is it OK to pee in houses???
Welcome to the June edition of my author newsletter! For more info on what this newsletter is, see the about page. For more info on who I am, check out my website.
This is gonna be a short one because I don’t have any notable reading or writing news to share from this month. But! I do have a very important question to ask. It is in the subject line of this email.
So my boyfriend Graig and I have spent the past few weeks shopping for a house, which has been quite the thrilling journey! Like any good basic bitch, I’m obsessed with HGTV and have basically spent all of my adult life eager to live out my own personal episode of House Hunters and/or Property Virgins. I’ve especially always wanted to say dumb shit in driveways, such as:
“Well, it’s not the craftsman style I was hoping for.” (As if I’d never seen the listing online.)
“Is that vinyl siding?” (When it’s obviously vinyl siding.)
“This is pretty far out. Not sure about the commute!” (Despite the fact that I’m self-employed and work at home.)
And so on.
But you know what? It turns out House Hunters is a total crock of shit. Because here’s the one thing I actually found myself saying the most during our marathon days of house showings:
“I HAVE TO FUCKING PEE.”
It got really bad on this one day last week when we looked at seven (mhmm) houses back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back.
I drank a large iced coffee prior to house number one. By the time we got to house three, I had to go. But how? And where? The very first place we saw had a sign that literally said “do not use toilets,” so I decided that going in any house was out of the question. Plus I figured that if I were selling my house, I wouldn’t want throngs of prospective buyers P-ing in my T. And I didn’t want to make things awkward with our real estate agent. How would I even go about it? Tell her I was gonna “test out the powder room” and then shut the door while she waited outside, listening to the flow? Also! She is quite pregnant. I figured if she could manage her bladder for seven houses in a row, what excuse did I have not to?
Speaking of pregnancy. I was basically in a fetal position on the car ride between houses five and six. And there were still two more houses to go! It suddenly struck me as absurd that we had laid eyes on fifteen toilets in the past few hours and I couldn’t use a single one.
So then I decided I would just ask our agent what the etiquette was for peeing in houses. I figured I could say it in a light, silly tone — so as to let her know that I was totally OK with both of us pretending I was making a weird joke and not actually trying to defile the toilet of a seller if it was a real faux pas.
But then I told Graig my plan and he was like, “No! That’s trashy.” So I suffered through yet another house. As we left, our agent was like, “The listing agent asked me to ensure all the lights are off before we leave, so I’ll just stay here for a sec and meet you guys at the next one.”
I became mad with envy. “You KNOW she is peeing right now!” I yelped to Graig as we got back in the car. “This is madness!”
We prayed for a gas station or fast food chain to appear en route to the next (and final) house, but no such luck. So we got there and I hobbled through that place like I was suffering from a fucking gunshot wound. I barely even remember what the kitchen looked like! Which says a lot, because you know I was meticulously scrutinizing every kitchen I passed through that day.
Once it was all over, we finally made a pit stop for a bathroom break and the world made sense again. But I still couldn’t stop thinking about how inconvenient the whole no-peeing charade was. How do all those bitches on House Hunters do it? I wondered. But then I remembered that they only look at three houses per episode. AND NOW WE KNOW WHY.
thank you for reading!
If you enjoyed this, please feel free to recommend it to a friend. If you hated it, please feel free to recommend it to an enemy. Either way, I encourage you to respond to this email with your thoughts on the subject of peeing in houses.
Nic