Booze, bath and beyond

by RAF KATIGBAK

It’s not easy being manly. In fact, I’ve been really working hard on it for the last couple of years. In an effort to shed my ultimately nerdy past, I’ve learned how to ride a motorcycle, properly shoot a rifle, build shit with my hands and hunt large and small game. Heck, I even learned how to pick a lock, just in case. But try as I might to be a more macho, manly man, the reality is that I’m actually a total wuss. And there is nothing I can do about it. I don’t consider myself a pansy simply because I feel queasy at the sight of a needle, or even that I kinda got weepy at the end of that Bright Star movie (I had something in my eye, okay!), but really I’m a wuss for one fact alone: I like baths. Actually, scratch that. I LOVE baths. In fact, there is nothing that I like more than to ease myself into a candle-lit pool of steaming water, as the intoxicating aromas of essential oils fill my lungs and ease my troubled soul…. sorry, I just got transported into my own personal bath commercial for a second.

Yes, I’m fully aware that taking baths is breaking the fourth cardinal rule of being a real man (right after “Thou shalt not share your umbrella with another dude”). But I can’t help it. I mean, what’s better than being warm and quiet and float-y and relaxed? It’s like returning to the womb, except without worrying about getting poked in the head by your dad’s penis whenever your parents have sex. I love baths. The shit rules.

But it wasn’t always this way. In fact, I used to think baths were disgusting. In my mind, there were two kinds of people in this world: those who liked baths and clean people. Logically, bathing is really just sitting in a pool of your own filth. And don’t get me started on hot tubs. We had a name for the one at the YMCA I used to frequent: old man soup. If you had any notion of hot tubs being glamorous or sexy, wait till you see one full of blotchy old Chinese men boiling away while watching drops of condensation fall from the soggy single-hairs sprouting from their back moles. That ain’t no hip hop video.

Also, I figured I was just too much of a spazz to enjoy a bath, anyway. What the heck would I do? Just sit there? I have trouble concentrating as it is. My rampant ADD coupled with my guilt would probably make me worry that I should be doing something more productive, like my taxes or cleaning the grout in my bathroom.

What’s more, the whole idea of bath culture—with its aroma therapy, dimly lit ambiance and peaceful serenity—sounded like being trapped in an Enya video. Have you ever wandered into the bath section of a pharmacy? It’s like a new age cult. They’ve got all sorts of strange fancy schmancy things to make your bath time “the holistic experience it’s meant to be”: special organic cotton pillows, sea salts, esoteric minerals, essential oils, little white balls that get fizzy and make you smell like a flower farted fairy dust on you, separate expensive little scrubbers for every single part of your body. All of these things would just make me mad.

That is, until I discovered the secret to baths. It’s a secret that I’m ready to share with all of you now, dear readers. It’s the secret that has made me a bath addict. So much that now I wouldn’t even think twice about spending $17 on eucalyptus knee oil from Dubai or dropping $30 on a holistic tiger-whisker taint scrubber imported from Sri Lanka, if I thought it would improve my bath experience. In fact, it’s a secret that has caused me to buy so many bath-time accoutrements that the cabinet under my sink looks like a BDSM gimp closet, except with loofahs instead of nipple clamps. The secret to the perfect bath is simple: get totally wasted.

That’s right. Once I discovered the combo of steaming hot water and getting shit-faced, something just clicked. It’s a magnificent sensory experience that made me wonder, “Is this what it’s like for astronauts to get wasted?” But of course it makes sense. Scandinavians have been getting wasted in saunas for centuries. I mean, we all know the shameful delight of chugging a beer in the shower. Imagine that, but lying down! So, to hell with being a manly man. If loving the smell of lavender and the feeling of tiger whiskers on my gooch makes me less of a man, then so be it.