The Shower, The Towel and The Filthy Bathroom

I’m sitting at my computer writing this in a towel.

This is probably too much information and yet it may be the entire premise for this post, in which case it’s not too much information.

I’ve just had a shower.

It was simultaneously pleasant and unpleasant.

Prior to the shower, I’d not had a shower for a couple of days. This is gross, but also indicative of the fact I hadn’t really left the house properly for a couple of days.

By the time this post reaches the blogosphere, me having been in a scenario whereby I could have had a couple of days without really leaving the house may make no logistical sense, but I’m a bit ahead of myself, so at the time of writing it makes all the sense in the world.

Rest assured, if I have somewhere to be, I am generally pretty clean and presentable.

Well, mostly.

I’m always showered and wearing clean clothes, but facial hair is variable and I don’t get my haircut as often as I’d like.

In the vainer days of my youth, I’d shave every day and never go longer than a month without getting a haircut.

Except when I lived in Paris. When I lived in Paris, I spent the first couple of years afraid that my linguistic skills would let me down at le barbier, and so I shaved my head. I was intentionally bald for about two years of my life and, frankly, it was a look I was able to carry off.

Although people were sometimes a little afraid of me.

I’m quite a big guy and while I think most people who know me would describe me as a big teddy bear (whether I like that description or not – because what am I going to do about it? I’m just a big teddy bear), people who didn’t know me often found ‘skinhead me’ to be a bit intimidating.

These days, as I say, I generally sport a full head of hair and it’s normally longer than I intend it to be, because I don’t get to the barber very often.

I did, in my third and final year in Paris, get over my fear of le barbier, so in that last year, I did have hair. That’s the year I met Mrs Proclaims. She’s one of the reasons I don’t get my haircut very often. She quite likes my hair to be a little longer, even if I look a little scruffy. I wonder if, had I still been a skinhead when I met her, whether she would have agreed to go out with me.

Would she now be Mrs Proclaims?

I suppose we’ll never know.

I could ask her.

But I don’t know if she’d tell me the truth.

Anyway, I’ve just had a shower. And I’m sitting here writing this in a towel.

It’s a pretty cool towel, actually. It’s sort of a hooded robe made of quick-drying material. I look a bit like a futuristic monk. Possibly one with superpowers. Not quite a Jedi Knight, but some sort of straight-to-video rip-off from the 1980s. Possibly a Jodi.

I say the shower experience was both pleasant and unpleasant.

The pleasantness came from the fact that a shower, after two days of not showering, always feels nice. Added to that, I was using some expensive soap, which, while too overpriced to justify what I paid for it (and I got it at a substantial discount), did demonstrate that it was nicer than normal soap and/or shower gel, with a thoroughly pleasant scent and a lather that made a mockery of my normal ablution products.

But the unpleasantness came from the fact that my bathroom really needs to be cleaned.

It’s gone past the stage of being a bit grubby, through the stage of actual embarrassment and out to the point where really the room should be condemned.

And while I do feel cleansed by the act of showering, I also feel a level of shame that I hadn’t been aware of when I went into the bathroom.

So now I’ve got to go and clean it.

And I will.

But I thought, while I was in such monastic attire, a little confession might be good for the soul.

And who better to confess to than you, dear readers?

Also, by writing this, I was able to slightly delay the bit of my day where I have to go and scrub a filthy bathroom.

The bathroom remains disgusting because I chose to write this.

Which is a post that literally explains I haven’t showered in days and my bathroom has not been cleaned in… well, months it would seem.

You might be inclined to judge me.

Or at the very least question my priorities.

And perhaps you’d be correct.

Perhaps if I read this back in the future, I might even agree with you.