by Shane Cook

Created on: January 11, 2009

I shower an average of ten times a week. Always in the morning and often before I go to bed. Parts of me sparkle. I have a routine that starts with the head, crosses left to right and ends with the feet. It's a simple top to bottom system that relies heavily on gravity. Simply put, I would never wash my chest before washing my neck. What would be the point? Why spend all of that time scrubbing your chest just to have filthy neck water run down the front of you. I believe in my washing system. I believe in it so strongly that I've found myself in some fairly uncomfortable situations. Most of them at the gym. The other day I noticed this fellow coming into the locker room. He was a weight lifter. He had been at it for years. Yes, he was one of those tiny-legged, jug heads. He also had a tattoo of a snake on his thigh. A green one. Anyway, all sweaty he strolls into the shower, turns on the water and proceeds to wash himself. Now I'm using the term washing in the vaguest and lightest sense. He was really just slapping at himself with wet hands. He had very little regard for accuracy. As far as I was concerned he was wasting his time. It took everything I had to keep from calling him out in front of the other strongmen and offering to help. This is where the sense of "uncomfortable" comes in. I've never gotten the feeling this was the type of gym where helping the fellow next to you shower was appropriate. But even worse, I think the guy across from me knew what I was thinking. He was looking at me. His body language seemed to say, "There is something seriously wrong with you. Really, YOU ARE NOT OK". Well, if there is something wrong with me I blame Southern California with an emphasis on pretty Mexican girls. I will not shoulder the weight of my strangeness alone. I haven't always been this way.

Quail Valley, California was an alright place for a kid to live. It was a terrible place for a human, but for a kid, it was alright. For the lucky kids there were blonde tarantulas and for even luckier kids there were King Snakes. For the unlucky kids though, there were the Satanists. I was one of those kids who could be both lucky and unlucky. Every so often while attempting to corner a snake out in the desert I'd come across an "alter". Now, I use the term "alter" in a light and vague sense. These were usually large boulders with poorly spray-painted pentagrams on them. Below the pentagram would be a pile of rocks. There would also be cat remains. Along with their unhealthy

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