From Hygiene to Lowgiene

We're talking dirty

Man Washing by Maximilien Luce

When I was in high school, I had a social studies teacher named Mr. Falcone. To this day, I still remember the most valuable thing he taught me: don’t floss your teeth in public.

This wasn’t a life lesson about propriety. No, he taught me not to floss in public by doing that very thing. During lectures about the Pentagon Papers or the Hatch Act, he’d hump his way around our desks, working the thin string between his tobacco-stained teeth.

I regret taking his class after lunch.

Since then, I’ve noticed a disturbing trend of people tending to their hygiene in public instead of their bathrooms. If that weren’t gross enough, there are others who don’t tend to their hygiene at all.

I see no need for anyone to blast a snot rocket in front of a stranger, unless that stranger is a Guinness World Records judge and you’re going for a distance title. Yet people do it on crowded sidewalks.

Likewise, there’s no reason for anyone to use an electric razor in a coffee shop. It’s a look that says, “I have no time management skills, and I will 100% forget to pick up my daughter after karate class.”

At least have the decency to do it in your car, man. But if an espresso and an express shave is your thing, there’s a bathroom right there. Granted, it’s probably a hazardous waste site as many coffee-shop bathrooms are—which is a whole other sign of our impending societal collapse—but it’s the right move.

Speaking of moves, have you ever had to dodge an errant nail as it screamed toward your head? Not the I-was-just-minding-my-own-business-walking-by-a-construction-site kind. The small, alabaster, crescent-shaped kind. A fingernail.

I have. It was at a recovery meeting. A guy I know, Jeff, used to unholster his clippers and let the shrapnel fly where it may. Like Mr. Falcone, he was also an odd guy who happened to be a teacher. The first time he did it, I thought it was a one-off. But then he made it a habit.

In nearly every meeting in which I saw him, which was probably weekly, he’d settle into clippin’ position and draw from his pocket his small, silver weapon. I don’t know what his collagen intake was, but his nails seemed to grow faster than bamboo.

His actions would cause a wave of head-shaking and annoyed looks, but he was oblivious. I finally spoke up one evening when he took a seat next to me. I didn’t want to risk a sliced cornea.

Jeff and I were friendly, and I wanted to be as tactful as the situation called for, so I chose my words carefully. Just as he lined up tool and nail, I looked at him and said, “What the fuck are you doing?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, are we in a fucking nail salon?”

“This bothers you?”

“It bothers everyone. Do that shit at home.”

“Oh...okay.”

He’d clearly never considered the possibility that grooming oneself in public and leaving his nails, as well as whatever grime he unleashed from beneath those keratin caps, all over the floor might be inappropriate.

Inappropriate. I wish Merriam-Webster had made that the word of the year just to remind people that it exists.

Then again, does it? It’s hard to be sure when you see someone reach a hand into their pants in a big-box store to scratch whatever unholy issue is going on in their nethers.

I haven’t seen this in person, which is fortunate because if I had, I probably wouldn’t have been as nice to those people as I was to Jeff. But I have seen photos of it online, more times than you’d think.

This is because I easily fall prey to clickbait headlines in the vein of:

18 People Doing Things So Shocking in Walmart They Were Asked to Leave

or

People Are Sharing the Most Disgusting Things They’ve Seen in Public and I’m Dead

Damn you, Buzzfeed.

Reddit is another great—and by great I mean horrifying—source of these kinds of too-candid camera shots.

But if we’re going to talk about unpleasant online finds, we have to veer into territory that isn’t about public hygiene practices. It’s about the absence of hygiene practices altogether.

I’ve seen some things in my life.

I’ve seen a drugged bear wrestle drunk bar patrons. One at a time, that is; this was a civilized establishment.

I’ve seen a Canada goose dive bomb a coworker and knock him to the ground. Oh, how we laughed.

I’ve seen Bill Cosby flirt with women. Or, should I say, assess them.

