The Lawless Era: an Origin Story about Soap
In the Summer of 2001 when she was living on a fraternity porch, she would work in the lab and then go to the gym for a shower and a swim at lunchtime (no membership, but somehow it never came up), and then back to work, and then back to the porch for evenings of poker and cigars and weird interactions with other chemist drifters. It was a weird gang. One day, the gym was closed, so she went back to her old dorm and let herself in via the old fire-escape.
N.B.: When she had lived in that dormitory, she used to climb to the top of the fire escape with a glass applesauce jar to set tiny controlled fires. A fire escape: temporary distraction from reality or routine kind of 'escape'. She wasn't a pyromaniac or the like, but it was really relaxing. And it kept her trash-can relatively empty. And the applesauce jar seemed like a safe option for flame containment. Anyhow.
Given its relative proximity to the exit, she slid into the first floor West girls' bathroom, locking out any potential strangers. Upon ensuring there were sufficient paper towels to get back to lab without looking like she had dealt with a rainstorm in her underclothes prior to dressing, she disrobed and hit the showers. Despite the fact that it was clearly not a full blue bottle (and consequently could have very well been half pee--which even now seems alternately a normal and weird paranoia), she poured out a handful of soap from the crazy looking bottle onto her hand.
It smelled pretty pepperminty. And then she put it on herself. On her hair, on her face, on her assorted lady biz: basically, way too much and in all the places. And then everything changed. And that was her first experience with Doctor Bronner. She may have thought that the crazy sensation might have been due to the adrenaline rush and sense heightening that occurs when one is young and being a little transgressive (or at least trespassive). But, it was, definitely a little bit at least, amazing and weird soap. Not really great on the hair, that was a mistake.
In the following years she would not always find it around. But nowadays even Target and Walgreens seem to stock it. It is possible the formulation has changed slightly, or maybe that heightened sensitivity hypothesis was not that far off--it's not exactly the same. But every time, she would tell you--even though she puts a surprising amount of stock in the little joys of being a by and large (maybe buying an extra large, just to comfortably sleep in it,) decent person--it does feel a little...deliciously wayward, especially (especially!) in such close naked proximity to the Moral ABC.
