18.0715-0900 The 100%/100% Dream Dies

@25.0520-1415.31 Atx

Dear Marla,

Damn. This just isn't going to work.

Hevea and I should have tested 100%/100% before making such a grand commitment. The reality is brutal: we simply cannot wear the hood all the time. There are too many real-world problems—more than we can handle at our age.

I tried. God knows I tried. The first day was manageable, even exhilarating. But then the problems started. Our 99.5% hood—the one with the microperf holes—is enjoyable for a few hours, but not much longer. The fundamental issue is sweat. When our head and face start sweating, it inevitably runs into our eyes, causing real problems. The 99.5% hood makes this worse because it reduces air circulation around our eyes, so they can't dry out. No matter what type of headgear I use, if my head is covered, sweat will leak down from my forehead. I can deal with it for an hour or two, but rarely longer. 

Then there's my hair. I've lost many things to old age, but my hair isn't one of them. I still have a full head of thick, silvery hair that cascades down to the middle of my back. That much hair doesn't fare well when compressed in a latex hood while steeping in a salty solution of sweat for more than a few hours. I even tried using a hood with a ponytail hole. Trying to fit my thick ponytail through that opening is challenging enough, and the hair still trapped inside suffers terribly.

The shower-every-12-hours regimen helped refresh me, but it also meant facing The Grind twice daily. It meant working even harder to make up for the HITEz I would have earned otherwise. Just wearing rubber all or most of the time is exhausting in itself. Wearing a hood for extended periods amplifies that exhaustion exponentially.

We've talked—Hevea and I—about the real-world impossibility of wearing 100% coverage latex 100% of the time. It's just too much. Maybe if we were decades younger we could make it work, but at our age, this stuff simply doesn't fly.

"I might have a solution," Hevea suggested.

I took the bait. "What do you propose?"

"The EMT Burn Coverage Chart says the head is about 10% of total body surface area. If you covered everything else from the neck down, that would give you 90% coverage. Could you wear 90% all the time? We'd just need to figure out how to earn the extra 10%."

I considered this carefully. "What about extra garments? Our apron is latex. Would that give us the extra 10%?"

"Interesting thought, but don't forget our three hours of daily bath time. Let's do the math. Assuming two baths daily, with half an hour soaking each time—LatexLadyII said that was key to Living In Rubber—plus half an hour on each side for donning and removing, we're only in our suit 21 hours daily. At 90% coverage, that's 18.9z, rounded to 19z. A daily deficit of 5z."

"We could do Ordeals to earn extra HITEz," I offered.

"Think about it, Thalia. That means one or two Ordeals every single day just to meet quota. Do you really want that? There's an alternative: wear two 90% suits."

My mind raced. "Layered suits for 21 hours daily? Each suit earns 19 HITEz—that's 38z total! Fourteen surplus HITEz!"

"Not so fast. Diminishing returns. The second suit has maybe 50% of the first suit's presence. The third, only 33%."

She was right, of course. We'd need a spreadsheet to manage this complexity.

So here's my compromise: I'll wear latex from the neck down most of the time, reserving hood time for short-duration Ordeals or when I'm simply in the mood. The 100%/100% dream? Just a pipe dream after all.

But perhaps that's okay. Perhaps 90% sustained is more meaningful than 100% failed.