From the Toilet to the Tub

I don't know quite how this all came together, but it did. Way back in October 1997, I started to get horribly serious for the man that is now my husband. He made me silly that way. He likes to take baths. I am not so fond. So, one of our first memories was of being in his apartment in downtown Portland with him in the bathtub and me perched like a good potential husband on the toilet. Lid closed, by the way. You know how those most poignant of early memories can lodge themselves into the cracks in one's mind? Yup, it's still there. Elton John's Big Picture album had just come out. And he had a cassette tape of it that we played in the little cassette player that sat on top of the medicine cabinet above his bathroom sink. The hot water in this old building took forever (can I just repeat "forever"). Literally, there were times it would take 15 minutes to get even warm enough to bathe in. So, we'd wait and wait. Then, he'd dive into the tub, bubbles would ensue, and we'd begin blabbling about this and that. Should we become lovers? Or not? Where was this thing going? Anywhere? What should we do about the fact that I lived in Boise, Idaho, at the time and had never really been in a long-term relationship with a member of the same sex before? Man, those were the days.

And they haven't quit. Seems like that's become some of our favorite times. It's continued happening wherever we've lived -- numerous places in Portland as well as Anchorage, Alaska (near Wasilla where Ms. Palin has dibs on Palin). We always find ourselves discussing the world's troubles, how to do this or that, should we or shouldn't we, are we still in love with one another (kidding!), who to invite over for dinner, and where we should go for dinner. I've hauled my laptop in there to look up this or that. We've planned world vacations in there. We've looked up things we didn't know. We've probably even looked at things we shouldn't have. And lately politics have become quite a bit of our discussion. We've strategized, planned, giggled and laughed, and I normally always offer to scrub his back -- though he always says no. I shave his neck from time to time so his neck is as slick pretty as the rest of him. One thing we try never to do is discuss work. That's out of bounds. And, NO, I've never done "that" while I've been sitting on the toilet with him.

We have stopped listening to music while doing the duty. And he rotates what kind of smelly bubbles he lavishes himself in. And you wouldn't believe the beautiful puppy that often joins us to sleep on his daddy's pile of clothes next to the bathtub. It's all a part of those little unexpected moments in our lives that we find ourselves in. The rituals and habits. Plain and simple, it's just the things that we do. And we're planning on doing it for years to come. Well, as long as we've got a bathtub and toilet, that is. And the bubbles. We simply must have those.