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Cleanliness advice just for men: how to properly take a shower
Gerry Canavan
The Vanishing Hitchhiker
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Splash water on your face to wash off the shaving cream; ignore the sting. Take off your boxers; throw them against the door. Scratch your bare leg. Consider your naked self in the mirror. Open the shower curtain. Lean forward; bend one leg on the edge of the tub. Turn on the water, hot knob first. Adjust cold water to taste. Test the water with your fingers periodically. When desired temperature has been reached, point the shower nozzle away from the curtain towards the wall. Test the water one last time. Pull the pin on the bottom faucet to activate the shower. Step backwards. Close the front of the shower curtain. Open the back of shower curtain. Get in. Close the curtain behind you. Wash the dots of blood off your neck. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.
Spend two and a half minutes washing your body with a bar of soap and washcloth (arms, armpits, legs, chest, face, armpits, armpits). Spend ninety seconds shampooing, two minutes (at least) conditioning. On most days bring a razor in to re-shave your face, in the event that you find any lingering stubble – which you almost certainly will. This should take no more than half a minute. In addition to these functional tasks spend on average a total of three minutes standing still and thinking: about the Girl (or Boy), whoever she (he) is, about the coming day’s classes, about whatever you forgot to do last night, about what you will eat for lunch today.
Every three days try somewhat unsuccessfully to shave the unsightly hair that grows on the back of your neck – hair you finds particularly troublesome and unattractive, hair which takes at least one minute to remove. While you’re at it you might try shaving your chest, if you think it will do you any good. Shave your back if you must, your armpits if you desire. Of course you are free to shave whatever you want. (Keep it above the waist.)
Approximately every six days use V05 Hot Oil Treatment to moisturize your hair, which is (you have often been told) noticeably and unusually dry; from application to rinse this process should take approximately a minute and a half. In the summer after wearing sandals you will have to scrape the heels of your feet with a pumice stone for forty-five seconds to two minutes; even in the winter it is sometimes nice to perform this task, if just to sit for a moment and relax. If you and the Girl (or Boy) were intimate the night before, you may perhaps find it necessary to clean your Apparatus with a small amount of soap and/or shampoo. You do not know, and often wonder, if other people do this – if the Girl (or Boy) herself (himself) does it. Counting the wondering and the accompanying twinge of shame this should take about thirty seconds.
Some days things go long. Some days you are forced to move onto still lesser tasks: reshampooing and reconditioning (thirty seconds and one minute respectively), washing beneath your fingernails by scratching the bar of soap, washing your face twice, washing your neck, washing your toenails, washing your ears, washing behind your ears, checking your body for ticks and unusual moles, and finally, washing the inside of your bellybutton (two minutes fifty seconds total). On some mornings you spend an unusual amount of time (an astonishing ninety seconds over the course of the shower) regulating the water temperature – on such a morning you may also exceed your normal “standing still and thinking” time allowance by more than fourfold, as well as drop the soap an extraordinary number of times (ten).
And, indeed, on one such morning – early, too early, snow falling outside, heater broken in your apartment – you may suddenly realize at the end of your shower that you have inadvertently forgotten your towel in your bedroom, that it is still hanging on a hook in your closet, that in a few moments you will have absolutely no choice but to dash naked and wet down the cold hallway. Some days the thought of leaving like this may be unbearable. Some days you may try in vain to put it off, waiting there, ignoring the inarguable, dreading the inevitable; some days you may spend thirty, forty, even fifty minutes in the shower you may spend an hour in there, two hours, longer, still longer, before it even occurs to you that you must leave.
Don’t move.
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