Showered in Miscommunication

If there's one thing the relationship experts harp on, it's communication. Almost all the best-selling books about marriage include the words language, communication, talking, or conversation. Whatever works for you, I suppose, but through more than 16 years of marriage I have learned that communication is overrated.

Sex, now that's a worthy goal. It's a form of communication, after all. And hotel sex? Even better.

To this end my husband and I packed an overnight bag and tossed a twenty at the kids on our way up to Eureka Springs for some much needed time away. We had reservations in a lovely haunted hotel, complete with tall ceilings, warped windows, and hundred year old furniture. After we'd settled in and opened the same riesling we drank on our honeymoon, I showered and started to get ready for our big night out. (Where big night out = eating pasta on a deserted balcony at the only restaurant that stayed open past 8pm.) Anyway, I was at the sink setting up the hair infrastructure when my husband started opening the drawers to the dresser.

He pulled out a penguin made of terry cloth and that soft but scrubby material, something you'd find overflowing from a basket at Bath and Body works during penguin awareness week.

"It's a penguin loofah." He turned it around in his hands.

"It's not a loofah," I corrected, "and I can't believe you're touching it."

He looked at me and then the penguin.

"Seriously," I said. "Put it down."

He set the penguin back in the drawer and closed it slowly, methodically.

"What's the big deal?"

"What do you mean what's the big deal? You touched someone else's scrubby. That's disgusting."

What he wanted to say: Get over it, freakish germaphobe. What he said: "Yeah, I guess you're right."

I applied a second coat of mascara as my husband came up from behind me and put his hands around my waist.

"Seriously, wash your hands. I don't want someone else's ass germs."

Confusion washed across his face. "Oh come on. The face thingy?"

I stopped applying blush. "That's not what it's for."

Confusion was replaced by realization.

"So that thing hanging in our shower– that fluffy thing? You use it– on your– "

"Ass crack."

"No!"

"Yes."

"You're lying."

"You don't really use it on your face, do you?" It took several more minutes for me to convince him that I wasn't just messing with him, torturing him for sport, as is my custom. "It's scrubby and soft. That's what it's FOR! It's an ass scrubber."

He sat on the ancient sofa and shook his head in disbelief, saying more to himself than to me, "I specifically don't use that thing on my ass because I know it's for your face."

"That's funny, Babe," I said. "Because I specifically don't use that thing on my face because I know it's for your ass."