How to Remove Hair from a Floor Drain

There is always a moment of doubt.

When you clean the hair from the drain at night, somewhere near the end of your shift, when the surfaces shine and your muscles ache, when the building goes quiet, eyes half closed, chest slowly heaving, breathing now regular, Totoro between the trees, there is always a moment of confusion, however small and unstable, confusion about whether the hair that has accumulated in the grate of the floor drain, a matted mess of assorted strands and soap lather, the size and general appearance of a slumbering rodent, has indeed failed in its attempt to go down the drain or if, to the contrary, it has arisen out of the depths of the pipes, from their dark and indecipherable center.

This confusion is compounded by the impression, when you reach down to pull on the wad of hair, when you grab the limp rodent by its bloated belly, still warm, that, from some hidden location within the darkness of the drain, some secret abode, some clandestine base, some secure foothold, the hair is pulling back. It is unclear, at this moment of obfuscation, of liminality, whether you are pulling the hair from the drain, or whether the hair is trying to pull you into the drain.

Whatever you do, don’t stare, at that very moment, inherently unstable, dangerously so, straight down the center of the drain. Don’t peer into its dark heart. Don’t inquire into its obscure origins. Don’t try to follow the rope ladder down to the place, the diffuse region, the murky abyss, the event horizon, where its ends fray, where it unravels, where it pixelates, where it dissolves into the surrounding cloud of nothingness. It will only aggravate the crisis. It will only heighten the distress.

It is there, crouched down, sitting on your heels, in the showers of the changing room, floor tiles reaching out in all directions, that you start to feel desperate, that you let out a grunt, that you exert more force than necessary, a violence in excess of the needs of the situation, in hopes that the knot will loosen, that the enigma will be resolved, that your head will stop spinning, that you will take up, once again, your place in The Order of Things, with a modicum of certainty and dignity and composure.

A sense of danger and precariousness overcomes you, as if everything you worked so hard to build, your most deeply entrenched interpretations, your most cherished sufferings were about to be toppled, upended, invalidated, lost. Cheeks flushed, pulse quickened, pupils dilated, you rally to their defense. You panic, you grunt, you strain, you hyperventilate, you overrespond.

But the harder you pull, the tighter the knot becomes.

Then it hits you, the epiphany. It bathes you in its serendipitous light.

There is nothing to defend. The real battle is over, long gone. You are covered in the scars that tell its story, a tale of defeat, of precipitous descent, of deprofessionalization. It is the very bottom of night, and the city is sleeping. You are smaller than ever before, just a tiny speck, covered in hair, trembling, fur perhaps. And you are squatting low on the floor, all the way down, engaged in an imaginary struggle with an imaginary adversary, amidst so many real ones.

The realization overtakes you. You abandon yourself to the darkness and drink it in deep, savor it in long sips. You feel yourself falling, feel the warm air of the abyss against your skin. Your muscles relax. Your vision softens. Your grip loosens.

At that very instance of letting go, of sweet release, the tuft of hair also releases its grip. It detaches from the grates of the floor drain. The rodent scurries into the palm of your hand and nestles there in its safety, now a friend and co-conspirator.

Source: Yellow, yellow (1971), written by Frank Asch and illustrated by Mark Alan Stamaty