I arrived at the steps of my hostel at 7 a. Nothing at this place worked properly. I wanted to rough it, and it was as if a genie had been charged with granting my wish. The toilet seat was held up by a mop. The hot water heater was broken. The sink ran constantly, which struck me as especially odd considering that it was quite apparent the owner was already cutting all costs through the neglect of all of his other domestic devices.
Just how lazy must you be to tighten a screw and instantly end an accumulating expense, in this case in the form of an unnecessarily high water bill? As time went on, I found myself growing more and more comfortable in the place, despite the lack of many basic luxuries that many of us take for granted at home, such as not having to consciously remember to check that toilet paper is available after you race to the bathroom in a hurry, with only your business on your mind.
One Friday, after a night of partying in the suburbs, I arrived back at the hostel at the crack of dawn. The spectacle of a hulking transvestite in a tight-yellow wife-beater did little to rectify our dispostion.
Immediately we proceeded up the stairs to the balcony to further observe this creature of the night. At this point I felt as if I were at the shark tank at the aquarium; while you feel exhilarated observing such a potentially hazardous, intriguing, being thrashing about, you never quite forget that the only thing separating you from certain violation is little more than a sliver of concrete and glass.
How perilously close we bring ourselves to the end sometimes, all in the name of cheap thrill…but alas, I digress. Hardly surprised at this point, I let it go. By now, a good few weeks into my stay, I had come to reason with the one important truism about this place: there is, absolutely, positively, no reason for anything.
