Shower

Who knows what it's like in Switzerland, on a sparkling day of winter snow and cloudless skies? I certainly don't, having never crossed the Swiss border. But I can imagine the general feel of Alpine days here in London, staying in the penthouse of the Swissotel, modern rooms flowing about the top floor, one containing my bed, the other a more or less living room/office with a floor-to-ceiling plate glass view of the Thames where, even in midwinter, tourist boats zip along and freight barges steam ahead. I sit at the desk, laptop humming, proud that I have learned to work the extremely simple espresso machine...which mystified me at first only because of its extraordinary ease. The room is loaded with everything. The room is not a room, but several rooms, a suite, a penthouse suite, and what's really sweet about the espresso machine is that the thing works just like the barista version that hisses in Peet's back in Menlo Park, except that the job of loading the little stainless steel holders with ground coffee and tamping them down is already done. The ground coffee holders are packed, tamped and ready to load. I am loaded too, not only on a series of espressos, but chocolate. Remember, this place is Swiss. On the center of the dining table, and, yes, there is a dining table, some member of the suite staff has placed the sweet stuff of Switzerland, a tiered silver tray of chocolates. I know it's not a healthy breakfast, but I'm not in a healthy environment. I am in this fancy West End hotel, high on the river view, chocolate and the escapism that comes of avoiding the awful moment when I have to shower alone.

A friend has written to ask how this can be possible, how in the fabled metropolis one can operate a slick hotel without a single wheelchair-accessible room. Wilhelm, a long departed German Jewish relative and keen observer of everything European, would have had a simple answer. The Swiss. A nation of venal charmers, anti-Semites and cuckoo clock makers. They are not to be trusted. And in all honesty, I believe that if the Swiss belonged to the EU, this hotel would operate differently. But they don't, and it doesn't, and speculations of this sort are only stalling the inevitable. I avoided a shower yesterday, staring fearfully at the stainless-steel-and-glass modernity of the bathroom and deciding to sponge off instead. But not two days in a row.

Better tackle the easy part first. Yes, the toilet is a little low, but at least it's manageable. Once I'm done using it, it's a simple matter of shifting around on the toilet seat to get enough of an angle to...what? Yesterday, didn't I slide my hand onto the marble shelf behind the toilet and work myself up to a standing position? And am I not doing the same thing today, having moved my functioning leg under me? And why isn't it happening? Why am I not rising? Okay, a little shifting around on the toilet seat and, damned if I don't scoot my knee against the heated towel rack.

Yes, it's a wonderful thing, the British habit of electric bars next to the shower. In this chronically damp and cold climate, there's no other way to get a towel dried. And this is a particularly exquisite stainless steel rack, washcloths, bath and face terrycloths, all dry and warming nicely. But I have this little problem with skin sensation, and I can't tell when something is burning me until it's too late. So I am leery of this heated towel rack, otherwise I would grab its steel bars and hoist myself to standing. I'm stalling. I am stalling, because I am slightly panicking. I am not sure I can get off this toilet. How did I do this yesterday? I scoot my butt just high enough on the toilet seat to facilitate use of the arm extended on the marble and the functioning quadricep of my left leg to get myself up and vertical...and now wedged in the space between the wall and the hot pipes of the electric towel rack.

I try, but no, I cannot shift my paralyzed leg out of this corner without hitting the heated steel. I try, and I feel my leg spasm in response. Yes, I could sit down again and get stuck one more time on the toilet, or I could work my way past the pipes, heat be damned, but there's this other neurological factor, the spastic effect of things that are unexpectedly hot or cold. I am trapped in this wedge area, and if I think much more about this situation, how it is a metaphor for life, my energy will drop to the point where I will drop to the toilet...remaining here until the maid finally decides to clean the penthouse. Which is too ugly to consider. So I go for it, twisting past the hot pipes, getting the leg around the toilet and to a point of relative safety. I still haven't showered.

This calls for another espresso, doesn't it? I insert the pre-packed metal thing in the machine, but I'm so nervous that it springs out. Cursing, regretting my existence, I scramble around for the smooth coffee puck. It has camouflaged itself beside the sofa leg. I don't know why I am doing this. There are many more of these espresso pucks, for this is a suite, doubtless the scene of many corporate dos or high-end romances, all of which require more than a cast of one.... Which explains why, looking at the clock and realizing that the London daylight is shifting, and not in my favor, I finally align my wheelchair's front casters with the low metal lip of the shower.  

Okay, the glass door doesn't open in the right way and there is no effective railing inside, but I am going for it.  After all, there is at least a rubber shower mat, and isn't it perfectly arranged, slanting across the tile shower floor to provide maximum traction?  So what's to worry?  Look at the way I am now dropping my paralyzed right leg onto the rubber mat, gingerly lifting my moving leg up and over the metal lip, and damned if I'm not inside the stall and shower-ready.  

The scene is glistening with Swiss hardware.  This is a high-tech, high-design Swiss shower, don't you know?  Too bad these Europeans can't use a sensible, unambiguous knob to turn the damn thing on.  I twist and...too much happens too quickly, spraying and clouding, my limbs shaking with spastic overstimulation.  Quick, think, deduce, analyze, make sense of this.  Those little metal protrusions are not decorations.  Four shower heads are erupting, two spraying up, two down.  Miraculously, I am standing.  The quadriplegic body doesn't like surprise, especially the 63-year-old quadriplegic body.  It cannot bend or twist the way it once did.  Balance is critical.  Yet once I get used to it, having all these shower heads spraying up and down at bodily crevices is quite convenient.  It's the lack of railings that makes this such a marginal experience.  At least I don't drop the soap.  I get myself lathered and rinsed and successfully drop back into the wheelchair without a fall.

After all, it's only time isn't it?  I've been up for four hours.  It is now noon.  My trip to the London Transport Museum will be a short one.  My actual trips on London Transport in the 1970s were long.  One pays a price for life experience, all of it.  I don't understand the cost/benefit ratio here.  And, yes, it's 12:45 PM by the time I have my socks on, shoes on, money pouch cinched into place.  All this to look at the story of tubes and buses.  Nevermind.  It's my story, and it's taken so long to get here...but out the door is out the door.  Which is better, much better, then on the floor, the floor of the shower, and in my small neuromuscularly defined world, sometimes verticality is everything.