Washing Your Hair in A Truckstop Sink
Posted by reallyrelyay | | Posted On Tuesday, February 19, 2008 at 6:44 AM
Being on tour gave me a new found appreciation for showers. Every bathroom was different. There was the suburban family household bathroom of Lombard, with dryer-sheet scented towels, and floral wallpaper curled over itself on the walls, then there was the dim-lit and dirty bathroom of Millwaukee, the bathroom that belonged to four hipster dudes, with organic mint-scented shampoo, and hair in the drain. There was the shower on the farm, after which I actually felt clean, because there was a breeze coming throw the lace-curtained window when I stepped out from under the hot water. I washed my hair twice that morning.
Sure, I had brought my own shampoo, Garnier Fruictis 2-in-1 that I kept in a large plastic bag in my suitcase. I would carry it in with me to the bathroom along with my toothbrush and face wash with every intention of using it. There was no reason to take from strangers, bath products are expensive. Curiosity got the better of me every single time, starting with Milwaukee. Mint-scented organic shampoo? What does that feel like? It ended up not lathering very well, the soap seeped through the spaces between my fingers and circled down the drain. It didn’t feel any thicker than the water running down my back. I didn’t feel clean at all after that. On the bus later the shampoo came up in conversation.
“Man, my hair smells so good!” Gavin exclaimed as his coif whipped him in the face as we sped down the highway.
“Did you use the Garnier?”
“No I used that mint stuff they had. Actually I used every shampoo they had, and it was awesome. I love showering at other people’s houses. They always have such cool stuff.”
“No wonder you take twenty minute showers.” Ian said. Gavin’s showers were marathons, and rarely left the person who followed with any warm water.
“I like to take my time man.”
“Yeah we noticed.” Justin said over his copy of Love in the Time of Cholera.
“You should try it.”
Out of all of us, Justin was the most particular about showering. He wouldn’t go a day without one, and he was usually first in the bathroom if he woke up in time. It’s not that he took an especially long time, like Gavin, or left the bathroom billowing with steam, like Joey, he just refused to leave a house until he had showered. He sweated a lot when we played and hated to feel dirty. The rest of the guys would rough it sometimes, waiting a day or two between cleaning, but Justin always insisted on lathering up before we left. In Minneapolis he had to go without a shower (We got kicked out for sleeping in too late. Famous line, “I don’t mean to be an asshole, but you guys need to get the fuck out.”) Justin was the first of us to wash his hair in a bathroom sink.
Ian only showered every three days. With most people this would be disgusting on th even the tidiest of people would smell after a day or two. Ian’s sweat just didn’t seem to smell very bad, so none of us minded. He just smelled especially nice on the days where he did clean up.
Here’s my theory on Ian’s sweat. I have this untested theory about his lack of body odor.
Ian drank a solid gallon of Arizona tea every two days, or about a liter of tea every day. On the bus the gallon was constantly by his side, he would take a swig, put it back down, wait a few minutes, and then drink some more. When he ran out of his first two gallons on the first four days of tour he started buying multiple cans at every gas station that we stopped at. As far as I can see there are no studies on the effect of sweet green tea and sweat production, but Ian stayed SO hydrated through his almost ridiculous intake of the liquid that it might have actually changed the way that his sweat smelled.
In any case, the rest of us just showered as normal, in other people’s bathrooms, using their shampoo whenever we could. We were fortunate enough on the Western leg of tour to never be out of a place to stay.
The Eastern leg was different.
There’s an art to washing your hair in a truckstop sink. Getting all of my hair wet was an uphill battle. My scalp was littered with bruises from the bottom of faucets in shallow sinks. There was no way to master the trajectory of the water from my hair when I finally did pull my head from the sink. Once I accidentally splashed a woman who just exited the stall behind me. Her light blue blouse was dotted with drops of water. She looked at me with complete disgust, as if my hair was really just wet trash piled on my head. The guys didn’t have as big of a problem with these vile stares. Their numbers protected them.
In Richmond, Virginia, on the second day of our second round of tour, I was in the bathroom, brushing my teeth in with small circular motions the way my dentist always tells me to, when a woman walked in to use the restroom. She paused in the bathroom door and we looked at each other. She stared at me, with my foamy Crest mouth and bed head, and quickly ducked into the bathroom stall closest to the door. I rinsed in the sink, brushed my hair, and washed my face before she flushed. I didn’t want to have to look her in the eye again.
