But remember — real Socialism hasn’t ever been tried yet!

When I’m lucky, a trickle flows through my apartment building’s rickety pipes. When I’m really lucky, they deliver as much as 30-straight minutes worth of H2O. That’s enough to fill up the 200-or-so-gallon tank in my kitchen and trigger a celebration. I’ll do something crazy and run the water until it gets really hot before I jump into the shower. The tank is hooked up to the building’s distribution system, so I don’t have to be present to collect the precious liquid. In past rentals, I had no net. I did the mad Caracas water dash when the pipes mysteriously started flowing while I was home. I’d fill buckets, pots, coffee mugs—anything.

True enough, in Caracas, we go without reliable access to an extensive list of basic life essentials, from toilet paper to toothpaste. But if you ask me, dry taps are by far the most unpleasant of the epic shortages. Dishes are brushed off and reused, and clothing is not something regularly laundered, though, personally, I draw the line at multiple wearings of underwear or socks. You ask friends whether it’s okay to flush. You often do not. We’re sweaty and, yes, smelly, especially in the rainy season when the humidity can top 80 percent. We’re at risk, too, because water stagnating in the vessels that people stash around their homes attracts mosquitoes; malaria rates have soared.