The guy who has been my tenant for the last ten months just moved out last night. I waited until this morning to tackle his bathroom.

I’ll just preface this by saying that he is an extremely hairy guy. He’s got full back, front and arm hair (and leg and pit and let’s just get real here, probably pubes too, because who would let all of that hair grow wild but then trim around the frank and beans), plus he belongs to that club of men who are growing out their beards to ZZ Top lengths. He even has an emblem for that club on his vehicle. (Walks with Wood would tell me that every time he saw my roommate, he had to resist the urge to run his fingers through his beard and then mess it up.) I know about all of his hair because there have been numerous sightings of him in just shorts or a towel.

I suited up for this cleaning by wearing elbow-length gloves and a mask. Even with my gear, I had to hold back a few gags because there were all kinds of curly hairs floating around the tub and the floor. Since I haven’t had hair for about 12.5 years now, it’s not something I have to deal with when I’m cleaning my bathroom. It makes me recall certain events I can’t un-live, like the time a boyfriend and I took another friend to get food at Denny’s at 3 am because it was the only place open, and my first bite into pancakes resulted in a curly, coarse hair wrapping around my tongue. (I did not lose it all over the table but I also did not continue chowing, no matter how not sober I was.) It also reminds me of a few times when I’ve had my face in guys’ junk and one of the short and curlies got stuck at the gag spot at the back of my throat, instantly making me dry heave and my eyes water profusely. As a side note, I am torn about the whole shaving phenomenon, because nothing will kill the mood faster than dry heaving during sexy time, but then again, if guy has some stubble and it comes into contact with my bits, it feels like my most tender parts are being sanded with an 80 grit.

I still have a good number of men in my circles who are single, and the best, unsolicited advice I can give them when they wonder why they are single is that they should start with their bathrooms. Their toilets should be white, not white-and-brown-and-yellow-and-moldy. Same thing for the counter tops and tubs – clean, not hairy, fuzzy and moldy. And for god’s sake, clean out the piles of hair balls that collect in the corners of the room so that when a breeze blows through it doesn’t look like a rabbit has escaped. If a guy does manage to land and keep a woman, I can only say that she must have forgiven him.

I scrubbed the toilet and the tub twice. Twice.