When i first moved away from home I got a small apartment in a town not far from where I was taking my machinists apprenticeship. I was a cheap bastard then as now, so in order to help defray the costs of my rent, I volunteered to help manage the building. Not a big deal, as it included shovelling walks and mowing a 3′ by 40′ strip of grass.

Sometimes there were more, er, distasteful gigs.

The blond in 3B would often come home from the strip club where she worked, and shower, and the skin oil and glitter and her long hair would clog the shower drain, most often at 3:00 AM. She’d be standing there in a bathrobe being rubbed up against by her most recent acquisition (they were always cops. Why is that?) while I ran the snake down the tub drain and cleaned out a wad of hair that looked like a dead cat. She alwas thanked me with such sincerity, and I’d pack up my tools and try to go back to sleep, imagining her being drilled by the Boy in Blue scant feet from my headboard.

Occasionally, as well, there were crapper problems, and they were the worst. You had to go get the big powered snake from the rental place and set up base camp in the potty for sometimes several hours. I also usually ended up letting the offending party use MY crapper in the interim, and at the end of it all, I’d have to clean up their crapper AND MINE, because they were invariably pigs.

Now, Mrs 6C was a divorcee in her 30’s, and she was always after me, though I was in thrall with my first wife at the time so I never took advantage. I also discovered she seemed to have NO concept of personal hygeine; she flushed pads. Shouldn’t a 30something woman know not to flush pads? The box was next to the crapper, it said “NOT FLUSHABLE” in big mauve letters.

Anyway, I set up in her bathroom and began to feed the snake into the john, after scooping out the brackish water and dumping the most of it in the bathtub. I managed to get the clog broken up, (yes, pads) and decided to run the snake all the way down the main lest some other nonflushable items were there, laying in wait for me to block off the whole building at 2:30 some morning. I run the snake out another eight, ten feet, and then it gets sticky. Figuring I’d just hit a bend in the pipe, I pressed on, and soon the snake was moving along nicely. I managed to run out about thirty feet, which I figured would have been enough to take it to the street. I started to reel back, and it stopped.

I let out another couple feet, reeled back, and it stopped again.

I backed and pulled and backed and pulled until at one point i was perched atop the bowl with my feet on either side of the porcelean rim, both hands on the snake, yanking like I was pulling the worlds toughest weed from the worlds hardest dirt. the veins on my neck were standing out, and my face was as red as the handle of the Milwaukee drill that drove the whole contraption. I know this because of the mirror just opposite the crapper.

I was abvout exhausted, on my nands and knees, tugging and releasing the snake, when I heard a bloodcurdling scream from across the hall. Everyone in the apartment building went running; I shouldered the 5C door open and we found Mrs 5C standing in the living room, having reecently arrived home from work, pointing into the bathroom, where some twenty feet of drain snake protruded from her toilet, where it had grabbed her bathmat, shower curtain, and a towel.
“The toilet is eating my bathroom” was all she could gasp as mr Winters caught her and lowered her to her couch; I had apparently run the snake through a cross in the drainpipe and back out through her toilet, where it sprayed shit all over the place and then flopped about the room knocking things down and latching onto several items which I was attempting to pull through her toilet.

Now, I had three crappers to clean. I lost my part time building management gig because Mrs 5c moved out (I think she probably poops in old milk cartons to this day, she’s never touched a toilet since) and I never got to see the stripper in 3B half naked again.

Meeeeeemmmmmmreeeeeeez.