THE ART OF THE SHOWER-BATH

Yesterday evening, while I was busy throwing dinner together (Roast Prime Ribs of Beef, Pommes à la Sarladaise, Roasted Root Vegetables in the style of Karen Wise, with a bottle of Coppola zinfandel to wash it down), She Who Must Be Obeyed ran out with the Mistress of Sarcasm to do a little money-burning shopping. Imagine my surprise when they came back with something…for me! Some sort of Moroccan Spice Exfoliating Goop, to be used in the shower. Something I may very well like, but never would have thought to buy for myself.

Men and women, you see, have extremely divergent views vis à vis the Fine Institution of the Shower-Bath.

A while back, there was a little item going around on the Internet, contrasting the ways women and men take showers. Here it is:

How to Shower Like a Woman

1. Take off clothing and place it in sectioned laundry hamper according to lights and darks.
   
   
2. Walk to bathroom wearing long dressing gown. If you see your husband along the way, cover up any exposed areas.
   
   
3. Look at your womanly physique in the mirror. Make mental note: must do more sit-ups.
   
   
4. Get in the shower. Use face cloth, arm cloth, leg cloth, long loofah, wide loofah, and pumice stone.
   
   
5. Wash your hair once with cucumber and sage shampoo with 43 added vitamins.
   
   
6. Wash your hair again to make sure it’s clean.
   
   
7. Condition your hair with grapefruit mint conditioner enhanced with natural avocado oil. Leave on hair for fifteen minutes.
   
   
8. Wash your face with crushed apricot facial scrub for ten minutes until red.
   
   
9. Wash entire rest of body with ginger nut and Jaffa Cake body wash.
   
   
10. Rinse conditioner off hair. Make sure to get it all off.
    
    
11. Shave armpits and legs. Consider shaving bikini area but decide to get it waxed instead.
    
    
12. Scream loudly when your husband flushes the toilet and you lose water pressure.
    
    
13. Turn off shower.
    
    
14. Squeegee off all wet surfaces in shower. Spray mold spots with Tilex®.
    
    
15. Get out of shower. Dry with towel the size of a small country. Wrap hair in super absorbent second towel.
    
    
16. Check entire body for the remotest sign of a zit. Tweeze hairs.
    
    
17. Return to bedroom wearing long dressing gown and towel on head.
    
    
18. If you see your husband along the way, cover up any exposed areas and then sashay to bedroom to spend an hour and a half getting dressed.

How to Shower Like a Man

1. Take off clothes while sitting on the edge of the bed and leave them in a pile.
   
   
2. Walk naked to the bathroom. If you see your wife along the way, shake wiener at her making the “woo-woo” sound.
   
   
3. Look at your manly physique in the mirror and suck in your gut to see if you have pecs (no). Admire the size of your wiener and scratch your ass.
   
   
4. Get in the shower.
   
   
5. Don’t bother to look for a washcloth (you don’t use one).
   
   
6. Wash your face.
   
   
7. Wash your armpits.
   
   
8. Blow your nose in your hands, then let the water just rinse it off.
   
   
9. Crack up at how loud your farts sound in the shower.
   
   
10. Spend majority of time washing your privates and immediate surrounding area.
    
    
11. Wash your butt, leaving those coarse butt hairs on the soap bar.
    
    
12. Shampoo your hair. Do not use conditioner.
    
    
13. Make a shampoo Mohawk.
    
    
14. Peek out of shower curtain to look at yourself in the mirror again.
    
    
15. Pee (in the shower).
    
    
16. Rinse off and get out of the shower. Fail to notice water on the floor because you left the curtain hanging out of the tub the whole time.
    
    
17. Partially dry off.
    
    
18. Look at yourself in the mirror. Flex muscles. Admire wiener size again.
    
    
19. Leave shower curtain open and wet bath mat on the floor.
    
    
20. Leave bathroom fan and light on.
    
    
21. Return to the bedroom with towel around your waist. If you pass your wife, pull off the towel, shake wiener at her, and make the “woo-woo” sound again.
    
    
22. Throw wet towel on the bed. Take two minutes to get dressed.

There’s a point to all this, of course. This morning, She Who Must Be Obeyed was horrified to catch me doing something nasty in the shower.

No, not that.

It was the Bowery Blow. You know, the technique of blowing your nose by placing your finger over one nostril and expelling air (and miscellaneous Nasal Detritus) from the other nostril, without benefit of handkerchief. I call it the Bowery Blow because it’s the favored technique of street people on the Lower East Side of New York. Very nekulturny, of course…unless you’re in the shower. Any guy will tell you: in the shower, anything goes…because everything goes down the drain.

So SWMBO catches me in the midst of blasting a particularly large wad of schnot, whereupon she asked, “Are you having a good time in your phlegm-snot-fart-pissbox?”

OK, sure, I’m guilty. Give me some credit, though. At least I’ve never taken a crap in the shower.