Tuesday

There I stood. I wasn't really paying attention, How could I be? As you might imagine my mind was occupied. What I was about to do was going to take all of my concentration. They say we only use something like ten percent of our brains. I can tell you, here and now, what I was readying for was going to take at least eleven.

It was a Tuesday. That much I can recall. I couldn't tell you the weather. I couldn't tell you what I had for breakfast, or even lunch for that matter. Dinner, a turkey sandwich with a side salad, but that is neither here nor there. Work was uneventful. The commute home was more uneventful than work.

Was it kismet that landed me there? Was the painfully uneventful actually a series of seemingly uneventful happenings all aligning to create something eventful?

Maybe it was just chaos. Independent forces acting on their own behalf colliding with each other, rocketing me through space and time with the accuracy of a pinball with the flight pattern of a bumble-bee that had just recently mistaken a smashed bottle of watermelon vodka for a non-alcoholic flower.

Doesn't much matter at this point. Because there I stood. Staring down at my shower drain. That rusted shield of valor. That stronghold, only accessible by plumbers and other vigilantes, protecting me from all things washed away. Protecting me from all things I was about to do.

That was when the burning came. Burning, and the smell of wild wintergreen, freshly sprouted in the Vermont spring. Just like I used to smell as a boy walking home from Little League practice. There was no time for nostalgia, however. The burning was just too much to take.

It was then and only then that I realized I had made an error that would haunt me for the rest of the hour. From roughly 6:10pm to 6:38pm on that most eventful Tuesday that, from its sunrise, looked so pure and honest and bright.

That was the last time I ever masturbated with Icy Hot in the shower after work.