Ch 1 Saturday - Sly offers the master shower to Primo and me and I throw up a little bit in my mouth as images of Sly and Doris naked in the shower come to my mind

You guys, this is so, so gross. SO GROSS! Who does this?

Sly is already up when I get up. He says, “If you and Primo want to use our shower instead of the guest bathroom, go ahead. It fits two. Doris and I shower together all the time.”

The Viagra conversation, taken to another level. The man who knows I am uncomfortable with the idea of sleeping in the same bed with his son in his house thinks I wouldn’t mind taking a shower in his bathroom with his son while he is in the next room.

When I brought my college boyfriend home, my dad asked him if he wanted to play chess. He never offered us the shower in the master bedroom.

1.      If I’m not comfortable sharing a bed with their son under their roof, what makes him think I would be comfortable taking a shower with him under their roof?

2.      The image of Sly and Doris naked together in the shower flashes into my head and makes me a tiny bit sick to my stomach. I don’t want to imagine about my own parents naked. I definitely do not want to think about my boyfriend’s parents naked. I shake my head, trying to evict the picture from my mind, but it sticks there and haunts me.

3.      I have showered in the nastiest of showers in the nastiest of motels in Latin America. I have stayed in motels where the shower is covered with mildew and the sink is gray, caked with grease and old whiskers. I used those facilities because I had no choice. It was use a nasty shower or be dirty with the sweat of a 21-hour bus ride over bad Paraguayan dirt roads where the toothless drunk next to me kept falling asleep on my shoulder and the passenger behind me threw up in his seat and the bus driver refused to clean it up, telling me that it was not his responsibility.

I can take a lot, but my shower tolerance has been used up. I am not squeamish about many things, but showering in a tub that has not been cleaned after the previous occupant has used it unless the previous occupant is my sister, my brother, my mom, my boyfriend, or one of my best friends makes my stomach turn.

Showering after someone I don’t even know and risking finding their body hair on the shower floor or in the soap would make me betray my country.

Showering in someone else’s shower WITH MY BOYFRIEND is – I don’t even have the words.

“No, the guest bathroom is fine, thank you,” I answer.