Call Me Ishmael the Plumber

I've been blessed with thick hair. Curly hair. Lots of hair. And it's nice on my head, but not so much in my drain.

Which is where it always seems to land, in spite of my best efforts to blow-dry my hair away from the counter. My silky strands somehow manage to float through the air and, with the focus of a heat-seeking missile, gravitate toward the sink to effectively clog the pipes.
Last night, when neither basin would drain, I spent an exciting Saturday evening fishing with my handy-dandy Cobra 400 Zip-It stick. The spiky little teeth usually work like a charm, although it's an effort not to gag at the sight of the hairy pond scum that comes up. But last night, nothing.
So I placed a 9-1-1 call to Captain Ahab. This is what I call Sarge, a retired plumber who lives down the street and tolerates my frequent calls with a fatherly patience. He usually shows up, tinkers 5, 10 minutes and voila, whale killed, problem solved. Half the time he doesn't even charge me since the problems are so minuscule.
"I'll get ya next time," he usually warns me with a grin.
And reliable as always, Sarge showed up promptly at 9am this morning, armed with a mean-looking, mega-long Zip-it stick and looking pretty confident. Only this time, like Captain Ahab, Sarge appeared to have met his match.
"Clog's too deep," he said after 30 minutes of fruitless fishing. "Gonna need something stronger." A bigger boat, per chance? And he left.
He returned half-an-hour later with some nasty-looking liquid. When I inquired about the brown stuff sloshing in the clear container, he replied with a cryptic, "You don't wanna know." And up the stairs he went.
For the next two hours I could hear Sarge tinkering around while I finished reading the Sunday paper. He left the house briefly, only to return with more tools. I baked chocolate chip cookies and watched an episode of "I Love Lucy" while the clinking-clanking sounds continued echoing through the house. He left and returned again. I swept the floors, watered the garden. I tried to pretend that this was a pleasant Sunday morning in which my beloved fantasy husband (who looks like Hugh Grant because hey, this is my fantasy) was upstairs puttering around with his newest toy, and not a plumber who typically charges $90/hr.
Finally, Sarge clumped down the stairs, ready to leave. Not that he was done, mind you.
"Gonna hafta come back to finish the job," he told me. "The stuff I'm using needs time to work. In the meantime," he warned, "stay away from the bathroom." When he saw the look of concern flash across my face, he was quick to reassure me that there weren't vapors or anything to worry about. Vapors? I hadn't thought of vapors. Good lord, what was in that container?
"Just stay away," he repeated. "Pretend those two sinks don't exist."
And so, tomorrow Captain Ahab returns in yet another attempt to harpoon Moby for good. Not to mention, I fear, my wallet.
After all, he's always joked, "I'll get ya next time." This time he may mean it.