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| "Mind the minors, plea-uzz!" |
Bear in mind that Gordon is an unseemly clean individual. One might go so far as to say he is ‘O.C.D.’ about things, but a more pejorative {and thereby more accurate} description would be ‘anally retentive.’ Nomenclature aside, he wears gloves to do the dishes, irons his jeans, owns a feather duster, and carries hand sanitizer with him in his jacket pocket. He is a model tenant at the Walton Arms apartment complex, and had he any friends they would likely agree his apartment is kept in a perfect, probably fashionable order. Well-groomed and orderly as Gordon may be, and as clean-cut a mid-level manager as the Fred Meyer has ever had, for all intents and purposes the man leads a thoroughly miserable personal life. No sex, you see. Whether this is the cause or an effect of Gordon’s aforementioned cleanliness is anyone’s guess. What is certain is that, thirty-four and unbedded, unhappy Gordon’s life takes a drastic turn the day he misses his morning shower. The day is a Tuesday, mid-February. Naked down to his immaculate ¾ inch sideburns, a routine turn of the spigot produces an unexpected absence of water. There is a slight befuddled pause, then an absent minded and equally unfruitful twist of the second spigot. Confusion transforms to concern; the time is now 7.21. In thirty-seven minutes Gordon should be at the corner bus stop, or else be late for work. He rushes about the tidy, conservatively sized apartment checking the taps {which are likewise dry} and {braving the winter snow in his bathrobe} the hose outside. No water. He phones the water company {#8 on his speed dial}, but the lines are busy. 7.39. Time is running short. He smells himself, but finds only a faint odor of skin. He is unshaven, but not noticeably so. It will have to do, he sighs to himself as he brushes his teeth using a bottle of water from the fridge. He doffs his neatly pressed business casuals and jets out the door in a state of mild discomfort and mental disorder.
The dull blue bus with the large dirty windows pulls in on time, unusually filled with morning people. Our hero winces as he grabs hold of a hand-rail, squished against these unsanitary strangers. He notes with distaste a vagranty-looking old man sitting in Gordon’s usual seat at the front, doubtlessly farting it up good. The bus lurches forward and Gordon jostles backward, bumping into the girl behind him. He has seen her many times on this bus, and has never found a reason to talk to her. Plain of face and bosomy, possibly married. “Pardon me,” he tells her off-handedly with the merest turn of his head. From the corner of his eye he thinks she may have smiled at him. They graze limbs and bump bodies several more times, he apologizing and she at last assuring him that “It’s no problem.” He leaves the bus in a curiously giddy mood, temporarily forgetting his unwashed state. The spacious Fred Meyer lot is full of cars and trucks and the various vehicular dinosaurs that rule the earth, with streams of unkempt folk rushing in or lumbering out with cases of water. Inside he hears the dreadful news: a blown water main may not be fixable for a week or more, leaving the entire town high and dry.
Only able to buy one case of spring water amid the chaos, Gordon faces the unhappy fact that showers are hereafter impossible for the time being. He sleeps uneasily the night, the feeling of crawling uncleanliness covering him. Nightmares and vague visions of filth and decay rollick his evening, and by morning he is too tired to really care about his scent, much less brush his teeth. He catches the once-again typically half-filled bus and, remembering the incontinent old man from the day before, looks for a new seat. There are few to choose from however, but the bosom-woman sits alone on the side-bench. He drops beside her and his heartbeat quickens at the prickening sensation of two fleshes in near proximity. She smiles at him again and he possibly says good morning, mumbling nervously. The bus pulls ahead and now she brushes into him. “We can’t stop bumping into each other,” she says to him pleasantly. “I don’t mind,” he replies in all honesty and immediately feels stupid; unclean and self-conscious. Gordon can hear her sniffing, and remembers that he hasn’t showered in two days. He must reek to high heaven! Sniffing up his odor and probably judging his lame remarks; he wishes he hadn’t sat here, but the crusty old man and his bean gas… “My name is Sue,” Sue tells him, in what manner? More than pleasantly in the ordinary run of things, he knows. But in what way, he cannot quite figure out. He tells her his name, and they get to talking about things he will not remember when he disembarks. When Gordon steps into the Fred Meyer his only thought is that they have a coffee date later that afternoon.
