The Crazy Show in the Shower

“Mom! Get out of the bathroom right now!” I shouted, as I dropped to the bottom of the shower pan, my hands hurrying to cover my genitals. “God mom! How about a little privacy?” I was now face down on the bottom of the tub, my left hand cupping my penis and my right hand spread over my ass crack. My mother laughed heartily.

“BC, you’re ridiculous!” Ever since moving to the new house by the school, my privacy had gone from small to non-existent. The whole house had discarded the idea of solitude. My mother and step-father for example, had recently taken to leaving the bathroom door open no matter what kind of waste matter they were excreting. Sometimes, if I was brushing my teeth I would turn around to find my step-father, stark naked, straining on the toilet to take a dump. I squirmed on the bottom of the shower, trying to hide myself even further. I hate running. I loathe being naked in front of other people.

“You can wait five minutes until I’m done!” I shouted indignantly, as shower water sprinkled on the back of my head. Not to mention the fact that she could have done whatever it was she needed to do in the hours before I had gone into the shower.

“Well everyone is going to Costco. If you want to come along, you better hurry up.” My mother lifted the hamper from its place by the shower and headed toward the door. Laundry? It was that important to do a load of laundry?

“I’m not getting back up until you’re gone!” I would lie at the bottom of the tub all day if necessary. My penis, including the image of it, was and is mine. I am very selfish about that.

“Fine! I’ll just take your laundry, and you can go ahead and be lazy in the shower!” My mom snorted.

“Close the door! I don’t want to go to Costco!”

“Fine! We’ll be back in six hours!” My mom slammed the door shut. I stood back up and stretched by thirteen year old body, and put my head back under the faucet. While it was a shame I wouldn’t be able to go to Costco, as I was almost done, I was happy to be naked by myself again.

“We’re leaving!” My mom shouted from the other side of the door.

“Fine!” I barked. I liked being alone anyway. More quiet that way.

After hearing my family take off, I figured there was no need to hurry myself, so I relaxed under the hot stream of water until it began to turn lukewarm. Then, stepping out onto the bathroom carpet I bent down to retrieve a towel from the cupboard under the sink. It was empty.

“God damn it,” I muttered, turning around to dig through the hamper for something that would cover me during my walk to the dryer. The hamper wasn’t there. I had forgotten my mother had walked away with it. “Shit!” I amended.

Getting ready to place my hands over my genitals and run past any open windows, I put my hand on the bathroom door knob, ready to sprint to the nearest shred of clothing. I twisted. The door knob refused to move. I twisted harder. Then I grabbed it and shook with all of my might. “Fuck!” I concluded. I stood in wet nude horror at the immovability of the bathroom door. It was a solid core door. I could break it, but probably not without severely injuring myself.

“Um… guys?” I ventured. “Is anyone home?” I asked a little louder. “Please! Bryan? Mike? Is anyone out there!” I shook on the door knob again for good measure, hoping the rattling would attract some unexplainable good Samaritan.  “Fucking god damn it! If anyone is out there I’m going to be really pissed off!” Being thirteen my voice was a sinusoidal wave of squeaking, and could hardly be thought of as intimidating by anyone with a lick of sense.

Dejected, I sat on the toilet, put my still wet face in my hands, and sighed. “Six hours…” I murmured. “I’m going to be stuck here for six hours.” The nearest Costco was well past Olympia and the family never went there unless it was for the whole day. I picked up a five year old Sears winter catalogue and flipped through the pages. My grandma, refusing to throw away a Sears catalogue, regularly discarded them by putting them in our bathroom as though they were valuable objects. A bunch of old coats, scarves, and winter boots. Awesome. I threw it back into the basket in which other such magazines were kept, and sighed again.

I did a couple of mental calculations. In six hours, I could have watched “Braveheart” twice, “Dark Man” almost three times, or over six episodes of “MacGyver.” I tapped my leg on the ground, then went back to stand in the shower and used my hands as squeegees to wipe the water droplets off of my body. “This sucks!” I screamed to no one. I didn’t dry myself so much as I made myself less wet. After ten minutes, I began to shiver.

“Come on, let’s walk in place,” I whispered, encouraging myself as I stood up and shifted my weight from leg to leg. Without giving it any particular thought, I began to hum. I closed my eyes and continued thusly for the course of another fifteen minutes. Opening my eyes again, I caught sight of my reflection in the bathroom mirror. My hair was askew so I combed it. As long as I was totally naked, I might as well have well groomed hair.

“This is so gay.” I muttered.  The coldness persisted, I resolutely began shifting my weight again, crossing my arms across my chest and crouching to try to conserve heat. I tucked my penis between my thighs to stop it from shrivelling any furhter. I began to hum. Not wanting to be anything less than manly even though I was going to imprisoned for the next five and a half hours, I hummed Sixteen Tons, by Tennessee Ernie Ford. It tickled my throat like I had swallowed a buzzing bee hive.

After a while, sheer boredom compelled me to mutter the words. It was good to hear a human voice, and soon I was pronouncing them at normal volume. It wasn’t long before I was singing as loudly as I could, trying to match Tennessee Ford’s baritone with my pubescent pipes. I believe in a Helium based atmosphere, Tennessee Ford would have sounded exactly like me. There’s a phrase used in poltics. That phrase is “slippery slope.” Beginning to sing while completely alone, is perhaps the most slippery slope of all. From Tennessee Ford, I sang Danny Boy, in as male a fashion I was able to muster.

