Have you ever seen those shower curtains that have sentences about water and breathing on them? I’m sure you have. Like the one at my mom’s house that says — hold on let me check — water in a state of purity, a clear transparent liquid, and other stuff like, soap is an alkaline substance.

I had strong feelings of paranoia in the shower today. It was my fault. When my brother was in the shower last night I kept turning the faucet on in the kitchen; pretending I was washing cilantro but really I just thought it was funny imagining him getting really annoyed every time the water got scalding hot. Now I was afraid he'd do the same to me.

Anyways, I was in the bathroom smoking a cigarette with the shower running; I like the way the sound of running water drowns out my brain-talk a little and I noticed the room kept getting steamy and then really cold, he was getting back at me.

I got into the shower with feelings of paranoia and started washing my hair with my eyes open. I can tell if the water is going to get really hot by staring at the coiled pipe on the removable shower head, if it’s going to get hot the pipe jumps a little but that means you have to do everything facing the wall with the shower head, and just stare at the pipe. This is how you take a shower with feelings of paranoia.

So I'm at the lathering step of the shampoo process and just staring at this pipe, trying not to get shampoo in my eyes, while also thinking about what I’d do if I had to close my eyes. Like if I felt a shampoo dribble running down my forehead I’d have to close them right away. Because if I tried to keep my eyes open and the shampoo dribble got in my eye I’d have to close them and squint in pain anyways and then try to open them under the water to wash it out. But what if the water was scalding hot? Would I just burn my eyeball? That would be dangerous. It didn’t happen, the shampoo dribble or the hot water, I guess he got bored after the first fifteen minutes when I was smoking but he thought I was in the shower. Actually he did it once after I was in, but I just pushed my body against the cold ceramic tiles until I could feel the water cooling down on my toes, it was easier to maneuver because I was already done washing my hair. I was now at step two of the conditioning-my-hair process, which is leave in.

That has nothing to do with this story. I was talking about the shower curtains with strange breathing and water quotes. While I was being really careful in the shower I looked around for a bar of soap and only found a new Dove bar in its unopened packaging. I use soap for some parts of me and body wash for others because some skin is sensitive to really perfumy body washes, like the one my mother has that’s supposed to smell like pomegranates — even though pomegranates taste much stronger than they smell, they don’t actually smell like anything — but I guess pomegranates are really popular now and can be used to sell things. Like people will walk down the body wash aisle and see one that is supposed to smell like pomegranates and think that it has some antioxidant components because they heard something about pomegranates on Oprah, or whatever that Doctor’s spinoff show is. Anyhow, so as I’m unwrapping the Dove soap and trying to listen to the water getting hot; because right before it gets really hot it also makes a transitional sound and I can’t look at the pipe because I’m looking at the soap wrapper. I notice that the wrapper also has an inspirational(?) quote like the shower curtain. The wrapper says Happiness is a warm bath. This makes me really confused. I hate baths, only take them when I’m sick, or sometimes I think,' People like baths, l should try liking baths too.', or I want to do what I’ve seen in shit-movies where the girl lights candles, puts on some smooth jazz and reads a book.

A bath is not happiness, it’s mostly boring because you can’t do anything once you’re as long or longer than the tub. The soap packaging should have read ‘Happiness is a warm bath if you are shorter than 3 feet’. Because if you are shorter than 3 feet, you can pretend to swim, you can — wait, I change my mind — the packaging should say, ‘Happiness is a warm bath if you are shorter than 3 feet and younger than six’. Because I was going to say you can close your eyes and pretend you are swimming in the ocean, or that you are about to float into a whale's stomach, or the drain is going to suck you into another dimension, but that would be strange if you were older than six and shorter than 3 feet, essentially a midget, and you thought about floating into a whale’s stomach.

Right, about the weird shower curtains and Dove soap wrappers, that say strange things about baths, breathing and water. A bathroom is where you try to wash the shit off you, you brush your teeth to get rid of shit, you sit on the toilet to get rid of shit, you take a shower to get rid of shit. I mean, no amount of stupid quotes about warm baths being happiness is going to change the essence of the bathroom; a place to get rid of unwanted things.

Wait, I guess that would be happiness, a place to get rid of all your unwanted things. Like if you could just wash off, or pluck, or expel your unwanted feelings or memories, that would be happiness. That's what the quote on the Dove bar should say, 'A warm bath will extract every bad memory or feeling you've ever had, forever.' And then they could just put a disclaimer with a * to show that there is one, because at this point the person who's bought it is staring at the soap wrapper in the shower and their hands are wet and the wrapper is disintegrating, they won't even have a chance to get to the disclaimer. Or wait, maybe it wouldn't need one because 'Happiness is a warm bath' didn't. It's deceiving to tell someone that happiness is a warm bath and then they take a bath and decide what warm means, which is too cold because by the time they get in, warm has become luke-warm. Then they're too long to do anything fun in the bath, and the bubbles disappear and it's really quiet which will lead to sad thoughts because now you're cold, wrinkly, thinking too much and the water is magnifying your thighs.