The boiler is out of commission at the Moab Fitness Center. No hot water for the showers. I come covered in red desert dust and desperation. The Community Center in Fruita closed for a week of maintenance the last few days in town and wet wipes just aren’t enough to remove hours of bike rides, runs, and general existence under the desert dust and sun.
I buy a monthly pass to the facility for $45, hoping the situation will improve. The woman behind the desk has piercings running down her face. She is in a black zip-up hoodie, has straight, long black hair, and looks directly into the computer as she takes my information. “I have a friend named Anja who spells her name the same way,” she says to me, typing away. “Oh really?” I say, and I mean it, because I can count on one hand the number of other Anjas I’ve met in this lifetime. She asks for my birthday then and cracks a smile as she plugs it into the computer. She looks up at me then. “That’s my birthday,” she says. And I do a sort of squeal with elation because this is only the second time this has happened to me and I love serendipity. I take it as an omen.
In the locker room, a woman with red hair dries off with a blue towel in front of the row of sinks. She smiles at me as I juggle all my soaps in my arms.
“Is it cold?” I ask.
“It’s not so bad,” she says.
It’s just us in the echoing locker room. The pool is closed for the day and no one else seems to want to brave the showers, despite the dozens of sprinter vans filled with showerless folks like us parked in front of the building. I pick a stall in the back corner, turn the nozzle to a trickle, and let goosebumps and cold water cover me. Cupping my hands I splash water on my face, lather up and rinse. I tip my head upside down and run water and shampoo through my tangled, greasy hair. I cup my hands again and splash water under my arms, my crotch, my dusty legs, soap up and pause, suds running down me in brown rivers. Then, because I read on the internet that cold water showers are good for you — and I am easily persuadable — I plunge my whole body in, trying to breathe in a way that doesn’t startle any other locker room guests. I say to myself as the goosebumps raise another millimeter, “This is good for you! This is good for you! This is good for you!”
The first day at the gym, the woman working the front desk told us the boiler would be fixed in a day. But that was nearly a week ago and I’m pretty sure we’ll spend our few weeks here paying to splash cold water on our dusty bodies. Each day, the outdoor temperature dips a little closer to winter. Utah is expecting snow next week. A month ago, this may have been enough to leave me sniveling over the dirty tile of the locker room floor. But now, when I sit at the plastic table in the fitness center lobby waiting for J, I feel something like pride.
A couple walks in, asks if the sign out front about the broken boiler is correct, and when the front desk person says yes, the woman looks at her partner, pain in her eyes and says loudly, “What are we going to do?!”
I sit there, my wet hair dripping down my back, rolling my eyes like a seasoned professional. The showers still work, I think to myself. The couple leaves looking incredibly distraught and I thank the universe for a moment of much-needed smugness.
On my last night in Bellingham, I asked a man who lived out of a van what he did for showers, just drumming up conversation, seeing how we could connect. He looked at me quizically. “I don’t know,” he said, “I don’t think people need to shower nearly as often as they think they do.” I’m sure he went back to his van that night rolling his eyes at me. It is what it is. Each of us clings to our own perceptions of hardiness to prove we deserve to plant our feet on the earth below us. Each of us needs to believe that going without gives our existence a little more validity. Maybe it does. Maybe it doesn’t.
A few more days, a few more cold showers, the future of the boiler is a mystery. Now I plunge my body beneath the freezing water and say with conviction, “You are worthy! You are worthy! You are worthy!”