Sharing Too Much

Things that I consider strictly off-limits for use by others in a communal household include: toothbrushes, expensive hygiene products (like facial cleansers and hair product), my underwear, shoes, and razors.

All of the aforementioned are user-specific goods that should never, ever be shared without express permission from the owner because such actions fall into the categories of “gross,” “weird,” and “expensive to replace.”

I've learned, however, that rules of common courtesy seem to have no weight in a land where men can piss anywhere, chickens and goats roam free to graze and bellow at unspeakable hours of the morning, and travelers can walk up to a stranger's front yard and pitch a tent for the week. Likewise, enter any home and all that you possess will become at once a new curiosity or tool for another, free to use and destroy at will.

Now, my host family is incredible and very respectful toward me – they don't make me eat if I don't want to, they leave me to myself when I am in my room, and they took down all of the spy cameras before I moved in. They don't even have the habit of going through my garbage like the host families of my many counterparts do (with often embarrassing results, I might add).

Considering their wonderful success in “getting me” as an American, I suppose I should forgive them for their single lacking: they use things that I deem “for private use” and, possibly, have my bodily fluids on them. But perhaps I shouldn't forgive them. You decide.

Some examples:

I developed the habit of counting my underpants that I hang to dry after I learned about the panty thief on my island site. The thief, named Tibo, is one of a family of thieves, a band if you will. His brother likes to steal my jewelry and wear it obviously in front of me, pretending all the while that it was his to begin with; his sister is fond of my flip-flops and other people's money; and his dad probably would like my pots and pans, but I can't know for sure because years ago he was put in prison for stealing and subsequently murdered in a fight. So this Tibo is a legacy, really, and I was told to guard my panties as one does Spanish Gold so long as he was around, because stealing panties is his “thing.”

On the mainland one day, I stepped outside to check on the state of my drying laundry, and lo! I was two pair short. Did Tibo swim across from the island and take my panties? I spent a week eyeing his underwear lines suspiciously, looking for the tell-tale signs of my underpants: frayed with holes and reading “Wictoria's Secret” along the top (a Filipino Original Brand). As it turns out, my host mother mistook the tattered underpants for hers, and I only learned of their whereabouts upon seeing them hanging during her next laundry day. Ew.

In another incident, I came home to find my running shoes missing. Thinking they ran off, you can imagine my surprise when my host brother returned from an afternoon playing tennis wearing a brand-new-used pair of trainers: mine. Though flattered I was that he thought my shoes worthy to wear, I could only wonder what mathematical calculation could predict the stink that would come from those things after our combined athletic pursuits.

The day my toothbrush was in the mouth of Papa was just as surprising. I guess I didn't know people here actually brushed their teeth all that much. And do toothpaste/toothbrushes work like antibacterial soap? As in, even if you are using them to clean something, are the instruments, in effect, self-cleaning at the same time....?

Probably my least favorite of all, though, is the repeated use of my razor by the men in the house. Yes, I shave my armpits, and no, I can't tell you why it's gross to share razors. It just is. Especially when you pick yours up, and you find all eight of your host brother's beard hairs embedded in the blades, having been removed just earlier that day.

It's weird and I don't like it, and maybe you're wondering why I just don't tell them that all of this borrowing makes me uncomfortable. The reason is because I already have told them, at various times, and they just don't get it because this is how things are. They share. Everything. And if that sharing results in me getting a new fungus, or me having to replace my things constantly, or new embarrassing material for my blog, then so be it. Existentialists beware: this is how things are, and apparently it is true that some things never change.