If You’ve Never Taken a Shower in an Airport Before, You Don’t Know What You’re Missing

My sister’s bridal shower was in less than four hours and I was 317 miles away, stumbling off the second-worst red-eye flight I’d ever taken. We were supposed to have been in Connecticut by now, but a mechanical problem in San Francisco meant my best friend and I had missed our connecting flight by at least three time zones. By the time we landed in Dulles International Airport (IAD), we had been traveling for 18 hours—way longer than anyone should have had to for a transcon to the eastern seaboard. I was tired, I was hungry, and I definitely still reeked of yesterday’s yakety sax stampede through the late-night hollow of Terminal A.

And, we were very late. By the time we’d board our noon-thirty flight to Hartford, my sister’s bridal shower would already be underway. Any notions we may have had of “freshening up” between the airport and my sister’s bridal shower had been thoroughly disabused somewhere over the Sierra Nevadas.

My only saving grace: I had Priority Pass, and Dulles International Airport (IAD)’s British Airways lounge had honest-to-god showers which were my only real hope of smelling like anything other than “eau de twinjet.”

Them’s the perks of having a best friend in a fellow avgeek, though. No matter what wackadoodle, aero-shenanigans you dream up, someone’s always game. Birthday party at LAX? You know me all too well. Lounge hopping the day away before I ditch my Sapphire Reserve? Yass queen! Leasing an apartment based on the fact that the bathroom fan sounds like you’re relieving yourself on a KLM B744 to Amsterdam? From here on out, just assume a resounding yes. Any variation will do.

When we planned this trip we had only two goals: fly transcon on a Dreamliner, and make the most of my Priority Pass membership while we could. (Bless you, JPMorgan Chase & Co.) A third goal was implied: get home to Connecticut and my sister’s bridal shower in time to snarf down burritos the size of my forearm in full view of the bridesmaids, their moms, my mom, and my soon-to-be-wedded sister.

The British Airways lounge was always part of that plan… but said plan imploding enough to necessitate intra-layover showers? Not so much. But, that didn’t stop an itinerary curveball from sending us parkouring past the 217 other passengers also scurrying from one end of SFO to the other last night. We made it to the gate, we were reticketed and reconfirmed, but as the delay dragged on, my perspiration turned into a cold sweat and that cold sweat had turned into a shiver.

Landing at Dulles felt like a hallucination. Most of what I can remember of our layover is a hazy, muddled mess. But that shower — god, that shower… that was my light through the fog.

We should probably get one thing out of the way: being naked in an airport is weird. Like… really, really weird.

Think about it: You are naked. In an AIRPORT. The place people go to get on planes to go to other places. There are passengers out there! Families! Businessmen on very important businessman trips! A Mormon missionary heading home to mom in Milwaukee! (Maybe.) Passengers who are clothed and doing the regular things that clothed people do in major international airports: like not use a sparking blow-dryer to dry themselves off with whilst dripping puddles beside their carry-ons.

And yet… there is nothing like it. It’s a stream of hot water in an Arctic oasis; the unique opportunity to rinse away all physical traces of the prior day’s stress; the knowledge that you’ll soon be boarding your connecting flight in a truly fresh pair of clothes and you won’t smell of rebreathed cabin air.

But more than anything, it makes you see the airport differently. So much of flying these days is time management in a package of panic; it felt foreign to be relaxed. Walking out of the British Airways Galleries Lounge, I felt the strangest air of confidence… and ownership. Somehow the act of showering at Washington-Dulles had made it feel uniquely mine. I know I’m not alone in this, because my best friend felt it, too. It wasn’t the momentary luxury going to our heads, though the air of exclusivity was alluring — and it wasn’t the dangerous excitement of the bare-all taboo. It was instead this curious sense of familiarity. As we made our way to the Air France-KLM Lounge for a breakfast of quiche and burrata panini, I wondered what the other passengers might have heard had my footsteps been audible — the soft, springy tap of a playground taunt, perhaps: “I know something you don’t know.”

In the end, though, timing wasn’t in our favor. We were against an unbeatable clock. I regret not making it to my sister’s bridal shower, as out of my hands. I know those are moments with her I’ll never be able to get back, and in hindsight I’d have probably planned our trip a little differently. But I will never regret the shower I took in the British Airways Galleries Lounge at Washington-Dulles International Airport: the one bright spot that—for at least a few spare minutes—made it all a little better.

I do regret not asking for a towel, though.