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I'm looking for an effective verb to describe "sloppily drying" yourself with a towel. I feel like there a single action verb is out there, but I've been thinking for a long time and haven't come up with one.

The sentence to complete is: "I [sloppily dry] myself with the towel, missing a few spots here and there, and storm out the bathroom." I'm hoping to replace the bracketed part with a single descriptive verb. The context is that the narrator just finished taking a shower and is fuming. So he wouldn't be focused on carefully drying himself.

Here's another visual of the action I'm trying to describe: imagine a little child is really excited to go play with a new toy, but the parent tells the child to take a bath first. After the bath, the parent can barely contain the excited child. The parent only gets to [sloppily dry] the child with a towel before the child bursts out of the bathroom to go play with the toy.

I don't like "dry" because it's not a strong visual. For example, the Merriam Webster website says the verb definition of "dry" is "to make dry" which is pretty much non-visual. "dry" describes the end result of the action, but not what the action looks like.

"Scrub/scour myself with the towel" is visual, but there's no sloppy feeling to it anymore.

"Frisk" seems to have the sloppy feeling to it (if you think about a TSA/security agent quickly frisking you at the airport), but it doesn't seem like an appropriate way someone can use a towel.

Thanks for the help!

Interesting question, I think the examples you provided were helpful too. They reminded me of the types of scenes in movies and tv shows where someone is late running late for work and [verb you need] gives their spouse a kiss on the cheek as they race out the door.

You could try something like distractedly - as in “I distractedly dry myself with the towel”.

Oxford Dictionaries

Distractedly (from Distracted): Unable to concentrate because one is preoccupied by something worrying or unpleasant.

I feel like you could successfully alter the focus of the sentence for far better effect, though. Something like:

“It wasn’t until I started to get dressed that I realised I was still soaking wet. In my anger-addled daze I’d either barely touched the towel or forgotten it entirely.”