Last summer, on the 4
th of July I went on a joyride in a banged up old Jeep that deposited me at a party where no sooner had I strolled in than I discovered that my ride had just abandoned me for a twenty year old, fat-bottomed, Brazilian tart. Not knowing where I was and not having enough money for a cab I suddenly felt panicked and I accepted a ride with a bunch of jovial Latinos. I was one of six human sardines and a mountain bike being shoe-horned into a
Rav4 for a chance at getting a few miles closer to where I'd left my car. As we
uncrumpled ourselves at our destination, I discovered that we were at a Tango studio and realizing I was still no closer to getting home than when I started my clown car shenanigans, I decided to drink. I introduced myself to the owner of the studio, an Argentinean woman and a prolific winker. As I helped myself to her wine, I learned that she had been a Tango instructor on Nudist Cruises to Alaska! The combination made me shudder and shiver. I do a lot of things naked. I sleep naked, cook naked, eat naked. If you've ever talked to me on the phone, I was probably naked on the other end. I'm not a nudist. I don't want to share my nudity with you and you would never catch me on a cruise ship learning to dance the Tango naked off the coast of Alaska! As I sweet talked a lanky Venezuelan into a ride to my car I chuckled to myself. "Absurd!" I thought. "Outrageous! Naked tango dancing...Well! I never!" This afternoon I found myself naked in my empty bathtub with a razor blade, rethinking my swift judgement.
Sometimes I clean naked and nothing prompts cleaning your house or finally finishing some mundane or pesky household chore like an impending visit from a guest. And nothing prompts a serious examination of ones bathroom cleanliness than a soon to arrive guest who, whether he remembers it or not, had to wear flip flops in your shower last time he stayed with you because you may or may not have contracted Athlete's Foot from your boyfriend's wife's boyfriend. With my guest arriving in a few days and having just taken a shower I happened to be naked when it suddenly occurred to me that this was the time to re-caulk the bathtub.
Years ago I had a fiance who before becoming a chef, had been an
HVAC guy, an
Orkin man and a Maytag Repair Man. Every time we moved into a new rental place, my loving handy man would take it upon himself to make some repairs and adjustments. One of the things he always did was re-caulk the bathtubs. He made it look so easy. I figured I could do it too. I immediately discovered that removing old mildewy caulk is a lot harder than it seems. As I scraped at it with a razor blade I decided I needed to actually be inside the tub and not leaning over the side to really get at it. And since my knees feel like those of a 70 year old mogul
skier's when I squat down, my best bet was to just sit directly on the floor of the tub.
I might be a bit more morbid than the average bloke so it's not unusual that as I sat there naked on the floor of my tub, razor blade in hand that I imagined how this would look in the event that I should meet an untimely death. What if I slipped and hit my head and bled to death while unconscious? This is the sort of thing I think about everyday and it brings up some big questions. Who would finally find me? How long would I have been decomposing before I was discovered? No one has a key to my apartment except my landlord. If I stopped showing up for work because I was dead, my boss and coworkers would think I just quit without notice and no one would look for me. Almost no one knows where I live. I wouldn't be returning any phone calls if I was dead but no one would really think that was cause for alarm for several weeks at the least. It would be the neighbors complaining of the stench that would finally get my carcass discovered which means it would probably be the landlord who would find me, dead, naked and rotting in a pool of congealed blood in my half caulked bathtub with a razor blade. My deposit would never be returned. And, what would they tell my father?
Then I wonder who would go through my stuff? I'd like to think it would be my sister. If anyone is going to discover my less than savory, sordid past and present, I hope it would be my sister. But I don't think it'd be her. She rarely travels and isn't likely to have the funds to fly the 2,000 miles to Austin, Texas to rummage through and dispense all of my personal belongings. I don't think Dad would do it either. My youngest brother died 4 years ago and still his belongings sit barely touched in a bedroom at the end of the hallway in my father's house. But someone would have to clean out my stuff, I live in a rental. One of my friends? But my family wouldn't know who to call. They don't know any of my friends. My ex-boyfriend once promised that if I died before he did, he'd find all my journals and destroy them (without reading them) before my family found them. I'm pretty sure that promise expired when our love did. My best guess is that my brothers would come to the rescue. So it would be my brothers then, who would discover my dirty little secrets, the
lascivious contents of my nightstand drawer, my volumes of revealing journals, the inexplicable contents of the trunk in my closet, my shocking debt, my passwords, my questionable google history, my unmade bed, my mountain of laundry and my sink full of dishes. But I think they'd be proud that I caulked my own bath tub and they'd be cool enough not to tell the rest of the family that I did it naked.
