about 8 blocks to get to the water. I’ll test that out soon.

In the meantime, I’m learning this airbnb and the water works are kinda tricky, it seems. In fact, the owner tried to pull a fast one on me and asked me to cancel 2 days before my scheduled check in because a pipe had burst in the bathroom. He claimed that for some reason, he was unable to cancel through the airbnb website. I said, “Fuck that! If I cancel now, I’ll lose my money!” He assured me that wouldn’t be the case. Uh huh. I get on airbnb and when it asked for the reason of cancellation I clicked “The owner asked me to cancel.” Airbnb said, “DO NOT CANCEL ON BEHALF OF THE OWNER OR YOU WON’T GET YOUR REFUND.” I screenshotted that message for airbnb owner #2 and he said, “Ok. I’ll fix the pipe.”

So, fingers crossed, the plumbing seems to be working just fine, but I’m having bidet issues. I cannot claim to be a connoisseur of bidets. You know, growing up in the US, we are sadly not exposed to all that a bidet has to offer. There was a bidet at the hotel I stayed in when I first arrived and when I turned it on, the water just trickled out from the faucet at the rear. But apparently this airbnb has one of them newfangled bidets. When I turned the faucet on with this one, the water shot up and hit the ceiling. Seriously. Well damn! That thing has plans to flush out your intestines. The only way to stop the water from hitting the ceiling is to, of course, sit on the bidet. The ass block. But here’s the thing—the water shooting forcibly into the cavities of your nether regions is cold, cold, cold. Now, every other faucet in this apartment heats up to scalding within seconds, but not the bidet. I’m sitting on there for a good ten minutes with my teeth chattering and icicles hanging off my ovaries waiting on the water to warm up. And when the water finally does heat up, it comes all at once. No warning like going from cold to tepid to warm to hot to scalding. No. One moment it’s cold, the next moment you’re googling: scalded clitoris.

Then there’s the shower head. From the looks of it, there’s nothing special about it, run of the mill. But when turned on, water shoots out from the places where it should, but also from the very top of the shower head where there’s a crack that allows the water to go wherever the hell it pleases. It’s like the shower head has a unicorn horn on top that doesn’t shoot rainbows but fountains of water instead. I find myself having to shower very precisely, aiming the shower head mostly towards the wall so that the unicorn horn fountain doesn’t send water over the shower curtain and onto the floor like it did the first time I used it. All part of the adventure, right?

I forgot for a few days to have fun. I was so caught up in the housing search that I forgot how lucky I am. I forgot that I’m doing better than just ok. I forgot that I have resources and time on my hands. Time to create, time to explore, time to do nothing. I see your struggles in the US and I’m reminded that housing and water works are miniscule problems in the whole scheme of things.

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