If you’ve been here for a while and if you’ve been counting, it’s no secret that I take entirely too many baths. It’s not just about getting clean. It’s the privacy and safety and bare honesty of a bathroom. It’s the sound of the gurgling water filling the tub.

I love my baths frighteningly hot. I know it’s bad for your skin. I don’t care. My jellybean turned me on to Goat’s Milk bubble bath. It sounds awful but I like the smell and I like the feel of it too. But sometimes still I prefer a naked bath. No foam. No oils.

I think I like baths because it is the only thing I do, the only ritual I have kept, where I don’t hurry. It is my last luxury of taking my sweet time. With everything else, I’m in hurry. I brush my teeth in a hurry. I type in a hurry. I work in a hurry. I sleep and eat in a hurry. Hell, I even run up my own in a hurry anymore. But I take my baths just as leisurely as I please.

And I think this is why I prefer a bath over a shower. As with all tasks, I shower in a hurry.

I step in gingerly. It’s almost always too hot at first. I have learned not to step back out again. It hurts more. The sting stings a lot longer and a lot more painfully if I jump out. Once settled in, I don’t clean myself right away either. That’s for the end when I’ve had enough.

I slide down to my shoulders and ease my head back on the edge. And I just lie there. Hot. Quiet. At rest. I pinch my nose with my hand. Mouth, submerged, my nose, my eyes, my ears, my head. I listen to what’s left of a distant and muffled world. I love that murky quiet. I stay under a very long time. As long as I can manage without incurring brain damage.

And then I repeat. After ten minutes, I let a little water out and add more hot water. And only when I have achieved the relaxation, the calm I’m after, do I get out the shampoo and the conditioner and the soap and clean myself. Sometimes when I’m done I take a two minute shower to rinse off all that soapiness.

I didn’t always like baths. When I was a kid, I lived in a farmhouse and had a very old bath tub which filled with very hard water and I remember that water distinctly. It smelled of rotten eggs and it was ever so slightly, but quite distressingly, rust-colored. And nothing could gentrify that water. Nothing could filter it or cure it or soften it or even cut through it. Not bath foam. Not dish soap. Nothing. As with my laundry. My whites never stayed white for long.

In fact I disliked baths very much. When we went on vacation or when I stayed over with friends, I loved taking showers. I like my showers like I like my bath, hot. And I love a shower with water pressure. I want a shower that knocks me over. I want to be pelted. I have never met anybody who likes a shower as hot as I do.

My year in Korea was great but also hard for a lot of reasons I do remember and probably a lot of reasons I don’t remember. But I do remember this: in Korea most bathrooms were built so that the entire room was a shower. I don’t remember ever seeing a bathtub in Korea and I went without a bath for over a year. But I liked that the entire bathroom was a shower with a drain in the middle. Unfortunately, with my shower, bugs liked to stop by for a visit. And, much worse, the water in my shower was crazy. I had to run the shower for not quite ten minutes to get it warm – not hot, but at least not stunningly cold – but then the warmth would run out two or three minutes after that. I can’t abide a cold shower. Timing my showers that entire year was a matter of critical importance and much attention.

When I am rich, I want to buy cameras and take vacations. I also want to design a very specific bathroom. I don’t have a plan for the other rooms but I know exactly the kind of bathroom I want. Or bathrooms. First I want a large old-fashioned style bathtub that stands alone and has feet, likely with the pipes showing. I want that bathtub to stand in front of a large window. I love natural light in a bathroom. Perhaps, only for the sake of decency, frosted glass will do. This room should be wood. With one exposed brick wall. Perhaps in a second bathroom I want half of the room to be a large walk-in shower with two or three showerheads, you know, gym style, perhaps with a half-wall of frosted glass blocking off the shower area from the rest of the bathroom’s business. This room would not be wood. Perhaps something that looks like stainless steel.

Meanwhile, the plumbers in my apartment building today have turned off all the water and I can neither take a bath nor a shower, nor can I flush the toilet. Charming.

SS