Sex, Kink, and the Erotic: “The Bath Book” by Brooke White
The Bath Book
In the bathroom, I stare at the puckered kiss of a conch shell and a square book. The book was given to my mom by a body positive hippie. For them, it was about girl power and pampering oneself. For me, it was something more: it affirmed my desire for women before I had the language to explain those feelings. Nearly two decades later, on the phone with my mother while I wash dishes, I ask if she still has the book. She tells me it was lost to mildew and moisture long ago. I ask if she remembers what this book was called. The Bath Book, she tells me. At first, I think she’s joking. She repeats herself. I’m sure I will never find it. I’m sure I will search and find only children’s books. I am wrong. When I type The Bath Book into the search bar, like an incantation, it travels through the years and appears in front of me again. There are limited copies. I learn it was published in 1973. The few folks selling The Bath Book ask a high price, higher than I can afford. On the cover, in faint blue font is the original price of the book: $2.95.
I want this book with an intensity which surprises me. Even after all this time, it enlivens me, but it’s not hard to see why. It feels like a nude photo of an ex tucked in a drawer somewhere. The kind one knows they shouldn’t keep, and yet, can’t bring themselves to throw away—and so here I am, staring at her again, and I feel vulnerable. It’s as if she asks a wordless question, and my answer is yes. I give myself over to her. I lose track of time looking at her. There’s something dynamic about her face, like those paintings with eyes that track you.
Her thick hair is auburn, and brown, and golden, it’s piled on top of her head, and cascades beside her face and down her back. She is stitched from contradictions. She stands in front of a glass window with generous light, cast golden by encroaching evening, beckoning bath time. A circle of yellow and orange pulses behind her in the stained glass flanked by two smaller orbs like moons orbiting her. I don’t doubt that she has that kind of gravitational pull.
Her stare. No one has ever looked at me the way she does. She is intent, she does not blink. She doesn’t have a nose, really, her nose looks like a snake’s, but never mind that. The womb of the tub looks like a fin from the right angle, and she stands behind it, her form liquid in the ripples of her dress. This is a book about women submerging themselves to emerge, transformed.
Her pale dress falls from one shoulder, and she holds a gathering of the fabric loosely in her hand, just barely covering her chest. Irises or some such flower blossom in the glass behind her hips. Her other arm is outstretched and her fingers dangle, prancing a bit. Her knuckles curve over the edge of the frame. She is stepping out from the book, sashaying toward you. The water is running, can’t you hear it fill the tub? She stands behind the porcelain lip, there’s only so far she can go. You’ll have to come the rest of the way. She’s gesturing toward the water. Don’t you feel the steam sticking to your skin? She grows impatient. She is clearly about to ask, “Are you coming?”
About Brooke White
Brooke White is a Michigander with a penchant for prose and long conversations. Winner of the Hopwood Committee’s Roy W. Cowden Memorial Fellowship for nonfiction, her work has appeared in Midwestern Gothic, Entropy, Iron Horse Literary Review, March Xness, and Lunch Ticket among others. She received her MFA from the University of Minnesota. She’s currently at work on a book of literary nonfiction about desire, transformations, and fairy tales. Her latest ponderings and delights can be found on Instagram and Twitter @brkthewriter
