taking baths and eating salads

Taking baths and eating salads used to be two of my favorite activities. The salad thing was weird because I would have never considered anything green, outside a Hybrid, a luxury. I was mainly a burrito gal but then the salads begin to call to me. The Persian, the mix greens, and oh…the great Caesar. Baths too where a treat. Going back to Monterey always allowed for several things: free food and laundry, mom and pop, beers at The Crown, and a big ass bath tub. Many women like to use bath tub time as…um…well their special alone time…but bath tub time is warm and relaxing the last thing I’d want to do is start the laborious processes of masturbation. I would have never thought of taking a bath in my own apartment if it weren’t for Julianne doing it first. The tubs of Toka apartments are nothing like the Monterey Bay baths, not to mention our own bathtub had turned into a kind of bomb shelter for Kenobi. A retreat for when she’s been caught in mommy Jamie’s bedroom, or scaling our double TV tower, or crapped on a curtain.

The past two weeks I have been sick. First anxiety brings back an ol’ ailment that I don’t particulary enjoy talking about but I did name Alexander Hamilton. Second came the flu. Alexander retreated for a while but then returned bringing with it…(sorry readers) The Curse. I’m just laying this all out for back story. Because of these various aliments I was forced to eat only salad and take countless sea salt baths. The result of which has been me laying around for 14 days pooping out tiny jungles. Today I cracked. I had Chinese food about two hours ago and of course now I am starving again.

I found myself in the tub again this afternoon, but I had quite literally gone insane at this point. Pissed off and actually tired of being naked I plopped my absurd whiteness into the salty water. Somehow I had brought the copy of Traveling Mercies Eleanor had given me into the bathroom. I cannot remember if I brought it in to read in the tub or if it was another one of my efforts to counter act the mindless bullshit that typically litters our magazine rack. That was harsh, Cosmo can actually be a good read especially if one is as curious or sexually suppressed as most Biola alumnae. But I have been known to slip in a feminist magazine or some O’Connor short stories if I see some of the same tight, white, faces hangin’ around the ol’ zine rack.

Eleanor had given me the book long ago and I loved and hated her for it because I always knew the book was too good for me. It sat by my bed for some time before today when in a fit of crazed frustration and a bit of confusion I picked it up and read the first part. I read it until the drain sucked most of the water away. That didn’t matter much for the water had gone cold and Ms. Lamott had proven herself a friend. Reading books on Christianity holds the same weight with me as jogging. Perhaps I should do it, maybe it will help me feel better about my current situation…but probably not and what kind of music do you listen to when you’re jogging or reading Christian books anyway? But I could trust someone who was saved with a “fuck it” rather then a “hallelujah”. Anne proved herself to me with her writing, then with her stories, she made me her friend and by the end of the first part of this book I was naked in a cold bath in tears. I’m not sure why I cried. Perhaps I was sad for her, perhaps still frustrated over Alexander Hamilton and being sick, or maybe Anne reopened a dusty place in my mind that allowed the rest of me to be brave again…in other words, to hope. Maybe.