Have you ever sat down to shower?
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Welcome. Take a seat- yes, hold onto the rails when entering ~The Jacuzzi~. Yes, it’s pronounced like that. That’s the joke, it’s just a flooded shower. Fine, you can stay outside. 2 metres square isn’t a lot for the bunch of us.
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So. I was in my early sec school years, when I was still a kid, but rapidly losing that weird innocence. I used to put a pail over the drain cover and run the shower, where it’d flood the bathroom a little bit and I could just sit in the mock bathtub, pretending to be actually well-to-do. To me, being well-to-do was being part of a family that owned a bathtub. Of course, this came with the associated costs of wasting water and I grew out of it quickly. Also, disgusting. There was a period where I realised there was a largish tub we had that could do the part of that, but I outgrew it within a month.
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You know the word “sonder”? It’s a word that describes the realisation that everyone’s lives are as rich and complex as one’s own. It’s not an “official” word, but words are just a series of letters strung together that people agree define a concept and that concept is “the realisation that everyone’s lives are as rich and complex as one’s own”. Anyway, a full, rich life is a bit difficult to visualise. I end up thinking, “woah, they had to deal with wet shoes today too?” and the thought experiment goes to waste. You could break it down even further and ask about their shower routine.
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What’s your shower routine like? Everyone’s vulnerable during a shower aren’t they? But so, so isolated as well. No one’s expecting to be watched. Everyone’s just… Themselves. Warts and all. No cool hair, no fashion. See? Look at this. It’s a keloid. Well, it’s like I’m Wolverine, that I heal too quickly so I look like I’m growing mushrooms. I don’t wear singlets any more.
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Sometimes a shower is just “get this scum my body made off me” and sometimes it’s where people fuck to reduce clean-up and sometimes it’s a luxury.
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I turn the heat up to two and the tap to full. I flinch, either because the water is already hot or still cold as it strikes my calves.
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Sometimes, I put my phone on top of my water heater and blast “The Definitive”.
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I enter the stream, with my sweaty running attire. I sit, cross-legged. I’m in my personal waterfall and I am a meditating monk-child.
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I feel the clothes clinging onto every inch of my skin, heavy. Sometimes, I mouth the lyrics. I don’t sing them. My brother rarely sings and I judge him, then I feel bad because I’m judging someone who is enjoying himself.
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I scrub the bit around my ankle with my pointer finger. Eraser dust. The flakes mean I’m getting cleaner. Sometimes, this doesn’t appear because I’ve already did this clean a day or two ago.
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Being nude frees you of judgement. Mom’s been trying to get me to meditate for a long while. But meditation never felt like a thing I wanted to do, because it’s just sitting still and not thinking about anything. But showering, sitting in the shower is meditation.
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I hear water hitting skin, tile, hair. I hear the computer fan that Dad installed at the top of the door. And so I hear nothing.
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Nothing but you, the warm LED glare, the computer fan and the channels and streams and creeks of water all over your hair, skin, folds, lashes and keloids. No water bill, no love, no hate, no judgement. Just rub that dead skin off, get the suds in every nook and cranny. Squeaky clean, as they say.
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No using your phone, nobody to rush you (yet) and no need for any of those -phins or -mines or -tonins. The world waits. Just you and the white noise of water on water on skin on floor.
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The towel’s over there, your clothes are over there, everything will be where you left it. Lock the door on your way out.
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