Honora never had much faith in the male capacity for hygiene. Certainly not thorough hygiene. The best she had always thought she could hope for was a man who at least washed his hands after he took a shit. She figured that, surely, such a practice was the “baseline” level for what a man was capable of when it came to something like hygienic practices. Especially men who were out of their twenties. For what other “excuse,” apart from “youthful folly,” could there be for such carelessness? Such blatant disregard for the health and well-being of others? When Honora, whose name would be used to taunt her whenever she was perceived by her boyfriend as being “holier than thou” or “overly moralizing,” was pushed to the brink of asking this question directly of Jordan, he was actually the one with the audacity to be offended. To turn it all around on her and make it seem like she was somehow being “condescending.” That “adults” didn’t need to be told what to do, and that they could make such “personal” decisions for themselves, be allowed the choice of interpreting what “individual responsibility” meant for them.

Honora was initially too taken aback to attempt building an “argument” about why handwashing was just run-of-the-mill hygiene that no one past a child’s age should have to be reminded that they ought to do. Especially after the collective trauma still recently endured during the pandemic. Yet what she was more taken aback by was the revelation that had prompted this entire argument (which, to her, should have been a non-argument in the first place), the one that began with hearing him using the bathroom in “that way.”

Because of the setup of their bathroom, the shower and sink were in one room, while the toilet was in another. The reason she had heard him at all was because she was using the sink while he “wrapped up,” fart noises and all, in the space next to her that was separated only by a paper-thin wall. She stopped what she was doing so that she could allow him entrance into the shower-and-sink bathroom to wash his hands with soap. For she knew there was no soap in the “toilet room,” which also had a sink of its own. But what she heard was him using that sink anyway, as though there were actually a bottle of soap next to it. Maybe it was a “precursor” wash, she naively thought to herself. But no, lo and behold, Jordan stepped out, looked at her blankly and tried to keep walking down the hall as though nothing unseemly had happened at all.

“Aren’t you going to wash your hands?”

“I already did.”

“Um, not with soap you didn’t.”

Jordan was already starting to look annoyed by this “inquisition.” “No, but I ran cold water over my hands and wiped them with the towel.”

“Don’t you wanna maybe…wash with soap?”

“I never do, Honora. So I don’t know why I would start now.”

Although Honora had had her suspicions about this before, the truth wasn’t busted wide open until now, after four months of living together. She should have known that a man who couldn’t be bothered to brush his teeth on the regular would also be guilty of something like this.

However, despite her horrification, Honora was trying to tread lightly, knowing how easily Jordan could shut down at the slightest perceived offense or “triggering.” “Um, well, do you think you could maybe add some soap on there for my sake?”

Jordan rolled his eyes. “You’re being such a colonialist right now.”

And that’s when Honora herself was triggered, sick and tired of Jordan constantly foisting his rhetoric about colonialism and capitalism onto everything. Of course, she was aware that everyone was a product of both in the current era, but this was one goddamn case where she had to push back, to stand her ground. “What the fuck are you even talking about? All I want is for you to wash your hands. Not even all the time, just, at the bare minimum, after you shit. Why is that ‘colonialist’? It’s fucking science.”

“You’d be surprised how colonialist science is.”

Honora knew there was truth to that statement as well, but that it had no bearing on the fact that no matter how “carefully” he felt he wiped his ass (that is to say, how “avoidant” he was of touching hand to hole), the potential for germs or bacteria to quite literally jump up onto the skin of his hands was still there. Still a possibility. And maybe he had been lucky all this time in not spreading something thus far, in turn, making Honora lucky not to have yet caught something. Emphasis on the word “yet.” Because it was just a matter of time, if he kept this lax, ultimately selfish practice up, that something would spread. Especially the way he flung his hands around everywhere after putting nothing more than water on them. It wasn’t enough to break down the germs or bacteria that he undoubtedly incurred while pretending that a fortress of toilet paper was enough to block his hand from making contact in some way with a pathogen. The fact that he went to this much effort at all to wipe himself in such a way made Honora all the more perplexed as to why he wouldn’t just go the extra mile and wash his hands properly.

When she tried to tell him this as well, he finally blew a gasket, going off on her about how, again, he was an adult and he didn’t someone to tell him how to live, to “bust his balls” over such minutiae and that, frankly, he was going to do whatever the fuck he wanted. As is key to the mantra “boys will be boys.” And then somewhere else in there, he somehow thought it would “sway” her “beliefs” in some way to mention that people in India don’t wash their hands with nearly the same frequency as “us Western twats.” As though that was supposed to be some kind of major selling point for his argument when India was among the countries (along with China) most prone to the outbreak of disease. She didn’t push it any further though, realizing that Jordan was not to be “reasoned” with on this matter, finding her to be the unreasonable one. The nagging bitch, to boot.

It made her think of Ignaz Semmelweis, the “Father of Handwashing” (why, oh why, couldn’t more men be like him? But no, he was the exception and not the rule to that gender’s sense of hygiene). And who, if she was being honest, she had only heard about because of 12 Monkeys. During that little speech of Jeffrey Goines’ (Brad Pitt, with the weird eye) when he tells James Cole (Bruce Willis) while they’re both locked up in a mental institution, “Do you know what ‘crazy’ is? Crazy is majority rules. Yeah. Take germs, for example.” This intrigues “Jim,” who probes, “Germs?” But Jeffrey needs no probing whatsoever to continue, “In the eighteenth century, no such thing. Nada. Nothing. No one ever imagined such a thing. No ‘sane’ person anyway. Along comes this doctor. Uh, uh, uh…Semmelweis. Semmelweis comes along and he’s trying to convince people, well, other doctors mainly, that there are these teeny-tiny, invisible bad things called germs that get into your body and make you sick. He’s trying to get doctors to wash their hands. ‘What is this guy? Crazy? Teeny-tiny, invisible, what do you call ‘em? Germs? Huh? What?’ Now, cut to the twentieth century. Last week as a matter of fact, right before I got dragged into this hellhole. I go in to order a burger in this fast-food joint. The guy drops it on the floor. Jim, he picks it up, wipes it off. He hands it to me like it was all okay. ‘What about the germs?’ I say. He says, ‘I don’t believe in germs. Germs are just a plot they made up so they can sell you disinfectants and soaps.’ Now, he’s crazy, right? See?” Would that Jeffrey could speak to Jordan about this matter.

And, funnily enough, it was Jordan who had first introduced her to 12 Monkeys. She wondered how it was possible that he couldn’t have remembered that dialogue. Or that, if he did, it didn’t still affect him. Remind him that he was the crazy one now. Even if Jeffrey had also added to that “little” soliloquy of his, “There’s no right, there’s no wrong. There’s only popular opinion.” But since Jordan and Honora’s “opinions” on the matter of handwashing couldn’t coalesce into a unified one, there was very much a right and wrong. With both convinced that the other was the latter.

Honora knew it was a seemingly “small” thing that was going to turn big (sort of like how germs setting off pandemics work). Because it would drive her mad to know he wasn’t washing his hands after shitting, and it would drive him mad to be “policed” about it. So, in the end, the only “natural”—ironically, the only healthy—thing for them to do was to live apart again. Though, of course, this was just a euphemism for their slow breaking up. It was but a fait accompli. After all, she believed in Semmelweis, and he didn’t.