I looked at my reflection. “I’m running out of songs.” My reflection looked back at me, as if to say “What the hell else do you have to do for the next five hours?” I took a break just long enough to really perfect my side part. I nodded at my reflection, “Okay, Jeremiah was a Bullfrog then.” It was at this horrible moment in time, that I began to dance.

Not that any other human being would have regarded it as dancing. Mostly what I did was clap my hands, then step to the side, followed by another hand clap and a side step that returned me to my original position. Sometimes I kicked my knees up as high as I could and spun around like a 50’s style dance show host so that I point, raise an eyebrow, and wink at my own reflection. Since I was already a 50’s style tv show host, I figured I might as well sing Rockin’ Robin and do jive hands. Somewhere around the fifth or sixth “Tweedley deet!” I made a decision. “I am totally fucking into this,” I announced to the empty bathroom.

From there I went to Tom Jones’ She’s a Lady, It’s Not Unsual, and Delilah. Then I traveled back in time to Return to Sender, In the Ghetto, Jailhouse Rock, and Suspicious Minds. You should probably know that I love to impersonate people, which is why I re-wet my hair back and combed it Elvis style as I shook my hips and sung vibratto. Other than a curl of hair I re-wet every few minutes, my hair didn’t look much like Elvis’ at all.

If all of this seems odd, I ask you to put yourself in my situation. I was a thirteen year old pubescent who had no idea how to masturbate, and I knew I was going to be locked completely naked in one place for a quarter of a day. What would you have done to pass the time? Yes, you would have sung to pass the time. You most certainly would not have begun to look in the mirror to do impressions of every famous person you could recall, which is what I did next. A normal person like you probably would have tried to take a nap. Unfortunately, I am not a normal person.

“Aye lass, Robert the Bruce will be rolling ’round Raymond in his rickshaw!” I proudly rolled my R’s into the mirror, giving what I figured was a curt Scottish nod, as I then changed my face to be more carefree and Irish. “Oh, and how would you know that boyo? Have ye got the ear of the king himself now?” Then I frowned, shouted “Fuck!” and ran to the door so I could pound against it again. I was approaching the middle of hour three. I had already done my impression of Bill Clinton, Richard Nixon, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Yoda. I was getting pretty good at the Yoda.

“Shit! I need something to do.” My reflection was panicked and desperate. “Fuck it!” I announced. I nodded in an approving manner so I could watch my reflection approve of my decisiveness. “I’m taking a shower again. Just for something to do.” Even pushing myself to the utmost standards of cleanliness, I was only able to shower for forty-five minutes before the hot water ran out and I ended up just as wet as I was before drying. Almost crying with frustration, I squeegeed myself from wet back to moist, and stared at my reflection for ten minutes, flaring my nostrils as far as they would go. Then I found out I fould actually make my nose thinner, if I flared my nostrils inward.

“Well I guess there’s only one place we can go from here,” I grated in my best Clint Eastwood. My reflection was squinty and suspicious. I slid all the way down the slippery slope. I did the unthinkable. I sang Dancing Queen. Then I sang Super Trooper and Fernando, with frantic desperation I bellowed Mamma Mia! until I cried. Laying naked on the floor, I clawed at the bathroom door. “Please! Someone come home and let me out!”

“Be home, no one is,” I informed myself, in the voice of Yoda. “All alone, you are.”

“But Master Yoda! I’ve been in here for four and a half hours!” I pulled my hair. While this may have seemed like an act of desperation, it was really a subtle maneuver that would allow me to comb a perfect side part again later.

“Patient, you must be” I coughed. Doing Yoda really tickles your throat. “Craziness is the path to the dark side.”

“Fuck me. I don’t even think that means anything.” Then I stood up and did a fly kick. Because I could. Then I spasmed all over the bathroom, pretending to fight various things before I sat down on the toilet again.

“Does anyone here question my right to the throne?” I asked the hand lotion, the mouth wash, and the tooth-brushes. “For I drew Excalibur from the stone! Only I may be called Pendragon!” Continuing on in a very dignified king-voice, I spoke, not sang “Row Row Row Your Boat.” At one point, I stood up and walked in lines back and forth in front of the toothpaste, nodding as I said “Merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream.” Before I jumped and did a pelvic thrust, trying to see if I could jump high enough to see my penis in the bathroom mirror.

I spent the final hour of my captivity doing various displays of acrobatics. With one foot on the toilet, and the other on the bathroom sink, I sang Memory from CATS. So enthralled in the idea of being an old cat recalling her younger days, I never heard my family barge through the front door. Nor did I hear my mother run down the hall in a panicked attempt to make it to the toilet before crapping her pants. No. I sang. I was the cat Jemima, and I was sad as fuck.

My mother, utilizing the still functioning outer door knob, rushed in the bathroom, so see her thirteen year old son, his eyes were closed, his hands raised in a passionate invocation to the gods of song, with… his legs spread open in the splits and… with his penis roughly at eye level.

“BC! What are you doing?” She shrieked in horror.

Opening my eyes, I brought my hands back over my penis so quickly it hurt my balls. “Beeninhereforsixhours!” I tripped over my tongue trying to explain. No one sentence could convey the eterntiy I had spent in the bathroom, trying to find anything to do. So I ran.

Holding my hands over my penis I ran, free once and for all. I ran past my brother, and step father, my young butt cheeks flexing as I pumped my legs. I ran down the stairs to the basement, through the door to my room and pounced on my closet, looking for underwear.

When I was fully dressed, I looked at each member of my family… and was ridiculed for the next several days.