The morning following my first stealth shower I arose eagerly and once again returned to the luggage room. There it was, still unlocked, still unguarded. I scampered in and repeated the previous morning’s shower ritual, this time without nearly having a heart attack every time I was forced to take my eyes off the bathroom door, which had yesterday caused me to picture it being knocked down by an enraged band of Oxford Shower Police. Feeling marginally more confident that my plumbing/hygiene difficulties had been resolved, I left the luggage room once more.
Needless to say, I was bursting with the joyful news of my stealth shower, and as so often happens when I find something terribly exciting, most of the people I told couldn’t quite see it. However, I did get one person to respond with something other than an ill-disguised nervous look and a quick escape into some other conversation—one of my fellow students disclosed the location of her stairwell’s bathroom, which she claimed was relatively acceptable, though I doubted that it was as acceptable as my stealth bathroom.
The following day I stealth-showered again, feeling even less nervous. Later that day, growing positively brassy, I decided I ought to put the bedroom attached to this plumbing marvel to use as well. It had a comfortable chair, and was quite cool, making it a much more pleasant place to study on a warm afternoon than my own third-story bedroom. So, I collected my notebook and Tolkien, and headed to the luggage room for a productive afternoon. Sadly, though I hadn’t come close to a coronary in the shower that morning, I was considerably jumpier at the thought of discovery that afternoon. I could hardly get through a paragraph without jumping up to pull the blind, check the door, or peer around the blind I’d just closed for the elusive Shower Police. One of these window checks led me to notice there were several workmen doing some sort of construction in the quad beyond (or possibly several undercover Oxford Shower Police, who could say). They kept making noises which startled me more than just being there already did. Then, on one of my investigatory abandonments of my studies, I happened to glance into my stealth bathroom. Yep, it was still there. Yep, the plumbing was still intact. Yep—but wait. The toilet seat was up. I most certainly hadn’t left it that way. It clicked that I was not the only one making use of this gem of a restroom. Probably the workmen in the adjacent quad found it fairly convenient as well (assuming they weren’t Shower Police).
That was too much for me. I gathered my things up and fairly bolted. Still, there was one more benefit to be harvested from the room. Set up as though it were waiting for a guest, it had a towel, bathmat, and soap packet neatly stacked on the bed. These were commodities to be little less highly valued than plumbing. Though I’d brought my own bath towel, I was having to rely on the good “scouts” (apparently they’re not maids) of Oriel College to supply bathmats. They gave out sturdy squares of paper for the purpose, which looked much more like the sort of thing mechanics put on the floor of your car to protect it from their grubby shoes while they perform maintenance, and the scouts were none too keen on replacing them regularly. So I nabbed the whole stack of linens (and paper) off the bed the next morning when I came in for my stealth shower.
Two more days were begun with refreshing stealth showers. Things had certainly improved from, say, the messy and largely unproductive attempt to wash my hair in my bedroom sink that had begun my trip. On the evening of that second day, as I headed down to the college computer lab (just follow the signs saying Nurse’s Office. A Britishism? A prank? I have no idea, but there you go), I noticed another open door. This one was a hallway even I, with my blissfully uninhibited attitude towards doors, had never attempted to investigate, as it had been described as a residence for important visitors (or so, at least, my memory of my heavily jet-lagged college tour told me), and had a very loud, echo-y sort of floor. Apparently these were extremely important visitors, because right there at the end of their hallway was a large rectangle of a bathroom ventilated by a stained glass window. I can’t quite imagine how the thought process for that went—yes, we’ll tuck bathrooms in this corner, this tunnel, and this closet, and, oh yes, let’s get some plumbing in the chapel while we’re at it—but there it was. Of course, I investigated. This bathroom had a slightly larger shower stall than my stealth shower, a rough sort of floor I would normally associate with swimming pool locker rooms, a very orange overhead light, and the stained glass window opened out onto a heavily-trafficked alley, but it seemed like a functional bathroom (relative to bathrooms other than my stealth shower, of course). I decided to keep it in mind, though I hoped I wouldn’t need to.
The next day, I headed off for my next stealth shower. I threw on my clothes from the day before, bundled clean ones in my towel, grabbed my various soaps and lotions and brushes, and trotted across the quads, enjoying the smell of summer in the early morning. As I entered the hall containing my stealth shower, I heard voices. Uncommon, as it was early, but not unheard of. But as I got closer, I knew they were coming from my stealth shower. My stealh shower and its adjacent bedroom were no longer a luggage room, but an occupied one. Trying to look as though it were quite normal to wander around in public at 7AM in rumpled clothes while carrying an armful of linens and toiletries, I walked past the door to my stealth shower, pointedly not aiming accusatory glances at the people standing in the doorway of its bedroom. This was probably just as well, as one of them was leaning rather proprietarily against the doorframe, wearing nothing but a towel, and the other, more conventionally clad, appeared to be seeing how her friend liked her accommodations.
I was forced to make use of my rather timely discovery from the night before, which was fortunately not being used by any important visitors (and had a lock on the door to keep the Shower Police at bay). It did work, but it was quite disconcerting to dry off and dress while listening to people chatting or shouting to one another in the alley just on the other side of the stained-glass window.
I checked my stealth shower several more times, but in vain. The door was now locked, or occasionally blocked by its new occupant. I was back to itinerant showering, though my options had increased. I had my chapel shower, and the shower my fellow student had told me about. That one was a little more interesting than I would have liked—I located it at the top of the main tower. To enter it, one had to duck under a huge old wooden beam, and the bathroom itself had two levels separated by a short staircase—the lower one for the sink and shower, and the upper for the toilet. The upper level had a perpetually open window which looked out on the college roof, and which didn’t seem quite pigeon-proof enough for my liking. Also, the shower drain functioned about as well as a plug, and the low lip on the shower stall meant one was constantly in danger of flooding the first level.
At least my new shower options no longer required me to disturb anyone early in the morning, but they were never quite equal to my stealth shower. Oh, well. It was good while it lasted.
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