New Jersey 23, or Tubbing (a draft)

I hate reading in the bathtub. The problem is, I can't seem to stop doing it. Baths are stewing places, contained places, warm, but also full of skin cells and extraneous hair and regrets that, if you are like me and can't see well without your glasses, turn things a little murky. I never want to wash my face in a bath. But there's something calming about water, and if there isn't a lake around, the tub is the only place I can successfully read a book while partially submerged.

I only start to remember how much I hate doing this when my neck goes numb. Oh, I've tried plastic pillows, and propping rolled towels against the back of the tub, but within a few minutes, the same creeping iciness spreads outward from my spine. Not to mention, my feet are nearly burning, but the steam rising off my kneecaps makes me feel cold. My body isn't some waiflike thing, designed to complement waves. My body floats, though dense, lumpy thing that it is. Sometimes, I think it was designed for absorbing impact. My belly looks so inviting sometimes that small children think they can bonce on it.

And here I am with my latest book, Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray Love, a book that has been recommended to me countless times, and one I have been persistently refusing to read for that exact reason. I have an alarming tendency to do this - it took me three years (until it was actually assigned to me) before I read the Harry Potter Books, four before I read Anne Lamott's Bird By Bird, which I now ruthlessly recommend to every young writer in my life, and carry with me on difficult trips. Sometimes, I even run my fingers over its smooth paperback cover, feeling for the difference between the matte and glossy parts of the background like a rosary. I've got it mostly memorized. Maybe one day I'll record the dates of my children's births in it.

Suffice to say, I am sometimes a stubborn idiot.

This seems to be the case with Eat, Pray, Love. The truth is, I'm only reading it because my sister just got home from France, and she borrowed it from her friend just so I could read it. This is perhaps also an begrudging admission that my sister knows me better than I want her to, or at least better than I know her. All this to say, I found myself in the tub.

The first section of Gilbert's book chronicles her travels to Italy, in part to exclusively pursue real, genuine pleasure. Her experiences in Italy are the exact opposite of mine in Prague. To hear her tell it, she learned Italian with a little more than a few charming hiccups, was surrounded by friendly, engaging people who kvelled over their sports teams and favorite pizza shops (and insistently shared them with her), and wasn't particularly interested in sex. I want to hate her. It's in the same way I want to hate every movie that depicts someone luxuriating in a bathtub. How come they never see pieces of clipped fingernails floating by? How do they maintain a comfortable body temperature, or keep their necks and shoulders from seizing into Quasimodo impersonations?

The still, small voice inside me whispers, not unkindly, "Dane? Isn't it time to take a shower and get dressed already?"

Give me showers and waterfalls and rivers. Give me movement. Even the bright, angry scars on my left knee are demanding to be examined, to be tested. Give me travel. Get out of the tub. Get out of the house. Get out of the state. Get out of your flabby, injured body. Get out of your patterns. Get out of your schlump. Get out of here. Get out of here.

Or learn to make it work. Make waves in your bathtub. Take showers and read in patches of sunlight. Find the solid places for your feet. Give your scars permission to bleed a little. Take the information of your cousin's friend three states away who sometimes needs long-distance copy editing work done. Take your oldest younger cousin to the movies on Christmas Day. Tell the takeout Chinese guy you're a poet, when he asks. Tell everyone you're trying to make it work. Push aside the lingering thought that college was a giant waste. Cremate your suspicions of your unemployability.

Or, if this seems like too much for one day, run a hot shower and go read your book on the couch. At least you won't hurt your neck.