Thoughts on "National Shower with a Friend Day"

  The other day it was “National Shower with a Friend Day.”

  I don’t know who comes up with these “National Days.”  Does someone have to come up in front of Congress and say, “We want a National Day for thus-and-so.”  Then congress argues about it, agree on something then a proclamation is issued?

  Or is it somebody just says, “I want February 5^th to be ‘National Shower with a Friend Day’” and so then they have dibs on that day?  Now that’s a possibility, because February 5^th was not only “National Shower with a Friend Day” but also “National Weatherperson’s Day” and “World Nutella Day.”  So I reckon weatherpeople and the chocolate breakfast spread people also had dibs on February 5^th.

  Questions came up in my mind:  Who was this for?  Was this for couples who have trouble with intimacy...giving them an excuse to get intimate?  You know, they’ve been out on dates like 17 times and still haven’t kissed because neither one knows how to bridge the gap…so on “National Shower with a Friend Day” one turns to the other and says, “You wanna take a shower together?”  Then love blossoms in the air and rainbows and dancing unicorns appear…or whatever.

  Do you shower with or without your clothes on on “National Shower with a Friend Day”?  Maybe you’re supposed to wear a swimsuit.  Maybe you’re supposed to be buck naked.

  What crossed my mind on “National Shower with a Friend Day” was the time a Belgian lesbian barged in on me in a shower in Bisbee, Arizona.

  It’s not out of bigotry or xenophobia that I tell you Franziska was a Belgian lesbian, it’s just statement of fact: Franziska* was from Belgium and she was very emphatic that people knew she was a lesbian.

  If you’ve never been to Bisbee I’ll describe it to you as a former copper mining town about 90 miles southeast of Tucson, about a rifle shot from the Mexican border.  In addition to everyday folks who work in county government, the town is populated by a significant chunk of artists, neo-hippies, alternative lifestylers and people with no visible means of support.

  You knew you were in an alternative type community when you passed by a sign reading, “This section of highway cleaned by The Southeast Arizona LGBTQ Alliance*.”

  While I worked 30 miles away at a radio station in Sierra Vista, the woman I hung around with…Muriel*…ran the town dance studio.

  Consequently our house was frequented by a parade of colorful characters:  The topless breastfeeding mom, the couple frequently covered in scratches and bruises because they fought with each other but insisted the marks were from a bar fight they were in…often.  There was the lesbian couple who had asked Muriel if I could “help them make a baby” and then there was Franziska.

  Franziska and her partner Camionelle had a dog grooming business.

  One summer Muriel went away with the two to a beachside resort in Mexico on the Gulf of California.  At the time I didn’t think much of it, didn’t think anything weird of the three of them traipsing off to Mexico, didn’t have a problem with Muriel calling me and saying she was going to spend an extra week down there with the two dog groomers.  But after Muriel and I had split up I looked at this particular time as one where after she came back there had been a palpable shift in our relationship.

  Then there was the time that there was a party at Franziska and Camionelle’s.  Muriel said I was invited too because, after all, to many of her friends I was known as “Mr. Muriel.”

  I showed up at Franziska and Camionelle’s, walked through the door and suddenly the house, full of only women, went silent.

  “What?” I looked around and smiled, “Do I smell funny?”

  “No,” said Camionelle, “You’re just the first man who has been in this house in probably 5 years.”

  I was surprised at how anti-male Franziska and Camionelle were, after all, I had moved to Bisbee from Phoenix after hearing that the town was an alternative utopia.  Back then I still naively believed that somewhere there was a place where folks all got along.

  Dumbass me.

  It was in Bisbee I learned that there is no such thing as utopia.

  I learned that no matter what side of the political spectrum you fancy yourself on, the left…the right, both sides have their extremes.

  I had a glimpse into the anti-man trip Franziska was on when she gave a talk at one International Women’s Day celebration.

  It was another one of those Bisbee things where I was one of a handful of men in the audience made up mostly of women.  I was there because Muriel was there doing a dance presentation in honor of the occasion.

  Then it was Franziska’s turn to speak.

  And speak she did.