That night, for the first time in his life Gordon has sex with another person, a bosomy plain-faced woman named Sue. He does not quite remember how it all ‘went down’ {as his employees at the Meyer would often say when recounting their own exploits} but when he wakes up with her next to him in bed, he feels dirty. A good, pleasant kind of dirty, like one might feel after a hard day’s toil in the garden. For the first time in his life, Gordon feels like a manly man, or something thereabouts. They have sex again when she awakes, then board the bus together. The hefty driver raises his eyebrows and grins afterwards with all three chins as they sit down. Yes, Gordie {she had called him Gordie in the night} feels like a man. “I fucked her rotten,” his smile announces to the world. And the raunchy smile widens as the sex escalates thereafter throughout the week. Dirty, sweaty stuff; things Gordie used to ponder over as a younger man {or older boy, as he recollects it}. Tit-fucking. Ass-ramming. Italian chandeliering. Sixty-nining {a term he still cannot figure out}. At work he quietly asks some of his cashiers for ‘moves,’ which they are more than happy to divulge with a nasty relish. And Gordie notices the women eyeing him, in the good sort of way. “They know it, too,” he tells himself. And he begins to eye them back as well.
And then the water returns. Having not washed in six days, Gordie feels slightly out of place in the shower. For one thing, Sue is in it with him, letting him play with her rubbery wet tits as she lathers his hair. But the hot water feels grand and the sweet smells of soap and shampoo are refreshing. And as the two lovers towel each other off a funny thing happens. Sue has to go rather abruptly, and catches the 2.28 bus home. Gordie thinks nothing of it {after all, she had been there most of the past week!}, but the next day Sue has ‘things to do,’ with an unpleasant, abstracted look on her face. The women stop eyeing him as well, and once again Gordon’s life takes an unhappy turn. Worse yet than before, he has what he can only call the Hunger. His bed has never felt so empty, the apartment never so lifeless and small. He goes over it in his mind, again and again to no avail. Life reverts to emptiness in a way he recognizes as his own, but had never before noticed. Shower. Bus. Work. Bus. Eat. Sleep. Shower. Days drag by, and his heightened interest in women only serves to make their passing the more painful.
It is during one of his introspective morning showers that the idea hits him: the showers! The fastidious cleanliness is the only factor that differentiated Gordon’s lifetime from the halcyon week of the Gordie. It makes no sense, but in his spiritual desperation it is the only explanation he can think of. In a fantastical sort of way he seems faced with a crisis of existence; either he gives up washing or he lives out his life with the sexless Hunger, unfulfilled and clean. The decision is made in the stale fluorescent lighting of his tiny bathroom, sealed in the basement with a wrench as Gordon permanently shuts off the water flow to his apartment. A vow is made, to never wash again and to live the life of pleasure that it might afford. Just as before, the transition is almost exponential. The Hunger becomes filled, simply vanishes. If there were any doubts before, Gordie finds an inverse relationship between his hygiene and his inexplicable appeal to the opposite sex. More than just a full-time gig, sex and filth become a sort of spiritual pairing that propels him onward with an unforeseen self-confidence. The sheer quantity of women in need of this newfound spiritual fellowship demands Gordie’s complete preoccupation. There are plenty of them about; ones with prettier faces, bigger {or adversely, smaller} tits, nicer asses, and heartier appetites than he had known with Sue. Life becomes a celebration of the physical and the raunchy, a glorification of all the schmutz he'd been warned against.
The metamorphosis is complete and all-encompassing. Not for want of presentability, but for sheer lack of presence the Fred Meyer stops calling for him, with the eventuality that his rent goes unpaid. The inevitable loss of his apartment does not bother Gordie. It was a miserable, overkempt pit of sadness, as far as he can recall. “Possessions are empty comforts,” he might have proclaimed had he the time or presence of mind to ruminate such things. In any case the matter is moot; he finds himself shacking up for a day or two here and there, living and shagging where he may by want of necessity. Everywhere; in the backs of cars, motel rooms, park shrubbery, stairwells, playgrounds, laundry rooms, sidewalks, and public lavatories. Rampant and non-stop, like some sort of living, breathing, fucking Axe commercial. He has come beyond the edge of the commonplace, an irresistible insatiable fucking machine; a sexual demi-god of urban mythology. And for once and forever, he is happy.