I’ve seen a man spread his ass cheeks against the outside of a Denny’s window, from the vantage point of a booth on the other side of that window.

I’ve seen that same man produce milk from his right nipple. And yes, he drank it.

But nothing I’ve seen compares to what I’m about to tell you. And, again, this isn’t even something I’ve seen. I’ve only read about other people seeing it. The anguish it caused me must pale to what befell them. It’s for those poor souls that I share these tales.

Friends, according to reports from scores of women, it appears there’s an alarming number of men who, to put it delicately, are severely negligent in the bum-cleaning department.

To be fair, this problem isn’t exclusive to men. There are skid-marked women walking around in an aura of butt-funk too. But most of the horror stories come from the female partners of men. Apparently, homosexual men are more fastidious, a fact that should surprise absolutely no one.

Anyway, the evidence these women describe is harrowing. It’s in underwear. It’s on bedsheets. It’s on towels. It’s on furniture.

In more cases than I would have imagined, the woman is seeking advice. She’s unsure how to handle it, or what to say. But she’s reached her limit.

It’s at this point in these narratives that I turn from being freaked out to fired up. These aren’t You won’t believe what happened with the guy I hooked up with last night stories. These are My significant other, whom I live with, is routinely caked in his own shit, and I’ve put up with it for years, despite the fact that he always smells like a porta-potty at a July 4th chili cookoff stories.

Good God, woman. How did things get this far? Why did you voluntarily shackle yourself to a human sewer pipe? How kind and loving must a man be, and how prodigious his penis, for you to have ignored this massive brown flag?

Now, you probably think we’ve reached our crescendo, right? That there’s no topping that level of self-neglect?

Well, wipe that thought from your mind, because there are some dudes who don’t wipe at all.

Let me restate that for emphasis. There are men who, after defecating, use neither toilet paper nor bidet, opting instead to stand, hike up their pants, and go about their day while ruining everyone else’s.

I don’t think this is as prevalent a problem as the worthless wipers, but can we agree that even one is too many?

In some cases, per their partners, these men claim that they don’t need to clean up. Their feces are like luges, shooting down their GI tracts with such blazing efficiency that they leave no residue behind.

Others have a more baffling reason: they contend that it’s gay to touch your own asshole. With your finger. With toilet paper. With a bar of soap. With a washcloth. Doesn’t matter. To them, it’s a slippery slope from making contact with your butt to taking a dick in it.

If these guys aren’t closeted, self-hating queens I’ll eat a roll of toilet paper.

Setting aside how repulsive it must be for those around them, it surely can’t be comfortable, or healthy, for Stenchy McShitpants.

It boggles the mind. And pummels the nose.

Similarly, there’s a contingent of men who don’t wash their penises. But everyone knows that touching your own penis is as gay as it gets.

I admire those who’ve gotten over caring about what other people think of them. It’s hard to do.

But there’s a vast gulf between I love wearing crazy bowties and I think I’ll put on deodorant here in the library. And then there’s This is what a straight man smells like.

This isn’t complicated stuff. If you’re about to get your floss on in a restaurant, maybe take a quick look around first to check whether anyone else is doing it.

If your crotch feels like a nest of fire ants, adjust your position and contract and expand whatever muscles might make a difference. If that doesn’t work, scratch over your pants discreetly. If the situation calls for a full archeological dig, leave Sam’s Club and go home. And call your doctor.

If your underwear normally resembles the inside wrapper of a Snickers bar that you left on your dashboard while you were at the beach, brother, search YouTube or ask ChatGPT for a wiping tutorial. Find one for showering while you’re at it.

There should be a program for adults who somehow never got the basics down, a refresher course for both those who offend in public and those who don’t tend to their privates. We could call it “Say Hi to Hygiene!”, and have a talking roll of toilet paper—“T.P.”—as the mascot.

It’ll be challenging, for sure, but I think we’ll find that it’s also good, clean fun.