That Time Someone Ducked Into Our Airbnb to Use the Toilet

He left me feeling a very specific kind of confusion.

For the audio version of this article, read by the author, go here.

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First, an apology. Michael and I are fully aware that we write about toilet issues fairly regularly.

Then again, toilets are a part of travel.

Like the time a few weeks ago when Michael and I were sitting at home in our Vancouver Airbnb, which was a basement unit in a house.

The front room to our airbnb.

There was a door which led into the other half of the basement — and the rest of the house where our hosts lived.

A door that we had always assumed was locked.

But suddenly, the door flung open, and a man stepped inside our apartment and made a beeline directly to our bathroom, closing the door behind him.

I looked at Michael.

Michael looked at me.

Had what we thought happened really just happened? Was there a person in our bathroom right now? Someone we’d never seen before?

Later, I told some friends that I felt such an unprecedented, unique feeling of confusion that it should have its own word.

“Shit-stunned,” I said. “Or bowel-wildered.”

Then one friend, Tyler, volunteered, “Poo-plexed?”

Which is, henceforth, exactly what this very specific emotion shall be called.

At that moment, Michael and I were completely and utterly poo-plexed.