Her face stayed with me for the rest of the eastern tour.
Exiting the bathroom was also bad. I looked like someone who had just had their head flushed down the toilet. My wet t-shirt would cling to my shoulders and back, and my bare face was usually flushed, my eyes still puffy with sleep. It was these moments that I never tell my mom and dad about. They don’t know about the woman in New Jersey who changed her daughter’s diaper in a regular stall rather than stand near me at the changing station. On the last day of tour I wrote, “In instances like this, I wish I could have a sign hover over me that says, ‘I’m about to finish my degree! I am a twenty-one year old girl from white suburbia who prefers reading and conversation over a television! I just happen to be in a band who couldn’t find a place to sleep last night!’” But even if that sign existed, no one would look at me long enough to read it. In their eyes, I was homeless.
That day in Ohio there were private bathrooms at the truck stop that we stayed at. They looked like bathrooms from a Motel 6, but without the towels, sample soaps, or Andes Mints. I was tentative of taking off my shoes. I did anyway. The showerhead was cheap and the hard water burst out. It felt like someone was hosing me down. I shampooed twice. People frequently tried to open the door, but it was locked. I took my time.
I studied myself in the mirror. This was the last day of tour. My body ached from every hair follicle to every toe. My collar bone was protruding. There was a bruise the size of my heart on my upper-thigh, the result of my aggressive tambourin-ing. It was originally a lesiousness black, but it had transformed into a muscle-tissue mauve, as if my skin was transparent. There were numerous other bruises of unknown origins all over my body. You could see my ribs. I had lost 7-8 pounds in the matter of two weeks. Tony would be in Toledo to pick me up that night, and I thought about what he would think when he saw me. I would be meeting his entire extended family in less than twenty-four hours. Who would he be introducing?
In Richmond, Virginia, on the second day of our second round of tour, I was in the bathroom, brushing my teeth in with small circular motions the way my dentist always tells me to, when a woman walked in to use the restroom. She paused in the bathroom door and we looked at each other. She stared at me, with my foamy Crest mouth and bed head, and quickly ducked into the bathroom stall closest to the door. I rinsed in the sink, brushed my hair, and washed my face before she flushed. I didn’t want to have to look her in the eye again.
Her face stayed with me for the rest of the eastern tour.
Exiting the bathroom was also bad. I looked like someone who had just had their head flushed down the toilet. My wet t-shirt would cling to my shoulders and back, and my bare face was usually flushed, my eyes still puffy with sleep. It was these moments that I never tell my mom and dad about. They don’t know about the woman in New Jersey who changed her daughter’s diaper in a regular stall rather than stand near me at the changing station. On the last day of tour I wrote, “In instances like this, I wish I could have a sign hover over me that says, ‘I’m about to finish my degree! I am a twenty-one year old girl from white suburbia who prefers reading and conversation over a television! I just happen to be in a band who couldn’t find a place to sleep last night!’” But even if that sign existed, no one would look at me long enough to read it. In their eyes, I was homeless.
That day in Ohio there were private bathrooms at the truck stop that we stayed at. They looked like bathrooms from a Motel 6, but without the towels, sample soaps, or Andes Mints. I was tentative of taking off my shoes. I did anyway. The showerhead was cheap and the hard water burst out. It felt like someone was hosing me down. I shampooed twice. People frequently tried to open the door, but it was locked. I took my time.
I studied myself in the mirror. This was the last day of tour. My body ached from every hair follicle to every toe. My collar bone was protruding. There was a bruise the size of my heart on my upper-thigh, the result of my aggressive tambourin-ing. It was originally a lesiousness black, but it had transformed into a muscle-tissue mauve, as if my skin was transparent. There were numerous other bruises of unknown origins all over my body. You could see my ribs. I had lost 7-8 pounds in the matter of two weeks. Tony would be in Toledo to pick me up that night, and I thought about what he would think when he saw me. I would be meeting his entire extended family in less than twenty-four hours. Who would he be introducing?
There was nothing that I could do to make myself feel clean.
