Leslie asked me the question. I looked away.
She came back with the same question again in a more deliberate cadence. My whole body tensed up and I stared purposefully three feet over her head.
No matter what, I wasn’t going to crack. I wasn’t going to make eye contact, and I surely wasn’t going to speak.
But then she asked the question a third time. As she asked, she reached up, grabbed my shoulders and summoned my eyes.
“Does this mean that you have never cleaned the toilet?” Leslie asked. “Never in the 13 years that we have lived here?” Her tone was a cross between amazement and utter disgust. Her words were a heavyweight combination of body blows followed by an upper right cross.
But more damning than her words – that stare.
I had been on the receiving end of that stare a few times before. I was immediately crushed.
It was a low I hadn’t felt since some traitor tipped Leslie off to the fact that they actually do have diaper changing stations in men’s restrooms. Who does that to a guy?
I don’t see myself as a slacker. I don’t believe that I am a male chauvinist.
In my defense, I grew up in a house with fairly traditionally defined roles. For much of my childhood my mother was home with me, my father was the bread winner, and their home duties fell pretty consistently along gender lines. Dad mowed the lawn. Mom did everything else.
As a result, I see the fact that I let Leslie mow, pay the bills, and open the door for me as pretty progressive moves on my part. And I have crossed picket lines to keep things running smoothly at home when needed. I’ve been spotted cooking, cleaning and meeting the varied needs of our littlest tribe members including bath time and a staggering number of diaper changes.
However, on this most unfortunate day, Leslie found my last holdout. I had almost made it to my 38th year without cleaning a toilet.
We had friends coming over that night, which always prompts a last minute mad dash of house cleaning. I was tending to two kiddos in the bathtub, while Leslie was running around the house hiding children’s toys. She called out to me from the living room.
“Honey, why don’t you spruce up the bathroom quickly?” she asked. Dutifully, I started organizing our toothbrushes and wiped down the sink.
She called out again.
“Don’t forget to clean the toilet!” she said.
“Don’t forget?” I thought. “How do you forget something that has never crossed your mind?”
I muttered back a response that didn’t confirm or deny her request. I began draining water from the bathtub hoping that a few wet and sudsy kids could provide a needed distraction. The water couldn’t disappear fast enough.
As I turned around to grab their towels, there she stood.
“It doesn’t look like you cleaned the toilet,” she said, peeking around me on both sides.
I showed her the meticulously arranged toothbrushes and the shiny sink hoping to buy enough time to develop an alibi or plan out an escape route.
“Well, we don’t have any toilet cleaner,” I said, trying to explain away the lack of progress. I opened the medicine cabinet to show her that we were out.
“Why in the world are you looking in there?” she asked. “What do you think you are looking for?”
It was as if questions were falling from the ceiling while a sea of questions began rising up from the floor. I was drowning, and there was no escape.
“Mark, where would you go if you wanted to get cleaner for the toilet?” she continued the inquisition.
Then with a Sherlock Holmes type flair, she marched over to the toilet, grabbed some magic wand that was hidden nearby, lifted up the cover of this strange container and thrust the wand down in, bringing it back up with a small, round scrubber now attached. With matched conviction she struck the inside of the toilet with her magic wand, circled the bowl a few times, and stood back to admire the sparkling, blue wonder that was our toilet.
With one triumphant flush Leslie had taken away my last holdout – my last stand as an independent man who refuses to be self reliant. I can only hope this victory takes her focus off of my inability to fold socks, or hang up my pants.
