When you think about visiting friends, family, and the more occasional members of your pick-up league of superheroes, what immediately comes to mind? Good company? Road trips? Crushing all those who have the temerity to oppose you? All, good answers, of course, but doesn’t it ever remind you of looking for the holy grail and exploding Nazis? Cleary, the very fact that I saw fit to ask this question implies that I have a unique point of view concerning this subject, which springs from three qualities which I possess in abundance. In no particular order, they are that I am a guy, I am hopelessly out of touch with that which is hip, and I am crazy. Also, let me warn you here before you wade any farther into the depths of this expose on nothing of consequence that, much like the Cowardly Lion and Calvin Coolidge, this is gonna get weirder before it gets less weirder. So, now that we’ve got that out of the way, on to the main business of the day!
Okay, my story, such as it is, begins in the shower (don’t worry, it’s not that kind of story, unless you’re the kind of person who is merely scandalized by things like monkeys playing the harmonica and people whose last names include fish; not that either of those things is going to be playing a real role here, mind you). The problem stems from the fact that, as a guy, and as the sole denizen of my bathroom, the only things that I require to successfully take a shower are pretty much a bar of soap, a bottle of Wally World Brand Demonic Evil Hair Control Shampoo, and a towel. Also, a large quantity of moderately hot water that needs to fall on me in a controlled and refreshing manner. That is all.
Unfortunately, whenever I go to visit anyone and stay overnight, I inevitably discover in the morning that whomever I happen to be staying with has taken part in some radical new toiletry revolution that has replaced such fundamentals of cleanliness as I am accustomed to with approximately 750 different ill-labeled bottles, all of which are named after rainforests, fruits, and meaningless words that would make good names for basketball teams or Toyotas (like Jazz, Fusion, and Troutmiester). Each one of them makes all sorts of dramatic and impressive claims concerning their ability to revitalize, rejuvenate, and grant you the power to teleport directly from your shower into the crashing surf of some tropical beach, which would be kind of cool, except for the fact that you’d still be naked. The one thing that this veritable Noah’s
The problem is, these days you never know what you’re supposed to do with the stuff in a random shower bottle. Sure, maybe it’s shampoo, but it also might be soap these days; gone are the days when all soap helpfully came in bar form, as God intended. And if it is soap, what are all those eighteen different synthetic koosh loofa tribbles used for? Are they like washcloths? Are they some kind of shower defense system in case Osama bin Laden breaks into your bathroom and decides to wash up a bit? All I know is, I’ve lived my whole life without touching one, and somehow my skin has remained intact. And even if you manage to avoid all the usurperous soap bottles and find one the contents of which go on your head, that still doesn’t mean that it’s shampoo. It could be something called “hair conditioner,” which I’ve also never dared to try, even while I was in college and experimenting with that sort of thing, but which, owing to the fact that it’s just a letter away from “air conditioner” must somehow make your hair cool. This is of course even still completely ignoring the possibility that if a woman lives in this house, any of the bottles around you might in fact be meant to remove your hair, or possibly dye it some funky emo color. So there you stand, the loofa tribbles (which would at least make a good name for a band, once you stagger out of the bathroom in a possibly bald or with an electric teal coiffure) mocking you insolently as you stand there like Indiana Jones trying to figure out which of these vessels is in fact the one that is supposed to go on your head. So you start freakin’ out, because you know that there could very well be an 800 year old medieval guy out in the linen closet waiting for you to choose poorly and die, to say nothing of Nazis who want to shoot Sean Connery (which, if you happened to bring him along, would be a very bad thing). In the end, there’s only one real question to ask yourself: which of these is the hair treatment of a carpenter? Which is why I usually end up going with a novel mixture of toothpaste and bourbon, which doesn’t really voluminize or bring out my natural curls as well as what I’m used to at home, but at least I know I’m not going to walk out of the bathroom looking like Patrick Stewart, the Bride of Frankenstein, or Chromatically-Pigmented Skittles Sell-Out Chewbacca.
So, to conclude, I really probably ought to just start packing an overnight bag when I travel, rather than just expecting to survive off of whatever happens to be living in my van at the time (except when it comes to weaponry, in which case my van is more than adequately armed).
