Where I Lay My Head

Cecil, at the time, was renting an apartment in a building that was just two blocks from that very bus stop. It was big, about twice the size of Mullica Hills tallest building, and built of weathered red bricks. It's door was a gate of twisted cast iron bars that led you into a basic stairwell, its walls smooth with off-white paint. We trekked up those stairs until Cecil finally came to a stop at a door on the fourth level. In that hall of crumbling drywall spotted with what was once a layer of pumpkin-colored paint, his apartment was located at the far left corner, second to last door, addressed 63 with bright green letters painted on the flimsy oak face like graffiti. He unlocked the door to let us in, but I'm pretty sure it would falter to your weight if you so much as leaned on it. The apartment was bigger than I expected but much more filthy.

When you stepped inside you were in the kitchen, polka dotted with beer cans and dirty dishes. You could walk straight through the kitchen to find yourself in the living room. The living room was small and could have been extended to the right for twice its length, but that half was taken up with a large mahogany dining room table that was littered with pizza boxes, magazines, a cassette dock and a turn-table record player, and mountains of cassettes or records. It looked like he had never used the table for its exact purpose.

The living room was cramped with a couch, overstuffed chair and a make-shift coffee-table of milk-crates and plywood. Last but not least, the focal point of the room-- the TV. This reminded me of freedom and all of the other things I wasn't allowed at home but positively adored. One of those things being a shower. I loved taking showers, although I had only ever taken one. At home I had to boil every single gallon of water I needed for a bath and transfer it from the kitchen stove to the tub we had in the houses back room.

"Do you have a shower?"

Cecil laughed at me but understood that the little things so underappreciated by English society were considered luxury to and Amish kid on Rumspringa. "Yeah, you bet."

He led me to a darkened hall hiding behind a wall to your left if you were sitting on the couch facing the TV. There were three doors in this hall, the two on the right being bedrooms and the one at the far end being the bathroom. I could already see the shower and that excited me so much that I sped past Cecil into the bathroom. I was surrounded with thousands of tiny white tiles bordered in grime and was damn excited about it. Although I was focusing on the layout, with a functioning sink, shower and toilet, I still made sure to pay attention as he spoke.

"Kay, well, do me a favor and leave the door unlocked. A girl across the hall is givin' me access to her clothes while you're here so you can, well... look normal. I'll set them on the floor."

The shower was surrounded with a plastic white curtain so I wouldn't have to worry about anyone barging in and seeing me. All the same, I shut the door and stripped down to nothing and began fiddling with the shower controls. There was a single chrome handle to adjust this showers temperature, unlike the other I had used. Eventually I figured it out and positioned my stark bare figure under the head. It was like temperate rain at the slightest turning of a knob. Unbelievable!

I was in there for atleast an hour, lathering the floral smelling liquid soap over my body repeatedly and running my fingers through my hair as the constant flow of water swept through it. At home, we had just updated to buying Ivory bar-soap instead of the home-made lye-soap my Grandmother used to make. The stuff Cecil had was better, though! It came out of the bottle as an electric blue slime but foamed into thousands of fluffy bubbles once it hit your skin.

Eventually, the soothing warmth of the water turned to aching cold and I was forced to get out. I dried myself off with a towell hanging from a brazen wall hook. The towell was fluffy and thick as my thumb, much better than the torn sheets we used at home.

I noticed the set of clothes that he had set out for me and my eyes widened.

Okay, bring on the culture shock...