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slughead42
Feb 21, 2011

Burt can be a kind Mod. But Burt can be a destructive mod.

Burt.
I'm in, plz.

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slughead42
Feb 21, 2011

Burt can be a kind Mod. But Burt can be a destructive mod.

Burt.
Rubber duck, 666 words

I think it started when I was a kid; both of my parents were big bath people. The house I grew up in had one of those deep tubs that was almost a jacuzzi, with nozzles that kind of bubbled and everything. I think the lady who owned the house before my folks had it installed for medical reasons, I’m not sure. Anyway, I was hooked, from before the memories even come back clearly...I spent hours half-floating, touching and then drifting off of my mother’s arm or my father’s leg, eyes wide open and head completely empty of thoughts - not a care in the world.

It gets more complicated as you get older, though. I ended up rushing a fraternity when I went to school just because they had this enormous hot tub on the ground floor of the frat house. I became known as “Hot Tub Buddy” almost immediately, because invariably whenever someone walked in (from class, from lunch, from a date, ON a date, at 3 am, whatever), if I was around I would greet them with a cheerful, “Hot tub, buddy?”

I lived in that house for 9 years; three of those were after I had already graduated, even. I’d still be living there now except for the singular reaction that every person that I knew had when I would tell them where I lived, once I got to a certain age. They would hesitate for just a fraction of a second, then say, “Oh!”, and all the while their eyes would make it clear that they were completely recalibrating their mental image of me.

So I moved to my own place, with a small standard apartment tub that made me despair of ever really being happy again, until I met Josie. Josie was four years older than me, whip-smart, neurotic as hell, a whiskey drinker and recovering coke fiend who also loved to drink wine and read in the bathtub. From day one she would tell me that I didn’t really love her, block my texts for days at a time, and patiently lay out for me all of the different scenarios that would lead to us eventually breaking up.

Josie and I were together for three years, which was two years longer than we had any business being. It was kind of amazing how much of the emotional destructiveness and utter unhappiness I was able to overlook because of those nights when we would light candles and run a bath, and sit in the tub and smoke cigarettes and drink red wine and talk about how stupid all of our friends were and how hosed up the world was and then drain all the water that had gotten cold and fill the tub up again and just exist for a while.

So, recently, in an attempt to compartmentalize, I wrote an on-line profile to try to meet people solely for the purpose of sharing baths together. It is harder to successfully stress the fact that this activity is not inherently sexual for you without sounding completely deranged than you might at first suspect, but I finally met with some success a few weeks ago.

A guy named Michael wrote me back, and after a week or so of chatting online I agreed to come over to his place for a bath. It was a little strange at first, but we were soon able to lapse into comfortable silences that would extend longer and longer, without us really noticing, until we were just alone together, instead of together separately, if that makes any sense.

As I was getting ready to leave, he suddenly said, “You know, I nearly never wrote to you at all. You know, because of your profile pic.” I froze, suddenly unsure of my ground. “No, I mean the picture was fine, you looked totally normal and well-adjusted and everything, you just had some of the worst duck face going on in a selfie that I’ve ever seen…”

slughead42
Feb 21, 2011

Burt can be a kind Mod. But Burt can be a destructive mod.

Burt.
Thanks. 👍

slughead42
Feb 21, 2011

Burt can be a kind Mod. But Burt can be a destructive mod.

Burt.
I'm in.

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