I am five when my three-year-old brother betrays me in the bathtub. My mother takes him out first, wraps him in a honeycolored Winnie the Pooh towel. I can hear the slap of my brother鈥檚 footsteps on the bathroom floor as he waddles out. My mother grabs my blue Thomas the Tank Engine towel from the metal rack, holds it out for me. Then her eyes go wide. Ben, she says. Get out of the tub.
I step out and she wraps me in Thomas and when I turn around I see a poop below the bubbles, resting on the white bottom of the tub like a derelict submarine. Ben how could you, my mother tells me.
But it鈥檚 not mine, I say, shivering, because she鈥檚 forgotten to rub the towel against me.
She narrows her eyes. She doesn鈥檛 believe me. Brother, one day I鈥檒l get you back for this.
My first shower is at seven years old. My father tells me they are superior to baths. I am unconvinced. Standing for minutes? Is he crazy? I鈥檇 rather sit and splash and play with bubbles and rubber duckies.
Shower is amazing. Hot water on my neck, down my back. Hot water on my forehead with eyes closed. Then I open my eyes and see the weird hair on the wall and I cup my hands and throw water against it. It does not move. Is it immune to water attacks like a Seismitoad? I use my body as a makeshift waterfall and the hair zig-zags between two tiles and then I throw more water at it until it slides down to the base of the wall like a loser in Snakes and Ladders.
A cold shower at camp. Wash off the poison ivy, keep the pores closed. I hate our intrepid counselor for taking us on that two mile shortcut through the forest. We鈥檙e all scratched up, half of us are red and itching. I hear my campmates yelling in their cold showers. Except for that one fat polar bear of a kid who loves it, you can hear him singing Bohemian Rhapsody. I turn the dial toward the little red bar. I don鈥檛 care if my pores open. The water is near to scalding. I turn it down and sidestep back and forth through it as I wait for a more forgiving heat.
Dorm showers. Thank god I brought flip-flops. How much cum has this drain guzzled? There is an alphabet of hairs on a wall. I add an 伪 of my own to the hairy wall. Endless heat and high pressure, fruity shampoo/conditioner, white lune of soap. On a hook outside my faded blue Thomas the Tank Engine towel waits for me. My hair smells like smoke. Clean off last night. Wash the important parts. Class is in five minutes. Someone I know is yelling at me to hurry up. Fuck off, I shout. And he laughs.
Second year of college. A house with seven guys. The only working bathroom is on the second floor. Its sink is covered in facial hair, red and black and blonde hairs like tiny arrows or the fallen dead in the aftermath of some formic war. Empty shampoo bottles thrive and mate and reproduce in the shower. A half-empty beer can stands in the corner on its soap dish, a different can every morning, and as I shower it whispers into my ear, Drink me, and I resist, for a while, and then finally give in and drink.
Sad tiny apartment shower. There is no window. The ventilation fan hums and I shower in darkness. I tell myself I am on some spinning spaceship, artificial gravity. I place my hands against the shower wall, some distance behind it is the cold metal exterior of my spaceship and a lesser darkness, a starry sky. It is brighter than my city had led me to believe.
Sad tiny apartment shower with girl. Medium pressure, hot water, same old gravity. Her breasts pressed against my back, her arms around me. I am warm on both sides. My turn, she says. We wiggle past each other and now I am wrapped around her and both warm and cold. I want a shower with two showerheads.
Years of showers. I sit now on the floor of my shower with my son between my legs. He is smiling, he feels safe with me beside him. He is waving his tiny arms and legs at the falling droplets. I suppose my father did this too. My first shower was earlier than I thought. Tens of thousands of showers. At some point they all meld into one lifelong shower. I have trouble remembering any but the firsts, in all the monotony of my daily showers. And then suddenly the shower changes. Now I have a shower chair, a nickel-plated grab bar. Doctor鈥檚 warnings about falls in the shower, a brother I once took baths with falls and breaks his hip, dies. I never got him back for that childhood bath. It doesn鈥檛 matter now. De mortuis nil nisi bonum. My wife has had her last shower. A year, and then another. The day of my life advancing toward midnight and there is something fine in the falling warmth of every morning鈥檚 shower.
