The gods of plumbing
A story about a broken shower head, rockstars, and polytheism
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Story time…
One irrefutable law of shower malfunction is that a shower will fail only after you’ve applied soap to your face and before you’ve had the chance to wash the soap from your eyes. And so it was that last Sunday, after a four-mile walk, I found myself standing in our shower, squinting up through soapy eyes at an inoperable shower head.
At first, I tried to fix the shower head. But this was difficult for three reasons.
I cannot see without my glasses.
While the shelf in our shower is stocked with body wash, facial scrubs, shampoos, and conditioners, there are no tools.
I am not a plumber.
After a few minutes of using my bare hands to twist the shower head clockwise, I changed my strategy. With my bare hands, I twisted the shower head counter-clockwise.
Eventually, I gave up. I switched to the blame game. Wrapping a towel around my waist, I left the bathroom, and went to find Christina.
“Was the shower working when you used it this morning?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Are you sure about that? Because it’s not working now, and you were the last one to use it.”
“Are you trying to blame me?” Christina asked.
“Yes.”
“Well, it’s not working.”
“Neither is the shower.”
Christina asked me to fetch her tools from the garage. Rather quickly, she removed the shower head, and almost immediately diagnosed the problem.
“Whoa,” she said, “this is rusty as fuck.”
Christina handed me the shower head. The hardware was, as advertised, rusty as fuck.
“What do we do?” I asked.
Christina looked back at the pipe coming out of the wall. The rust had begun to work its corrosive voodoo on the pipe too.
“We can try to put on a new shower head,” Christina said. “But that’s a temporary fix. I’m worried that we’ll have to replace the pipe. And you know what that means?”
“That we’ll have to call a plumber?”
“Yes. And the plumber might have to break the wall.”
“Sounds expensive. Disruptive.”
“I think we should try the DIY route first.”
But the DIY route was not to be. First, Lowe’s screwed up our online order. Then, we overestimated the healing powers of plumber’s tape. Finally, with all hope lost, we descended into pointless bickering, for a moment. After apologizing to each other, we cleaned out the shower.
“I’m calling Rockstar Plumbing,” I said. “They did a great job with the water heater and the sink with the slow drain.”
“Our plumbers are rockstars?” Christina asked.
“No, they’re plumbers. I mean, maybe they play music for shits and giggles, like on the weekend, but rockstar is just a clever way to let customers know that they… rock.”
Christina smiled. She played a little air guitar too.
“You could be mine… PLUMBER!” Christina sang.
“It would be cool if real rockstars showed up,” I said. “Like maybe one day, Axl Rose comes to fix our plumbing.”
“On second thought,” I said, “after the Chinese Democracy fiasco I just don’t think we can count on Axl to be prompt, and you want a prompt plumber.”
The next day, Rockstar Plumbing sent Sean. I met Sean outside. We both wore masks. For all I knew, “Sean” may actually have been Axl Rose under that mask. But then again, for all he knew, I may have been Slash, who played lead guitar for Guns & Roses, back before Napster ruined the music business and forced rockers to learn marketable skills like plumbing.
“You wanna show me the problem?” Sean asked.
I led Axl, I mean “Sean,” to the bathroom.
“This is bad,” Sean said. “It’s pretty rusty. If I can’t detach the pipe, we’re going to have to break the wall.”
“Oh no. I was afraid of that. What do we do to avoid breaking the wall?”
“We’re going to say a prayer.”
I liked Sean’s thinking. But his idea raised an important theological question, right off the bat: which deity should I address this prayer to?
As an agnostic Jew, I’m not even sure if there is a god, and I have no idea if she handles plumbing. Of course, there are other gods, ever world religion has at least one. But since I’ve never troubled those gods before, I didn’t feel right about asking them to do me a plumbing solid.
The gods I deal with regularly are what you might call pagan gods. For example, I’ve cursed the god of printers thousands of times. Whenever I’m running late, I beseech the traffic god to deliver me from the madness of Los Angeles freeways. This Thanksgiving, I failed to honor the baking god and they cursed my apple pie. All things considered, I am a bad polytheist. But if I can save a few bucks and spare two souls the trouble of a day laboring in our small bathroom, I’ll pray to any god who will listen.
“Roger that,” I told Sean. “I’ll be in my shrine praying.”
I left Sean alone. In my office / shrine, I said a quick prayer to Wrench, which seemed like a good name for a plumbing god. A few minutes later, Sean summoned me.
“Bad news. The thread is shot. We’re going to have to break the wall.”
CURSES! I Knew it. I just knew it. You can’t count on Wrench. For all I know Wrench isn’t even the plumbing god’s real name. It’s probably Monkey Wrench, and I’ll bet he’s one of those trickster gods who delights in giving people false hope.
“I’ll have to come back tomorrow with a helper.”
Just then Sean’s phone rang.
“Maybe it’s the answer to our prayers,” I said.
Sean shrugged, answered the phone. I listened as he explained the shower situation. Then Sean listened as the voice on the other end explained how the issue might be resolved without breaking a wall.
“OK, I’ll give it a try,” Sean said, before hanging up.
“Was that god?” I asked.
“No, it was my boss. He says I might be able to grab onto the thread with a nipple extractor.”
Sean went back to his truck for the nipple extractor. While I waited, I tried not to think about the deranged mind that came up with the name “nipple extractor.” But that was no use. I sort of understood the idea behind the extraction part, but why bring nipples into this? Was it possible that plumbers, perhaps owing to their previous careers as rockstars, are over-sexed kinksters? If so, how to square Sean’s hedonistic tool-naming conventions with his religiosity? And what did all of this mean for our plumbing?
A moment later, Sean returned with the nipple extractor.
“Hey, I’ve got to ask. Why do they call it a nipple extractor?”
“No idea.”
Sean jammed the nipple extractor into the rusty pipe, banged it home with a few taps from his wrench, then removed the troublesome pipe without incident.
“Our prayers were answered!”
“Rock & Roll.”
So George says that you should look into repiping the whole house. When stuff like this starts to happen, the shit can hit the fan. When it rains it pours. <3