I tend to do the best of my thinking in the shower, and – is not lying in a bathtub almost exactly like taking a shower? There are nuances, of course. I prefer to shower standing, and one may only be supine in a bathtub. But between these positions there are only the subtlest of differences. Standing is merely lying down viewed from another angle, after all.
In fact, now that I’m comfortably wedged here in this wide, ceramic urn, I’m thinking that nicely warmed tubs must be the best place for thinking deep thoughts. Great ideas are blooming in my mind like great blooming flowers. The mind wanders most freely when the body is subject to water, most poetic of the elements. I wonder what grand epiphanies Lizzie Siddal, only nineteen, must have had when she sat for Millais, morbid lecher, in that warm summer tub then? I wonder if she wriggled her toes as he drained the colour from her. I always wriggle my toes in the bath. Oh, she sat for him in winter, you say, and caught a cold? She should thank her faultless stars she didn’t catch her death, then.
I have a secret, of course, to keeping the water warm in the bath. Lizzie might never have caught that cold then if she’d known this grand secret I’ve always known. I picked it up watching TV a few years ago, and held it close to my heart ever since. I learnt the meaning of love from watching TV too – but I don’t hold that close to my heart. You can’t trust anything you see on TV. Anyway. The trick to a comfortable bath, then, is to keep the warm water running in and expired water draining out all at once. It’s almost common sense. Running water never congeals, never agglutinates, keeps you warm. Amateurs might bath in lesser comfort, but not I, no sir, lukewarm will not fly. Bathing is an art after all, like everything else. I do it exceptionally well.
By the way, isn’t this a strange sight, reader dear? Here I am, lying in a bathtub gathering my thoughts, and there you are listening to me, spectating, even – talking to me! How outrageous is this gentle eye-violence, belly nipple arse bathed in fluorescent bathroom light, what a curiosity! Where is your position of viewing, I wonder? Do I speak to you as you gaze at me from that mark on the wall? Or are you sitting invisibly on this stool by my side? Do you too see that gathering red wispy plume in the water that doesn’t drain off just quite fast enough? Phantom laughter in the dark, I am modelling for you, my friend.
While we’re on this subject of positions, do let me tell you about this girl I saw in the subway yesterday. There are hundreds of girls in the subway, of course. Green dainties in frocks and brown nymphets in braids, red measles in tears and little blue uglies dears – all manners of girls take the subway every day. But I saw this particular girl, not the dainties or the nymphets, and thank goodness not the measles or the uglies, because she fell within my peripheral. I saw her because I was sitting directly in front of her; I couldn’t have seen her, or those horizontal marks running along the vertical of her arms, some quite fresh, or her pixie cut, or anything about her, otherwise. You can only see what you’re in a position to see; it’s only logical. And I was in a position to see the loveliest pair of boots running up her shins, lascivious plum lipstick, to smell a faint tinge of vanilla perfume, and –
You’d rather hear about the marks on her arm then? Such a drab subject, y’know – every girl has one or two scratches along her wrist, it’s hardly a spectacle. But if you must know, she’s been going about it all wrong anyway. As I said, the cuts were along her arms – and deeper scars migrate away from her wrist. Non-lethal, non-fatal, purely cosmetic. I know all about such matters, of course. I spent many days reading it up. In fact, I’d show you on my arm exactly where to cut to draw real, red blood, straight from the heart, except I’ll rather not take my hands out of the water at the moment. I don’t mean to be callous, but I rather think her heart wasn’t in it. Had she really meant to accomplish the deed, she’d have filled a bathtub full of warm water, scattered rose petals into the tub, and taken the razor with her into the tub for a clean, almost painless job. No – I really do think that her heart was not in it at all.
Dim the lights, and draw the shades closer together, would you, please? Everything glares too brightly in the bathroom. Mother used to tell me that if I read in dim light, it’d kill my eyesight eventually. Such a caustic word – kill! – as if life could be snuffed out so easily, cut out on the hard ‘k’ consonant, in one broad stroke! Writers may kill off their characters quite easily, of course, and lovers seem to die for no good reason at all but for their loves (one almost wonders, why bother with love then?). We are not surprised at these deaths, because it is in the nature of characters to be killed off, and in the nature of lovers to die. But the rest of us normal folks, we don’t die too easily, do we? This body, alabaster sculpture, is an exquisite piece of work, too sacred to be brutalised.
Anyway, I’d better be getting along with this story. To have said a thousand words and not got anywhere yet, and to think that all some storytellers have to do is merely sit down at a typewriter and open a vein. The water is turning cold, and already a drowsiness is settling upon me. I’d like to start telling this tale before I doze off to this settling scent of roses. Only, look! – those twin willowy ribbons, bright as cherry pop, pirouettes, straight from the tell-tale heart.
*
By midnight the moon was over the house, full
and lethal, and Elay alone. He went to his desk
with a bottle and started to write. Upstairs,
the dog sniffed at the tepid bed. Elay held
his head in his hand and in his hands and wanted to cry,
but Beloved he wrote and forever and why.
—
Wong Wen Pu reads English Literature and Philosophy with Nanyang Technological University. He believes that all art, like all love, has root in heartache. He enjoys coffee on windy days, and tea on rainy nights. Attempts to reach him for tea and coffee may be directed to wongwenpu@gmail.com.
