Murder Podcasts in the Shower
Everything I have ever truly loved has been bastardized or gone corporate. Don't get me wrong I still love these things
but they all fall under "basic bitch likes" these days. Garfield, Roseanne (before she went all trumpster on us) still love aunt Jackie and Darlene, sister act 1 and 2, golden girls, crime documentaries, unsolved mysteries you name it and it's sold at Target. Maybe that's why I gravitate to a very specific podcast now. Unknown disappearances. Disappearing people. People that vanish in thin air. Leaving no trace, nothing but mediocre podcast narrative and no warning signs. Dissolving. I only like the ones featuring younger people, if you're 60 plus and you go missing I'm just not that in to you. Give it time though I'm sure Netflix and target are going to ruin this for me too.
Since having a kid of my own , who is now 3 and a half years old, and we are in pandemic I find the only place I can listen to podcasts, without making my own daughter listen to disturbing details of a crime scene, and be alone is in the shower. With the door locked, just in case someone tries to find me. I am disappearing too. Vanishing with them, in steam and white subway tile.
"I'm gonna take a shower now" I yell down to Jack
"Ok! Take your time" he says that because he knows what I am doing. He lets me disappear with no questions asked. Deep fucking sea diving into a mystery that hasn't been solved yet all while naked in my own bathroom. I set up the phone upright against the edge where the shampoo lives so I can hear it over the sound of running water. I am a runaway and a detective at the same time. One of my many dream jobs (before I realized I would have to be a cop to be a detective which obviously isn't happening) that along with working at the post office (I love mail) and working at a thrift store (imagine having first pick of the items coming in.) Those moments, while I am washing my hair, fading out of sight, I am in one of my happy places. I am not saying that peoples loved ones going missing make me happy, I'm not that fucked up. I'm just happy to be alone and warm and lost.
How does someone just disappear in 2021? An entire human being, the whole thing, it can just....vanish from sight, like it was never here. No goodbye. No tracks. No clues. Nothing. HOW? It just boggles my mind, and sometimes I need my mind to boggle instead of feeling sleepy or worried. Sometimes boggling is what my mind needs to do. It needs to jumble around in circles wasting energy on impossible tasks. Like finding missing people. Wonder if any of them are in their showers with the door locked? Missing people boggle my mind for me, until the hot water runs out. I come out of the bathroom a new woman. Boggled mind now free. How can someone's tragic disappearance be my zone to decompress? I take back what I said earlier, it is that fucked up, but it's true. The truth is fascinating. Sad. Scary. Weird. The truth hides in phone records and computer hard drives. Everybody is hiding something. We only find it while digging through all your personal shit when you die and then broadcasting it to strangers like me who listen to it all while washing my hair. Chances are if you disappeared tomorrow and we all went through your phone we would find..something. Doesn't that just make you wanna lock yourself in your shower and listen? Maybe thats just me. Secrets are intriguing. How do some people have whole secret second and even third lives. I can barely live one. Lies, trails, murders, and puffs of smoke that used to be people. Spilling secrets, in my vanishing place...it just does it for me. I am a monster. Clean though. Sparkling clean. Corporate America better back of disappearing people, I'm not losing another one.