I Have an Awesome Towel

I usually try not to toot my own horn, but I think it is fair to say that I own the greatest towel in the world.

Like an alcoholic who cannot hold down a steady job, for many years I have been unable to hold down a steady towel. During the last 12 months alone I’ve been through 3 or 4 towels simply because I leave them behind when I change towns, or in one notable case because I used my towel to mop up spilled wine and it became infested with slivers of broken glass.

Even before I ascended to genuine dirtbaggery I struggled with towel ownership. Back in Canberra I didn’t even own a towel, I just used other people’s. But when I went to Walmart early this year to buy more underpants, something incredible happened. I was about to make an impulse purchase of a regular, monochrome, rectangular towel when my housemate intervened. She had found a towel that had a hood in the middle and could be worn like a poncho. Better yet, when you put the towel on in poncho form you were magically transformed into a tableau of a octopus, sporting a dashing polka-dot bow-tie, adrift in an azure sea. It was slightly more expensive, and typically I am a pretty stingy person, but I decided this was not the time to let a few extra dollars stand in the way of a good idea. The folks at Walmart were all suitably impressed when I chose to wear my towel out of the store and through the car-park.

Because my towel is so excruciatingly fantastic I have made sure to hang on to it through my bumbling travels in the last few months. It has been my most faithful towel ever, and we are looking forward to a long and happy life together for as long as the fabric will last. But owning such an amazing thing comes at a terrible price. Members of the staff at Broken River have begun to covet my towel, and in the absence of anything meaningful to do with their lives they have started plotting to steal my towel. In response to this, I have been forced to hide it after twice having to race from one hut to another to prevent its theft.

In the past, I would have simply revealed my diabolical hiding place to the internet and trusted the obscurity of this blog to ensure that the information never made it back to the staff here, but now that people around here actually check this blog, the location must remain secret.

The issue reached a head last night after a particularly intense altercation. One staff member stole my towel from its hanger and tried to escape White Star Chalet. I was able to dodge past another staff member who was trying to delay me on the track between the huts and snatch my towel back before the thief could make it out the door. To top matters off, neither the thief nor his two accomplices removed their boots before entering the hut. I figured the safest thing to do was to wear the towel in poncho form, at which the thief (by now slightly inebriated) tried to manhandle it from my body. The dastardly trio only left when their boss dropped in. At the time I was convinced this was simply another ploy to steal the towel, and I conducted our ensuing conversation wearing the towel and clutching at it to ensure that no one tried to make a sneak attack. It turns out that he had no idea what was going on, and in retrospect my actions may have made me look a little weird.

The biggest problem I face now in keeping my towel safe is getting it dry after using it. At this very moment, the towel is actually hanging up in a completely stealable place and is not at all hidden, but I’m keeping an eye on the staff to ensure they don’t go nicking it. Once it’s dry I’ll return it to its hiding place, but if it goes into hiding too early it will get mouldy.

But seriously people, this towel is regularly used to dry my junk. I cannot for the life of me understand why other people would want to steal it. Apart from the fact that it’s awesome. But other than that, eww...