thank god i moved

call me old fashioned, call me spoiled, call me ocd but im starting to need tranquilizers to enter the shower. really strong ones too not that clonopin shit that the doctors think will solve all your anxiety, but xanax and valium and stuff that precludes driving and operating heavy machinery. I need the squinty haze of the pills to navigate the horrendously gross truck-stop inspired Hewitt bathrooms because I am ocd, or spoiled, or old fashioned, and I find the entire process of bathing in such filth to be a farce. The fact that everyone wears shoes in the shower, to rise above the two inch foamy sea that forms in every shower stall, ought to be an indication of a problem. sure, the experts recommend shoes to head off althletes foot. isn’t that kind of gross that you can actually get a disease from the SHOWER? I only wonder what other diseases they aren’t telling us about. I’m sure the lurking bacteria are just dying to impart their hepatitis or aids onto my dewy little skin. my skin turns red and scaly now that I live back east, and I am certain that it is the shower.

when I first moved into hewitt I thought no big deal. well, no, actually I was terrified of of the showers but I figured that if the freshman could emerge totally fuckable from such squalid conditions that I could too. living amonst the bright eyed underclassmen however has changed my mind entirely. this in depth case study on the bathing habits of barnard women has taught me that most of us try to get as clean as possible in the quickest amount of time and that the rest are just grubby. I fall into the former of the two groups. each morning, with exactly 6 minues to spare, I climb onto four inch platform flip flops, wrap myself in an oversized towel and grab my scented-product laden blue shower basket. I savor my last breath of clean air as I near the smelly radius that encompasses the bathroom door. once insiide I try not to look at anything, lest the image of someone elses hair or leftover food or worse lodge itself permanently inside my sensitive brain. I spent three years working at a perfume company for this? I wonder as I lather up with as much overscented bath gel as possible. I alternate between fragrances. KAI contains a heady, overpowering, frantically floral fusion of jasmine, tea rose and gardenia. the perfume itself is sickeningly strong and old lady-ish but as a bath gel it infuses the steam with a cloud heavy enough to transport my mind. scent is the strongest sense tied to memory, I used to tell my customers, and the KAI acts as a tranquilizer in its own way by knocking the nasty bathroom reality in and out of my mind as I scrub down. the other fragrance I use is a blend of my favorite essential oils: eucalyptus, chamomile, bergamot, lavender, peppermint and rosemary. individually each oil functions to clear my sinuses, calm me down, wake me up, calm me down some more, sooth my stomach and eliminate headaches, in that order, and collectively they too help me forget for a brief millisecond where exactly I am forced to bathe.

for the times when I am forced to touch the industrial shower curtain or the silver bacteria masking metal of the stall door I immediately pump a large pouf of my shea butter hand wash to eliminate anything infectious. if my elbow hits the wall in the tiny shower stall (at 125 pounds I can barely sqeeze inside) I scoot forward on my oversized platforms and try not to think about when it was last squeegeed. in addition to taking up valuable real estate, the tiny soap dish protuding from one tiled wall only offers enough space for one product, so I swing the shower curtain open and closed several times to swap face wash for shower gel for shampoo. I debate on pumping another pouf of shea butter wash onto my chafed hands but usually I don’t have time and instead try to touch the shower curtain (or shower head or handle) with as the problem is not the friendly, hardworking cleaning staff that invades daily between 1 and 2 pm. nor is it really the residents, who for the most part try to pick up after themselves. the main reason the hewit bathrom sucks is that it is just shared by about 25 people too many. sharing is all right in kindergarten and its required when your roommate gets a free bottle of champagne, but when it comes to bathrooms it should be outlawed. no one, not roommates, not moms and dads and siblings, not boyfriends and especially not 25 random strangers can be expected to religiously clean up their own bacteria and dead skin upon leaving the bathroom, yet without such strict measures the rest of the occupants are forced to literally bathe in their hallmates' excrements. there is a reason why any two bedroom apartment outside of new york city has two bathrooms as well: people’s sanitary well being depends on the peace of mind that the spots on the mirror and dust on the counter came from their carelessness and not someone elses