Do you know how whored I feel right now?
Frankly I didn’t know the word “whored" could be used in that way
So it threw me off—
Not that I had a good answer anyway
You see moments earlier
We were all squished together
Maybe fourteen of us nearly-naked high school kids
Crammed into an eight-person hot tub
How was I to know?
That when I reached my hand down toward her bikini bottom
I would find not what I was looking for
But instead: another guy’s hand!
See these are the crazy things
That happen in hot tubs
And somehow
For 30 of the past 45 years—
In good times and bad—
I’ve had a hot tub in my backyard
My dad deserves some of the credit—
And perhaps some of the blame—
For introducing me to hot tubs
In fact he coached me
In zen and the art of hot tub maintenance—
Except for the zen part
See at age three I was already a poolboy in training
Cleaning our in-ground hot tub in Walnut Creek
And testing the 104° water with brightly colored liquids
Five drops of yellow for the chorine level
Five drops of red plus one or two of the activator—
To determine the Ph
Matching the colors just right
Against the little laminated rubric
When we moved to Alamo in 1983
My poolboy duties continued—
And expanded!
See this hot tub was attached to an actual pool
So it never got very hot
And I would scare the shit out of my parents
By submerging myself head-first
And pressing my lips up against the floor bubble outlets
Staying underwater for several minutes at a time
Breathing the rubbery air pumped in
From an impressive array of plumbing and machinery
Over in the side yard
In that era my parents would take the family on vacation to Maui
Where I discovered the hot tub paradise known as Kaanapali
A walking path connects maybe a half dozen luxury resorts
And no one really keeps track of who's staying where
I’d run back out of the ocean
Throw my boogie board in the sand
And head straight for the nearest hot tub
At dusk—
When my parents were preoccupied with making dinner—
Usually tropical fish and charred veggies on the hotel’s outdoor grill
I would sneak off with my kid brother
To see how many different resort hot tubs we could slip into without getting caught—
And we never did
My hot tub adventures continued—
In college
Small groups of us would climb into the back yards of faculty housing
Which for inexplicable reasons
Often shared fences with what was once known as Fraternity Row
Now it’s just called The Row
Though in the bad old 90s—
The name was still in transition
And somehow hot tubbing
In faculty members’ back yards—
Was still a thing
Though I doubt it still is
My crowning achievement—
Of college hot tub tomfoolery, however
Was sneaking into the massive campus athletic complex
In the middle of the night
And having sex with my girlfriend—
In the outdoor hot tub next to the olympic pool
That girlfriend didn’t last—
But my relationship with hot tubs did
It was 1999
And after a protracted housing search
Including one set of housemates in Berkeley—
A bunch of recent Cal grads
Who asked me what I liked on my pizza—
They seemed to like my answer of anything but pineapple
But then they showed me the door when they found out where I went to school
Which as it turns out was both Cal and Stanford
But that subtlety was lost on them
Anyhow I finally managed to find an amazing place in the Lower Haight
With two women from my graduating class
I didn’t know them—
But everything about this place was magical
From the creeping vines and stained glass entrance
To the glossy hardwood floors
The tin-embossed chair rails
The vintage stove
And an Eden-esque back yard
Meticulously maintained by the landlord
And featuring—
You guessed it:
A hot tub
It wasn’t currently in use when I moved in
But of course I immediately scrubbed it clean
Filled it with water
Loaded it up with bromine
And perfectly balanced the Ph with my test kit
And handy plastic jars—
Of acid and base
My housemates loved the hot tub, too
We used it separately
And together—
But not like you’re thinking, no
I’ve made a lot of bad decisions—
But I’ve never slept with a housemate
Anyhow we shared the tub
But I was the poolboy
The one and only
And nobody disputed that
One time I had to go back east
On business
Not more than a week
So I sat my housemates down
And I carefully explained zen and the art of hot tub maintenance
How the levels needed to be checked—
Every day
Without fail
I think it was maybe day four of my business trip
When I got a frantic call from Housemate #1
See Housemate #2 had vicious-looking red marks on her inner thigh
And they were itchy as fuck
Have you guys been using the hot tub?
