A dispute I just quelled using fine American diplomacy:

Two heated tempers from a pair of lab rats who’ve been locked inside the drug-testing facility too long, probably overtired and never liked each other much anyway, and certainly desperately bored- there’s British John and Romanian Marius, fighting about something or other. Marius speaks English fine, but it’s not his first or even second language, and so he usually just talks about soccer. John is older than everybody else in here, but only by about eight years, and he takes nothing at all seriously (he was nearly kicked out upon check-in because he thought it’d be funny, when reviewing his restrictions, to claim he’d been mainlining heroin and methamphetamine cocktails). Somehow a three-way conversation got out of hand.

look, Marius said to the third guy, if you don’t believe me, you can go over there. go to john if you don’t believe me.

John turns to him, deadly serious. you don’t have to say my name like that. like a toilet.

And suddenly Marius is horribly defensive, apologizing with the edge of somehow who knows he’s being goaded into a fight.

no, i’m kidding, John says, that’s what they say in america. they call it a john.

There’s a tense moment, where Marius tries to figure out if this guy is just fucking with him for no reason. Everybody looks at me.

he’s right, I say. a toilet in america is called a john.

And there’s a deep exhale. Louis from Italy informs everyone than in Italy, a johnny is a condom.

Thirty-one hours to go. Boy, are we feeling it.