Random Esquire

Let’s say you’re visiting someone and staying at their place.  When you get into the shower, do you use their bar of soap?

I thought about this today while I was in the shower.  (If you stay with Bev, FYI, she will have all new products on the bathroom counter for you to use like you’re showering next door to Target.)  But some people aren’t as conscientious as that and sort of leave you to your own devices.

I don’t love the idea of using a bar of soap that my friend may have just used to wash his tackle but if I *must*, I can get over it because, really, once the soap is rinsed, it’s just sort of a new bar of soap again, right?  (This is what I tell myself.)  Of course, if I do use it, then I  wonder if, the next time said friend get in the shower, does he or she wonder if I used it?

It’s really a vicious cycle.  If you have guests, you should have liquid soap or place a new bar of soap on the clean towels you leave out.  Anyway, back to the bar of soap.

While I may be able to get past using a pre-used bar of soap, I really can’t do it if there is a hair on the soap.  A hair is sort of like a brand on cattle – it marks the soap as definitively belonging to someone else.  You just can’t get past it.  And, like a hair in food, it’s an all-bets-are-off sort of thing.

Besides, have you ever tried to remove a hair from a bar of soap?  You can run it under water but that sometimes takes a while while the hair slides around a bit and just hides on the other side of the bar.  Or it slides off of the soap and then down your arm and you have to watch it wiggle its way down your body in a stream of water.   Or if you try to pick it out, you either end up with soap under your nails or you just drive the hair deeper into the soap.

One night, after a date, I was invited back to a young woman’s place for a nightcap.  (Do people still say nightcap? That’s purely a movie thing, isn’t it?  What the hell is a nightcap, anyway?  ‘Nightcap’ makes me think of those hats you see in illustrations of The Night Before Christmas with some dude with a long cone-shaped droopy hat on his head.  Which is sort of like pajamas for the head – and that means asking if someone would like to come in for a nightcap is like asking if they’d like head pajamas. I digress.)

Anyway, back to the story.  I was at her place and I went to use the restroom.  This is when things began to fall apart.

See, first of all, she didn’t have soap next to the sink to wash your hands.  OR a hand towel.  That right there makes you wonder.  The shower curtain was open so I glanced in for soap.  And there, sitting in the soap tray was a big ass bar of soap.

With a black hair on it.

Did I mention said young lady was blonde?  A natural blonde?

This means said hair?

Not her hair.

It was a short night.