Yes, of course
Have you been checkig the levels every day?
Ummm
You need to take her to the ER right now!
As it turns out that was good advice
As she had developed a subcutaneous staph infection
And needed injections of antibiotics
To stop it in its tracks
Years later
Still in San Francisco
I managed to find a small bungalow above Dolores Park
And of course this wasn’t a requirement—
But it too had a hot tub
And I would end almost every night
Smoking a freshly-packed bowl of California’s finest indica
Through a small water pipe
Butt naked
And basking in the stimulating warmth
Of my very own hot tub
Alone—
Except for a few times when I wasn’t
But some things that happen in the hot tub
Need to stay in the hot tub
At least the private ones
Though not all hot tubs are private
Shortly before the world shut down
My friend Paul took me to a Russian Banya
Basically a public bath house—
Pools, hot tubs, cold tubs, saunas, steam rooms
And all the Russian penises and Asian boobs you cared to see
Because that’s entirely who was there
Russian men and Asian women
Crammed in so tightly in fact
That the cattle-like feeling
Took away any notion of intimacy
We did have a moment of peace
Paul and I
In a hot tub, of course
He had brought some other friends—
A nice couple
The three of us
You know, the couple and I
Were getting eye-rollingly bored
Over Paul’s endless lamentations
About darling precious Natalie
The girl who had dumped him just days before
He explained how—
In laborious detail—
He proposed to her after she left him
And it didn’t work out
A week ago I had strongly advised Paul not to propose to Natalie
Knowing full well it wouldn’t work—
And having the very same stupid idea fail in my face when I tried it
Against Paul’s also strongly-delivered advice
A bit more than a year before this evening at the Banya
So Paul was droning on and on
And I was exploring the depths of the irony of Paul not following his own advice
Meanwhile no one noticed the random guy sitting on the other side of the tub
His head was covered by a towel
And bowed slightly downward
So we couldn’t see his face
Paul must have stopped for a breath or something
Because all of a sudden mystery man—
His head still lowered and enshrouded by a towel—
Spoke
In a dark, smoky voice
With an accent thicker than borscht
Boldly interrupting Paul’s monologue:
You’re obviously a simp
And you will never find peace
Until you stop simping for Natalie
You need to shut the fuck up
Forget about her
And go sleep with twenty women
That’ll clear your head
And with that
Mystery man and his Russian penis
Left the hot tub and disappeared into a sea
Of Asian boobs and other Russian penises
This lesson—
Sadly—
I had not yet learned
Back in high school
As I sat in the hot tub overflowing with horny kids
My hands not the only ones doing the wandering
Of course my hand in particular
Not finding what it expected
Under the bubbly shroud of hot tub jets
Because the instant the girl realized—
Two different hands were competing for her crotch
She jumped out of the hot tub in a huge commotion
Of course I felt enormously guilty
And I ran after her as she headed toward the house
The other guy and his errant hand played it cool
And stayed in the hot tub—
Like nothing had happened—
He probably had his other hand on some other girl’s thigh, too
But this girl and I had been flirting all night—
For hours
And with our clothes on!
And now
We were both wet and standing in the kitchen
The ends of her auburn hair dripping into the beach towel
She had wrapped around herself like Linus
She proceeded to chew me out for a good long time
And then locked herself in the bathroom
Later—
I saw her get into other hand’s vintage Mustang
With bench seating
And lap belts
The two of them alone
A place where my hands definitely wouldn’t interfere
Being seventeen I was pretty crushed
Though as it is often said
If you don’t learn a life lesson
Life will just keep on teaching you
And it sure as hell did
Because like my fried Paul, I simped for women—
Until I was 43
See there’s a little secret that not everyone knows:
There’s nothing more repellent
Than simping
And the sooner you stop
The sooner life begins
Please, go ahead, share that little secret far and wide
Even though it may or may not have originated—
In a hot tub
