My friend called me early one morning and we caught up on things while she cleaned her four bathrooms. When she got to the one she describes as “your bathroom” — I spend good chunks of time at her house, so the basement bedroom and bath are “mine” — she asked if I had a hard time getting soap off my skin when showering at her house. Her comments reminded me that I am entering the itchy season.
I have dry skin and I live alone; the second thing becomes a problem when cold weather causes the first condition to rear its ashy head. As a “lone-liver” I have had conversations with others in the same circumstance. A female friend (I don’t have these chats with guys) gave me a frank and revealing list of concerns about her single life. She is a warm and affectionate person who lost her great love about 15 years ago and side-stepped another relationship about 5 years ago. Honesty and directness are always a part of our conversations, so I was only slightly uncomfortable when flatulence and dirty drawers came up in the list. I guess a warm snuggle cannot cancel out a stinky shirt.
She makes a point that many “lone-livers” internalize: in our homes (or caves, in my case) we have to please only ourselves. Nothing we do need go through another person’s filter or sensibilities. My friend Nancy visited me briefly in my new apartment and told me to turn all my cups and glasses upside-down. When she returned some months later, she said,” I thought I told you to turn those glasses upside-down.” Long-time friendships earn certain privileges, so I rejected a scorched-earth reply in favor of, “I thought I told you those mighty 100 were going to stand as placed.”
The donkey in the movie “Shrek” sang, “I’m all alone,” and I sing alone, as well. Loudly. Softly. Lustily and crustily, and there is no one to approve or disapprove of my choices. I give myself a “big hand”; I am my own crowd, going wild. And I am OK with that, until my back starts to itch.
In my “guy-shower,” there are few things: body wash, face soap, shampoo, conditioner and loofa. I apply the body wash with a scrunchy thing, and use a washcloth to clean up the noggin. I have a small shower, approximately the size of a pneumatic tube, so it is self-limiting, yet adequate for my needs. When I emerge from the upright coffin, I am clean and content in all but the Bermuda triangle between my shoulder blades. Yoga stretching has not made my arms longer, my hands any more capable of reaching and lubing that patch of my geography. And in winter, when I slather my dry body with cocoa butter and shea butter, I cannot get that place oiled.
When I lived close to my two good friends, they had grown accustomed to my winter request: “Would you lotion my back?” I no longer see them as often now, and I have not developed a back-up back oiler.
In the poem “Love Song: I and Thou,” the poet Alan Dugan makes a case for having help in some tasks: “I can nail my left palm/ to the left-hand crosspiece but/ I can’t do everything myself./ I need a hand to nail the right…”
As for me, in the itchy season, I need someone, sometime, to lotion my back.