the habit of being

At truck stops, you can buy a shower for about $5. Or, if you’re a driver, you can usually get one free if you buy a certain amount of fuel. Most drivers buy so much fuel that they easily develop a small collection of these free shower coupons, which usually expire within a week or two. If you’re a hitch-hiker, and you get picked up by a truck driver, and he’s going to be taking you somewhere overnight, and during that time he’s going to be stopping to get a shower, there’s a good chance you can get a shower too.

To redeem your shower, you usually have to take the coupon, which is generally on the fuel receipt, to the fuel desk in the truck stop, which is separate from the rest of the registers. If you have a driver with you, it’s good to have them do this for you, just in case someone asks to see your CDL. There are all sorts of cool things to do in truck stops that you’re not really supposed to get to do unless you’re a licensed truck driver. Movies, TV, washers and dryers, free showers, free coffee. (I don’t look like a truck driver at all.)

At the fuel desk, you trade in the receipt for a key with a big plastic rectange on it with a number. You sit around the in-house fast food restaurant eating area until the intercom calls your number. “Driver Number 8, your Shower is Ready.”

The shower room is big and completely tiled, floors and walls. There is a sink with a mirror over it and a little ledge to sit your toiletries. Exactly one towel and one wash cloth are folded on the top of the toilet tank. At some truck stops, you can request extra towels, as there are drivers who take their wives around with them, but some places frown on this.

The shower is separated from the rest of the bathroom by a wall that goes partway across the middle of the room. There is never a shower curtain or a shower door, just a little mini-wall along the floor of the doorway to keep the shower water from going out into the rest of the room. The shower area is quite large. Much larger than a regular home shower. The drain is in the middle of the shower floor, not under the showerhead near the wall.

There is never, under any circumstances, shampoo. If you don’t have some with you and can’t afford to pay five bucks for the Suave they sell in the store, you’re out of luck. There is a hand-soap dispenser mounted on the wall in the shower.

More than likely, you will not make it out of the shower before having sex on the shower floor, covering up the drain, and making the water spill out over the little guard-wall into the rest of the bathroom, making a huge mess. Hopefully you put your clothes on top of the toilet.

I do not know why truck stop showers are so sexy.

Maybe because there’s usually someone waiting outside to buy you greasy truck stop dinner. Maybe it’s the image of the hundreds of thousands of fat sleazy men who must have showered in there before. Maybe it’s just the weirdness of the whole situation.