All By Myself

Sometimes I think I'm the only girl on earth who really hates taking a shower with someone else.

I find it neither sweet, nor intimate, nor sexy; rather I find it irritating, uncomfortable, and annoying.

Unless you have one of those several-thousand-dollar showers with nozzles in all sorts of interesting places, the story is always the same. One person stands to the back, shivering and squinting as shampoo drips into their eyes, while the other is under the water, generally taking their sweet ass time.

You awkwardly squeeze past one another to change places, trying not to slip on wet tile or accidentally knock the other person over, sending them flying through the shower curtain and onto the floor, taking the curtain with them. You stand to the rear and pretend that the soap bubbles drying on your skin don't itch like crazy, or stand under the water and try not to feel guilty that you're taking an extra 30 seconds to rinse yourself while your partner's lips are turning blue, all the while trying to ignore the fact that your usual system has been thrown all to hell by the presence of this other body in your personal space.

And watching a man soap up his balls? Not even remotely sexy. While I'm all for good personal hygiene, some things are better done in private.

The worst showering-together experience I can remember was with The Russian Who Never Called. Not only was I excessively uncomfortable because I quite urgently needed to take a shit and had not been able to get into the bathroom alone--and in no way felt comfortable voiding my bowels in front of a guy I had known for just 2 days, and with whom I had spent the previous night having sloppy drunk-sex--but also because he had just moved into the apartment a few days prior and had NO hot water. And here we were, two human popsicles attempting to rinse ourselves in water so cold that it literally felt like needles pounding into our skulls.

I lasted for all of 30 seconds and then gave up, forgoing soap in favor of avoiding hypothermia, and sprinted from the shower wondering WHAT ON THE GREAT GREEN EARTH made him think this was a good idea?!?!?

All of this is why, this morning, when I climbed out of bed to take a shower and the Contender suggested joining me, I politely explained that my shower is not conducive to the presence of more than one body, and went off to shower by myself.

There is such a thing as too much togetherness, and it seems that the shower is where I drawn my personal line.