I’m just going to get this out of the way. Until this evening, I hadn’t showered for three days, maybe four. I lost count. All I can say is that I kept meaning to clean up, but there were so many reasons not too. I needed to exercise, I needed to blog, I needed to sleep. (Those are really the only things I do lately.) Suffice it to say, things got pretty gross, so in order to avoid smelling my own pits, I’ve spent a lot of time this week pinning my arms to my sides, kind of like a wallflower at a high school prom, minus all the acne. My personal mantra has been–elbows below nipples–elbows below nipples.

Since starting my new diet, my unfortunate and semi-longstanding body odor problem has actually improved, but it hasn’t entirely gone away. I read on the worldwide web that body odor can sometimes be caused by drinking too much coffee, so I thought that maybe I should cut back from my usual three cups, four cups, or maybe it was half a pot a day. Again, it’s hard to keep track of these things when you have so many other important tasks to accomplish.

Typically, whenever I decide something is bad for me, I cut it out cold turkey, label it as evil, and immediately proceed to look down upon anyone else who does it. Like, I could smoke half a pack of cigarettes for six months, quit for three days, and then walk down the street and see a total stranger bumming a Camel from his friend and think, What a lowlife–that’s disgusting. Or I could spend two months eating ice cream every night, quit long enough to lose half a pound, and then drive by the Dairy Freeze and think, You people should be ashamed of yourselves–go home and eat broccoli.

My therapist says that when it comes to certain topics, I’m so judgmental of other people because I’m primarily so judgmental of myself. I wish I could say I disagree with her. I guess because I have this highly developed sense of what’s right and wrong, good and bad, it gets applied here first, and then everywhere else across the board. So if you’re one of those people I’ve judged, I’m sorry, and I’m right there with you.

But back to coffee and body odor.

I’m really trying to not be such a hard ass, with myself or anyone else. (Did I mention I’m REALLY TRYING?) Anyway, instead of quitting coffee cold turkey, I decided to just back off, go to one cup a day. So far I’m two days in, and I’m starting to get really cranky. Part of me thinks, God, Marcus, you don’t have to quit processed foods, refined sugar, white bread, dairy, AND coffee in a ten-day period. But another part of me thinks, Yes you do–and while you’re at it, you should probably mediate for an hour every morning, sleep on a bed of nails, and adopt a child from China and pay for it by selling one of your kidneys on the black market. I mean, is that too much to ask?

Honestly, I just want the body odor problem to go away. I’m willing to try just about anything in order to make that happen, but some days managing my health feels like playing a game of Whack-A-Mole. If you want to know the truth, sometimes I think I’m a hypochondriac. (I can hear my friends saying, “No! Surely not you.”) Tonight when I finally did take a shower because I had a dance lesson (I’m not completely inconsiderate), I shaved my face, nicked something, and started bleeding. Well, I instantly thought it was a wart, another longstanding problem I had a couple of years ago. I think my heart actually stopped beating for a second as I thought, THEY’RE BACK.

But then I thought better of it and decided it was a zit, probably the result of not washing my face in three days, maybe four. Yes, I’m almost certain it was a zit and not a wart. So don’t worry, I’m going to live.

Phew.

That was close.

This evening I had dinner with a friend of mine who has really good taste and recently remodeled his bathroom. He’d probably die if he knew I took a picture of it and put it on the internet, so I probably shouldn’t have talked about my blog so much this evening or typed the address of this website into his phone. Anyway, I love remodeling, so we spent quite a bit of time going over every detail, but even now all I can think about is the arched window that he hung above his toilet. I’m guessing it came from a sanctuary, but it could have come from Target, which I suppose for some people is the same thing.

Isn’t that the cutest thing you ever saw? Doesn’t it remind you of a church? Call me twisted, but all night I’ve been thinking that if you just lit a few of candles, maybe had a couple of monks chanting in the shower (think how good they’d sound in there), it really would make the toilet feel like–I don’t know–a throne of grace. Just think of it–going to the bathroom could be called–a righteous release–a sanctified shit–a holy crap.

After dinner this evening, my friend and I were in the car, and he told me that I smelled “clean.” You can’t imagine how good it made me feel. I told him that I’ve been super self-conscious lately because I took some antibiotics and I think they messed up my intestinal flora and gave me body odor, so I’ve changed my diet and am cutting out coffee to try to fix it. Well, my friend is super honest, so he said, “Marcus, you’re a freak. (I’m summarizing.) You’re the only person I know who would change his diet because he’s afraid of the way he smells. No one else thinks about their flora.”

He may have a point.

Once I read an interpretation of the Garden of Eden story that basically said the Tree of Knowledge represents our capacity to judge or “to know” something. It said that it also represents the world of duality, where everything is hot or cold, up or down, good or bad, and it’s the good or bad part that causes a lot of our suffering. According to this take on things, everything was fine this afternoon while I was shaving, just as everything is fine right now as I’m typing this blog. In effect, I was and am in the Garden of Eden. (Who knew it would be this humid?) But as soon as I thought, I have a wart, and warts are bad, I kicked myself out of the Garden. That’s why my heart stopped beating, the way it would now if I labeled my body odor problem as anything other than good, which is what we’re told in Genesis is how God sees all that he has made. Or did he recently change his mind about that?

There’s a passage in the Gospel of Thomas that says, “Split a piece of wood, and I am there. Lift up the stone, and you will find Me there.” What I love about this passage is that it reminds me that God (sometimes simply called Good) is everywhere. There’s no where that he isn’t. I spend a lot of time trying to prove this theory wrong, of course. I walk around a large part of the day thinking that warts are bad, carbs are bad, certain smells are bad. I think anything could kill me, and that would be bad because death is REALLY BAD. None of those judgments, of course, feel good, and they certainly don’t change a damn thing.

So I’m trying (really hard) to look for the good in all circumstances, to basically play hide-and-seek with God, like, I know you’re here somewhere. (Come out, come out, wherever you are.) Of course, God’s been playing this game for a long time. He’s not going to hide behind the sofa–that’s too obvious. Don’t bother looking for the divine behind the divan. More likely, this game is going to require that I lift my elbows above my nipples, maybe take a selfie in my friend’s bathroom. After all, leave it to God to hide under my armpits. Leave it to God to hide in the Holy Crapper.