  Franziska gave an emphatic talk on “The Hysterectomy Conspiracy.”

  I can’t remember the whole thing but basically she launched into a diatribe against the American medical profession, that the removal of women’s uteruses was a power play by men to rob women of their strength and rightful place as the true leaders of humankind.  She went on to say hysterectomies are totally unnecessary, that when hysterectomies are performed the surgery disrupts women’s internal organs by taking out necessary balance and connective tissue rendering women weak.

  I sat in the audience with furrowed brow pondering her points.  I was fresh from a gig in Phoenix working at a talk radio station where conspiracy theories were their stock and trade.  At this point I was still two years away from tapping into the internet, still 15 years away from a cell phone with internet access, so I had no way to check the veracity of all the supposed facts she was spewing out that night.

  I had trouble imagining a secret cabal of powerful doctors directing other doctors to deliberately rob women of their strength by removing uteruses.

  The next year Franziska gave a talk on “The Gendercide of the Middle Ages:  Details of the Holocaust No One Talks About,” in which she described the wholesale slaughter of women from about 1200 to 1650 as a move to unseat women from their natural position of power.  The women were branded as witches and 6,000,000 women died.

  As I sat in the audience I pondered a loss of 6,000,000 women at that point in human history…that would’ve been a helluva dent in the population.  Wouldn’t that have been about most of the women in Europe?

  Oh well.

  I was in no position to argue.

  And Muriel danced on.

  Sometime later Muriel had a bunch of women over to the house for something or another, I wasn’t paying attention.

  I had to work the next day and so I had to take a shower and get ready for bed.

  I walked into the living room.

  “Excuse me,” I said as I looked over the 10 or 12 women there, “I have to use the bathroom for about 10 minutes.  Does anyone need to go in there before I do?”

  There was a general shaking of heads to indicate “no.”

  Except Franziska.

  “You just came in here to announce that in hopes that we would imagine you naked in the bathroom,” said Franziska.  “I can tell you none of us are interested.”

  I had to stifle a laugh at Franziska’s idea.

  “No, Franziska, that’s not why I came in here,” I said.  “I came in to see if anyone needs to go in there before I tie the room up for a few minutes.”

  “I’ll bet,” said Franziska.

  And so I went into the bathroom, brushed my teeth then hopped in the shower.

  About a minute later the bathroom door opens (there was no lock) and there’s Franziska heading for the sink.

  “HEY!” I yelled, gathering the shower curtain around me.  “I’M SHOWERING IN HERE.”

  “Well I’m certainly not coming to join you.  I’m washing my hands,” said Franziska.

  “HOW ABOUT USING THE KITCHEN SINK.”

  “You Americans and your false modesty,” said Franziska.  “You men thinking about sex all the time.”

  She turned around and left, slamming the door behind her.

  And I never saw her again.

  Well except for that time I came over to the house after Muriel and I split up.

  I came to pick up some of my stuff.  Muriel had said to come on over so I did.

  I got some stuff from the house and remembered some things I had out in the garage.

  Walking outside in the evening dark I heard some voices, looked over toward the hot tub and there was Muriel with Franziska and Camionelle, all naked in the hot tub.

  “Keep on walking, Mr. Man,” Franziska said loudly.  “Nothing to see here, and you have nothing we want.”

E P I L O G U E

  They had a fire in Bisbee some months ago.

  Seeing the place in the news brought back a flood of memories.

  I took to the Internet and looked up people I had known.

  The woman who had once been editor of the paper moved home to Houston.  Nermala who had once asked if I could help her and her lover have a baby had died…and when she died she had a new partner, not the one I had known.

  Many had moved away from the town “Where normal is weird and weird is normal.”

  But Franziska was still there.

  I looked her up on The Facebook.

  In that section where it says “Studied at” Franziska wrote “None of your damn business!”

  And in the other education section where it said “Went to” Franziska wrote “Also none of your damn business!”

  Ahh, Franziska was still the Franziska I had known.

  And a part of me still wondered, after all these years, why Franziska seemed so pissed off at the world.

*All names changed because people get upset over the slightest thing these days……