When My Boyfriend Got Trapped in our Airbnb Bathroom
This story is from long before my current odyssey, but I decided to share it for two reasons. First, as a statement that this website will be for any and all content I choose, including stories that are casual, comical, and sexual. For a while I considered keeping this website as a place for only “serious” pieces, like opinion pieces, journalistic style work, and the like, for the sake of looking more professional. But as I thought about it, I realized…why not? Why is it that a true story from my life, that happens to be comedic, isn’t “professional”? Why must the merit of a writer, a story teller, be judged only by pieces that are raw or thought provoking? That’s some bullshit, and if anything I think showing my range is much more a showing of skill than just writing the same style of piece over and over. The second reason is to put it as a reminder, to the readers and myself, that adventure doesn’t always have to come from something in a far off land. Travel is not limited to the international. We can, and should, travel within our own states, countries, and areas and look for adventure just the same as if we were abroad. Because why does fun have to be limited to certain continents? Why must our travel life be limited to placed deemed “worthy”? Life can be wherever you step; it’s just a matter of looking up to notice it.
This article contains sexually explicit content: reader discretion is advised.
Shot by Austin Dalley on iPhone 7
The cool night brushed my face as I stepped on the platform of Union Station. It was early May of 2018, and I was spending the week in Los Angeles with my boyfriend of the time. Somehow against all laws of California physics my train had arrived earlier than scheduled, so I waited in the sensually lit art deco interior until I got the text that he had finally arrived. After embracing, we started on our beautiful night drive toward our Airbnb in North Hollywood.
We rolled up sometime around midnight. After unpacking our things and admiring the aesthetic of the interior (what can I say, I have good taste) we took some time to get reacquainted, as it had been a while since we had seen each other.
So after an hour or so of fucking, we took turns cleaning up in the bathroom. I was first, and afterwards went down to the kitchen to eat some of the food I had brought, because I hadn’t eaten dinner and good gods I was fucking starving. As I savored my strawberries and greek yogurt as if it was the first food I had ever eaten in my life, I heard a banging and muffled yelling. Damn, I thought North Hollywood was a nicer neighborhood I thought to myself, continuing my snacking. But as it continued I realized it was coming from my apartment; I went up to find that it was my boyfriend in the bathroom. “Austin, I can’t open it. I’m stuck in here” he said through the closed door. “No you’re not, you liar,” assuming he was just messing with me. “Fine, try it.”
He was right. The door wouldn’t move. He pulled, I pushed, I even tried a solid door ram with a running start (I had been bulking at the time so I may have been just a little cocky about that attempt, but I digress). As I pushed against the door with all my force, my mind began to work.
The apartment was older, one of those mid-century LA apartments from the 60s. Unlike now where most American homes have their bathroom against an exterior wall to have window access, this one was in the center of the apartment, and had none. I had noticed some slight resistance against the door frame when I had used the bathroom first, but I thought nothing of it. Not only that, but thinking of my shower, I remembered there hadn’t been a vent fan either. All the moisture of any shower would be basically trapped in the bathroom and get into the walls...and the door frame. I remembered about how at my parents house growing up, the frame to our front door would warp every time it rained from the moisture in the air, and the door bolt would shift slightly out of place because of it.
This bathroom door had warped from however many days of shower humidity, and caused the bolt of the door to jam into the door frame. And now, we couldn’t get it out.
My boyfriend started to stress. I calmed him, talking through my side of the door. “Call the host, maybe this has happened before and he knows a trick to opening it.” He had left his phone in the bedroom when he went to shower, so it was all on me. I tried sending a message, then calling. Nothing. I realized I had no idea what time it was. Son of a bitch. 3am.
“He’s not going to answer,” I said. “For any time zone in this country he’ll probably be asleep. There’s only one other solution to this. We’re going to have to find a locksmith.”
“Are you for fucking real.”
So there we were, sitting on opposite sides of the door like some bad romcom, me using both our phones simultaneously trying to contact the host and search for a locksmith that was open 24 hours. I managed to make a list of local locksmiths, but one after another I called and they didn’t pick up. Finally, a shop in Little Armenia answered. It was the closest one we could get. I explained the situation over the phone, and after a long pause the other end replied “all right, we’ll send someone as soon as we can.”
A little over half an hour later, a young Armenian man was picking at the door with numerous tools from a toolbox. He was silently meticulous, working at the handle with a tool until he would realize that he wasn't progressing, then he would then replace it with a new instrument and continue the process. But it went nowhere. At the point when even this professional locksmith seemed to be at a loss, I told him my hypothesis about the door warping from moisture. He raised an eyebrow, intrigued that I would know of such an obscure situation, but gave a few specifically placed knocks onto the door and the wall. “Yeah, it’s the bolt that’s stuck” he said matter of factly, and pulled out the last remaining tool in his box: a saw.
After what seemed like an eternity of him working at the door, it finally released. My boyfriend ran with a towel to put on clothes, as naturally this whole time he had been trapped in the bathroom naked. We heavily thanked the locksmith, I paid him, and we finally went to sleep. We spoke of the incident again on our way to breakfast the next morning.
“The host better refund us for the locksmith and that night” my boyfriend said.
“Yeah well he’s a property owner in LA and we had to saw through his bathroom door, so I’m frankly not sure how this is going to go.”
As it turns out, messy. The host finally got back to us late in the morning, and as he was out of the city he couldn’t assess the damage himself. My boyfriend managed to get him to refund the night, since we barely even slept during it at all, but he was refusing to reimburse me for the locksmith.
“I mean, it sucks that I had to pay it, but maybe we should just drop it. This is already too much drama for my taste.”
“No” my boyfriend declared, “I’m going to get your money back. You know why? Because during our conversation he slipped that the bathroom door has been jamming and acting up for weeks now. So he knew something was wrong with it, didn’t do anything to fix it, and didn’t make any note of it for guests.”
“I still think this is too much drama.”
“Maybe I should sue him.”
“Can you not?”
My boyfriend in defiance decided that we wouldn’t stay the full time I had booked. We moved ourselves to his friend’s apartment that we had already planned on migrating to eventually anyway. The rest of our vacation week I just tried to keep it off his mind; it was a bump in the trip, but I didn’t want it to taint the whole experience, as this was his first time really seeing LA.
After a memorable 7 days of bars, clubs, food, and sight seeing, we finally had to say our goodbyes as we both went our separate ways to our parents houses, mine in California and his in Texas. And a few days later, I got a Venmo from my boyfriend, the message being only the lock and key emoji. He had gotten our host to pay. That stubborn motherfucker I thought, smiling to myself as I transferred the money and reminisced on that cool, wild night in May.
Shot by Austin Dalley on iPhone 7