the soap saga

When a relationship gets to the point when you're spending the night over at his place (and/or he at yours), the issue of toiletries become ... well, an issue. Is he worth the extra toothbrush in my medicine cabinet I was saving for myself? How do I deal with the fact that he is a guy and has no conditioner in his shower?

With a guy I dated last summer, the BIG toiletry issue was soap. My soap of choice is Dove. It leaves my skin soft and moisturized. It is also a very soft soap. This guy last summer was hairy: arm hair, chest hair, leg hair, back hair, thick forest of hair everywhere hair kind of hairy. Before him, the compatibility of soap with one's hairiness was nowhere near my issues radar, but as it turns out, soft moisturizing soap is not compatible with hair. Well, it is; it just disappears in 2-3 days because the extra hair lathers extra soap.

This guy last summer burned through 2 bars of my good soap in a matter of days, soap that would have otherwise lasted me a couple of months. He did have the awareness to realize that he, hairy Jewish guy, was using soap at a far greater rate than I, non-hairy Asian girl. Being the conscientious person that he was, he offered to go to the store and buy some. Walking through the soap aisle, he points to the type that he always buys. It is the cheapest one there; he claims that not only is it cheap, but it lasts and gets the job done, so it's his brand of choice.

Cheap it was. I think we got three bars for $1. Last, it did. Three days after we started the first bar, it was still intact and semi-rectangular. However, it was hard, dry, and left my skin feeling like sandpaper. Fine, whatever, at least he's not burning through my good soap, and I'll just switch to my body wash.

THEN, we broke up, before we even made it through the first bar.

This was when I reflected on the situation and became angry. I felt like he duped me and stole from me. I was down two bars of good soap, both sacrificed for his body hair, and all he left me were 2.5 bars of dry, nasty-smelling soap that grated on my skin, literally and figuratively.

Apparently, cheap, the guy, was too.