All THIS for some hot water???

Just another story from my travels that I thought you might find amusing.


I am in Casablanca and you have to pay for hot showers if you want one. I decided to pay the extra money because I needed to shave as well and I hate shaving with cold water. I went to the front desk to get the key for the shower. The front desk clerk tells me that the shower is downstairs and I have shower #1. Easy enough I figure. I go downstairs and there are rooms where the front desk clerk said there are showers. I am walking along this hallway to find the showers, and this hallway is never ending. I keep on passing room after room but no showers. The hallway takes a right, then another right before I come upon the shower. Not shower #1, but THE shower. As in there are no other showers but this one on the entire floor. My key opens the door so I know I have the right shower. I walk in, and it is unlike any shower room I have ever seen in my life. First off, it really is a room, no stalls, benches or anything, just a huge, white, bare 10 x 12 room. It is the damndest thing. There are hooks to hang your towel and clothes by the door, but the actual shower nozzle is waaaaaay across the room. There was nothing else along the walls that could be used as hooks to hang up my towel on. There were not even other sockets like there had been more showers in the room at some point in time. Why someone would turn a room that size into a single shower stall I do not know. Another thing that stood out right away is the fact that there is no drain. In addition, the floor was perfectly level. I mean that if there was no drain, and there was no decline that allowed the water to run to a corner of the room…Where did it go??? There was a red stool in the room also, but it was wet so it made me think someone had been sitting naked on it recently. I did NOT use the stool. There was a raised ledge type barrier on the floor going around the shower where a shower curtain should have been hanging. It was pointless to have the ledge since there was no drain!

I start the shower up. It is a pretty good shower I must admit, great water pressure, massage head shower nozzle. I sneezed at some point and it just resonated in the room. It was like being in Carnegie Hall butt naked in soapsuds. I started singing. Maaan, I sounded like Teddy Pendergrass, Marvin Gaye and Luther Vandross all rolled into one. I was just wailing in the shower putting on a concert for myself. Since there was no sink, I had to shave my head in the shower. No big deal at all. I have shaved so much I can do it with my eyes closed. I put the shaving cream on my head and commence to shave. However, a couple of things had since happened from when I first started my shower. I LOVE to take very hot showers. There was only one tiny window way up near the ceiling in the shower and it was closed. I started sweating while I was in the shower. Also, the steam had no where to go so it was collecting in the shower room like a storm cloud in Florida in July. I am shaving and get a bit of shaving cream in my eye, no big deal. After awhile though, with the shaving cream mixing with the sweat getting into my eyes it is starting to burn a lot. I mean my eyes are starting to feel like they are on fire. Not a problem, I can just wipe my eyes with my towel. Oh, wait! I am in a huge room so my towel is not right next to the shower. I begin to move towards the wall and I stumble over that damn ledge going around the shower. I try to open my eyes to see exactly where I am going, but the steam is so thick I cannot see a damn thing. It was like in the cartoon Scooby Doo when the fog would be so thick Scooby would cut a hole in it using his paw. My eyes started burning even more so I had to close them. I put my arms out in front of me to make sure I did not bust my nose when I reached the wall. I finally reached the wall and I was feeling around for my towel. I started searching and probing my way to where my towel was located. You remember that red stool I told you about? I didn’t. Bust my shin on it. So here is the mental image you should have here, I am butt naked, half my head has shaving cream on it, my eyes are squeezed shut as tight as I can get them, my arms are outstretched in front of me so I can feel for my towel AND I am limping. I finally find my towel and wiped my eyes so I could see. Walked back to the shower and tried to finish shaving fast.

Another thing I learned that you have to be aware of when taking a shower in a room with no ventilation is that steam consists of vaporized water and water has weight. That weight will be transferred to your lungs as you breathe in the non-ventilated shower room. My chest started hurting and my voice started sounding like an 80-year-old Jewish man who had a two pack a day habit. Then more sweat and shaving cream got into my eyes! Had to do the whole naked blind man with the half shaved head routine again. After I wiped my eyes again I knew I needed to get some air up in the room. Had no windows at all, but I did have a door. I did not want to shower with the door open, but it was a calculated risk. I cracked the door open a little bit, peeked outside and did not see or hear anyone. I started opening and closing the door really fast to try to get some circulation of air up in there. It worked a bit. I ran back to the shower to finish shaving. Even with the door cracked, it still was foggy as hell in that shower room. By this point, my contacts were wrecked so I could not see anything with my eyes open. I turned off the shower, knelt down to try and find my soap gel, shaving cream and razor I put on the floor of the room. Not sure how long it took me to do this, but it was long enough for someone else who needed to take a shower to not hear water or a person moving around to think the shower was free. Add that the door was unlocked AND open and I would have thought the same thing. The steam was starting to thin out a bit, but it was still pea soup and hard to see anything. However, my ears worked perfectly fine. I heard someone come in the shower and start heading to where I was crouched down. I jumped up and at the same time screamed “Aaah!!” Let me set this mental image for you again, but from the other person’s perspective. You walk into a shower room that is hot, humid and thick with steam. You walk towards where you think the shower nozzle is to put your shower things. All of sudden, this black man with white streaks running down his head from front to back, white goatee (from the shaving cream smeared in it), razor in one hand, shaving cream in another with devil red eyes opened as wide as possible screaming “Aaah!!” pops out of nowhere butt ass naked. It might give you a tad bit of a fright. Scared the shit out of the poor lil’ white girl who walked in on me. She looked like the Flintstones when they first start their cars. How they are running in place for a second or two before the traction kicks in and the cars zoom off. She did the same thing, but running backwards. I was very impressed. I got all my stuff together and got dressed. Made my way upstairs expecting to have half the Casablanca Police force waiting for me there with a terrified white girl screaming, “That’s him!” But all was quiet and the front desk clerk asked me if the shower was Ok. I told him it was worth writing a story about.