Bennifer, the reunited double act that is Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez, have a new $50 million Bel-Air pad that boasts not one, not two, not three, but 17 — yes, 17 — bathrooms.
Personally, I’m fine with this. Presumably, we’re talking a shared show-ponyish one, another couple that each will actually use, one for each of their five children, a cloakroom near the entrance, one off the kitchen, another in the gym, a staff bathroom, and five for guest bedrooms. Modest, really, even without resorting to gags regarding the upkeep of JLo’s mighty and doubtless immaculately scrubbed and polished posterior.
My principal feeling is not jealousy — jealousy is too small and slight a term for it — but a sense of gargantuan mourning regarding the minuscule, windowless pit I am forced to share with the man I love; loving him a good deal more when not obliged to share “facilities”. Seventeen bathrooms? Two would be a start.
I remember my horror on first cohabiting with a chap in my mid-thirties that I had turned my lover into someone I was compelled to have conversations with regarding lavatorial arrangements. Fifteen years on, and second go around, the pain remains real.
My beefs with Terence’s abluting practices are legion. I give you, travesty No 1: soap. One way in which I deal with the squalor I am forced to endure is with fancy Florentine bars. Terence persists in leaving them melting in pools of water. Cue my cries of “Respect the cake”.
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Unlike my father and brothers, he is not a pee-er on floors, meaning waders aren’t required. This involves him considerately sitting down, something I recently discovered at 4am when I found him perched in the dark (so he “didn’t wake up”) in the manner of a serial killer. My screaming lasted some minutes.
Warfare is not merely one way. Terence resents occupying the Vauxhall branch of SpaceNK, bottles and tubs assailing him from every angle. We do not have a leaving-the-loo-door-open type relationship, thank Zeus. However, not being a camel, I am frequently forced to interrupt his lengthy 6.30pm baths, a moment for which he coined the phrase: “Hold my Proust,” as he passes his paperback to me and dives underwater to render himself insentient.
And then there was the fatberg. Debate still rages as to its cause: Terence maintains that our drains were destroyed by my face-wipe addiction; I that it was an act of the gods. Either way, dismantling this monstrosity cost £6,000. He then created laminated posters of the carnage, which he tapes to the lavatory if he discovers me in possession of cotton-wool.
The fact that this hotly disputed area features no lock means it is also claimed by the dog, whose fomo is such that she cannot bear to be away from us at any point. For, lo, one of us will be enthroned, and there will be a bunt of the nose, then, in she trots, jumping into our laps to share each magic moment.
This marks the seventh year of our relationship. Happily, I am yet to experience an itch. However, I would like to start seeing another bathroom: large, light-filled, with a free-standing bath — plus another bathroom positioned at a strategic distance.
