Sour on showers

I didn’t shower today or yesterday, and I can’t remember if I showered the day before. Being expected to shower daily, especially in the summer, is probably my least favorite thing about being a human (other than foot cramps).\nWe live in a world where it takes only milliseconds to send a message halfway around the world or be matched up with one’s soul mate. So I am rightfully disgusted every morning when I wake up and realize that, once again, scientists have failed to invent a hygiene pill that would allow me to bypass the 10-minute process of physically applying soap to various areas of my body.\nSome mornings, I give in to our suppressive societal expectations of cleanliness by standing naked in a fiberglass tub and allowing myself to be sprayed with water. Other mornings I wake up, walk to the bathroom and have a stare-down with the shower-head while I mentally weigh the costs and benefits of said activity. When that happens, I normally return right back to my bed where I pull a blanket over my face and lie awake for this allotted time period, thinking about how much I wish I were a car. If only I could put myself in neutral and be sent through a tunnel on a conveyer belt while getting hosed-down with chemicals, foam and degreaser until a green light comes on and tells me I’m good to go for at least another few weeks, or until I get pooped on by birds.\nIt’s not even that I mind the actual process of showering that much, but the amount of time I’m expected to invest in getting my life back to normal afterwards, doing things such as drying my hair and putting clothes back on, is absolutely ridiculous.\nSince getting dressed after a shower always feels so daunting, I usually end up spending a couple hours sitting at my computer still wrapped in my towel, or standing in front of my mirror, wrapping and folding my towel around myself in different ways pretending that it is a tube-top style dress and that I am on the red carpet, about to accept an Emmy for my heartrending performance in a daytime soap opera. This goes on for hours, or until someone eventually knocks at my door and I shriek “Uh! Hold on!” and frantically scramble for clothing.\nThe worst is when I decide to work out in the afternoon and then have to shower for the second time in one day. Sometimes I avoid this second shower by simply blow-drying the sweat out of my hair and soaking myself with perfume. Other times I justify not showering again by telling myself that sweating is actually similar to showering because sweat and water are both liquids anyway. A lot of it has just been about altering my perceptions. You might look at my hair, for example, and comment that it is greasy enough to be molded like Play-Doh. But I would just call this my “youthful glow.”