When I was 20, I had a girlfriend named Tammy who lived on SE Hawthorne in an apartment with a shared bathroom down the hall. The fire had pretty much fizzled out of our relationship by then, but we were both too lazy to do anything about it. One morning when I had stayed over at her place, I went into the bathroom and proceeded to get ready for work by taking a shower. (We both worked at the same place, the MacKenzie Hall Cafeteria at OHSU, which made for way too much together time.) While I was taking my shower, Tammy came in and started brushing her teeth. Through the garble of toothpaste she said to me, "you have the keys, right?” I didn’t think I'd heard her quite right at first: In order to close her apartment door all the way you needed to lock it, and since we were in the bathroom a few feet down the hall... "What do you mean, do I have the keys? Did you lock the door? I don’t have the keys!”

It was not long before we realized the ugly truth: we were locked out of the apartment. I had no clothes on, and she was wearing underwear and a bra.

First we tried opening her apartment door with a little brute force, then we tried some kind of library card. We didn’t have a lot in the way of tools. The door was secure and there was no getting around it.

It began to dawn on us that that there was no chance of getting back into the apartment without outside help. "Do you know your neighbors very well?” I asked Tammy. "Maybe one of them could call the landlord for us.” “No, I just barely know the guy downstairs; I've only said hi to him a couple times,“ she said, "and I would definitely not feel comfortable going down there in my underthings and talking with him!” "Well I don’t know him at all!” I protested, "and all I have is a towel!" "Yea, but at least you’re a guy!”

Unfortunately, I couldn't argue with that one.

The neighbor downstairs answered his door and opened it a crack or two. He had been shaving, and globs of shaving cream were precariously hanging off his chin. "Hi!" I began, trying to avoid any hint of creepiness as I stood there wearing just a bath towel. "I’m Tom, and I'm...friends with Tammy upstairs. We have...unfortunately (here I affected a little good-natured chuckle), “...locked ourselves out of the apartment, and we’re wondering if you could possibly loan us 25 cents to call the landlord; we’d really appreciate it.”
I was really hoping he'd say, “Hey, no problem! I’ll call the landlord for ya!” (seeing as how he had a phone and we didn’t, and I had no clothes and it was wintertime.) But he just looked me over, humorless, and at long last muttered "lemme look." Shuffling through some clothes in his apartment, he came up with a quarter, which he handed to me and closed the door as quickly as possible.

A shiny quarter! I returned upstairs and we discussed next steps. There was a telephone booth across the street. Apparently, there was no choice but for me to go and make the call.

Wearing just a towel and making it across a busy SE Portland street during the morning commute to use the phone booth is a delicate operation. It involves making a serious run for the apartment building's front door, since you really don’t want other tenants witnessing this, then hurling the door open and tearing across the street just at the right time so that the cars are not coming and you can avoid the awkward moment of waiting for traffic as a pedestrian in your towel with everyone gawking at you. It takes careful timing and skill. I ran out there and made it across the street with only a couple of cars witnessing this disconcerting event.

I got into the phone booth and closed the slatted plexiglass door. Freezing, I dialed the number of Tammy’s landlord. Alas, there was no answer, and no answering machine. Luckily, we had a Plan B: to call work, tell them we’re running late, and then get our boss to call the landlord for us.

I called work and got my boss right away. “Laurie, we’re running late, and we’ve locked ourselves out of Tammy’s apartment, and we’re hoping you can call the landlord. Here’s his number...” “What? Locked yourselves out?" my boss responded. "How did you do that?” Clearly I was going to have to go into a little more detail. Damn it. I began to paint a vague picture of a typical everyday couple locking themselves out, but somehow it only prompted more inquiry. “Do you want me to pick you up?” “Well, no, thanks for the offer, but I’m afraid that won’t quite work." "Why not?" "Well you see, Laurie, when we locked ourselves out, our clothes were in the other room, and basically we have no clothes. I'm standing here in a bath towel, and we have that, a bra, and some panties to share between the two of us..."

Sometimes it’s a very thin line between expressing concern and just plain prying.

I went back up to the bathroom. We settled in to wait it out. We had no idea how long we’d have to wait. Maybe Tammy’s absentee roommate would come back from her night of partying and God knows what else, or maybe she wouldn’t. Laurie had agreed to call the landlord, but maybe she wouldn't be able to reach him.

A half hour passed, then an hour. Then way too much more time passed. The bathroom was getting very small. There wasn’t much to do in there.

Around 11:00 or so, after about 3 hours of waiting, Tammy turned to me and said, “Maybe I could shave your chest.” “No way!" I said. "It’ll grow back all bushy and hairy,” I said.

More time passed.

I said yes.

Sometime into the shaving, Tammy’s roommate finally came home from her night of sleeping with some guy. The guy had said he was a lawyer and could help her get her son back, but it turned out he wasn’t a lawyer at all! We were so relieved to see her, in spite of the thing about the lawyer. I was so thankful to get my clothes back.

Clothing is really quite underrated. I know that now.