Wish I Had a Shower

For a long time I lived without a shower. My place was central, beautiful, yet it missed a shower. I even changed address once and was ready to finally have one, but it turned out this new home lacked the right type of evacuation. Still no shower.

Many nights I would think hard about a solution, a way to have a shower and not have to go somewhere else every day to wash myself. I didn’t quite know what that said about me, not having a shower, but I felt inferior to those who did. At the gym I would look at men dressed like finance executives or lawyers or creative directors and think: you must have a shower at your place.

I would console myself with the fact that I could still have my daily wash in splendid conditions, only minutes away from my home. Still, I craved being able to spring out of bed and jump in the shower, or go for a quick rinse in the middle of a hot summer afternoon, or sing on my own in the shower.

Then I started dreaming of living in a lavish place, and then again in a couple of other extraordinary homes. They were all majestically beautiful but didn’t have a shower. Or so I thought. As it turned out, in each of these idyllic locations there was a dedicated space with a source of water, an evacuation, a tap, beautiful tiles, glass panels — a fancy, huge shower, only there was no hot water.

And because there was just cold water, nobody thought of those places as showers. But they were showers. Maybe not in the traditional sense, but they got the job done. I would just have to be flexible about the delivery.

Now, when I feel lost in this world, I think about my dreams. For a long time I used to wonder why some people shower in the morning while others at night. I concluded those who shower in the morning care more about the way others see them. That’s why they need to feel clean when stepping into society at the start of a new day.

And those who shower at night don’t care as much about the world and cherish their own inner world even more. That’s why they shower just before going to bed, into their own private world.

I guess sometimes you just shower when you can, because you don’t have a shower at your place. But if you did, you’d shower in the morning.