BATHTIME STORIES
Eat, Sleep, Bathe, Repeat.
Eat, Sleep, Bathe, Repeat.
“It’s bloody tough, I’ll tell you, but Genghis Khan’s hordes could do it, so of course I had to learn.”
<I have no idea what you’re talking about right now.>
“Never mind. Listen, we have to get you cleaned up. Into the bath.”
<Can’t I just roll around in the dirt?>
“No, we need to get you superclean. Any blood found on you will automatically get you killed at this point.”
<You won’t let them find me, though, right?>
“Not if I can help it, Oberon. Come on, let’s go.”
I rose from my chair, and Oberon began to trot in front of me down the hall to the bathroom, his tail wagging again. <Will you tell me about Genghis Khan’s whores while I’m in the bath?>
“Hordes, not whores. He had both, though, now that you mention it.”
<Sounds like he was a busy guy.>
“You have no idea.”
We had a good time with the suds and the short version of Khan’s empire, after which I had to see to my preparations for the Fir Bolgs—the full extent of which was nothing more than a good night’s sleep. They would not attack me in my home, figuring it would be too well protected—and it was. They would wait for me to set foot off my property, and then they would gang up on me like a bunch of schoolyard bullies. So I relaxed and got my beauty rest.
In the morning, I calmly made myself an omelet with cheese and chives, poured some Tabasco on it, and nibbled on a piece of whole wheat toast. I cooked up some sausages too, but most of them went to Oberon. I made us a pot of coffee to wash it down, some freshly ground organic stuff from Central America (I usually take mine black, but Oberon likes it with Irish Crème Coffee-mate and cooled down with a few ice cubes).
<Did Genghis Khan take his coffee black?> Oberon asked me. After my bathtime story, he wanted to be the Genghis Khan of dogs. He wanted a harem full of French poodles, all of whom were named either Fifi or Bambi. It was an amusing habit of his: Oberon had, in the past, wanted to be Vlad the Impaler, Joan of Arc, Bertrand Russell, and any other historical figure I had recently told him about while he was getting a thorough cleansing. His Liberace period had been particularly good for my soul: You haven’t lived until you’ve seen an Irish wolfhound parading around in rhinestone-studded gold lamé.
“He didn’t drink coffee”, I replied. Genghis Khan was more of a tea man. Or yak milk. Coffee really wasn’t around in his time.
<May I have some tea, then?>
I don’t know, buddy. I doubt the sandwiches they’re thinking of are anything special. It’s more like those two guys are special.
<Well, I share their enthusiasm for food, and I was thinking I should contribute something legendary to the world in that area. I will master food like Miyamoto Musashi mastered swords and you mastered iron.>
That wasn’t the obsession I’d expected Oberon to take away from last night’s bathtime story, but I could live with it. You want to learn how to cook?
<No, I want you to cook and let me coach you on the taste. Because you have thumbs and I have highly tuned senses. Together we will develop Sirius Foods, and I’ll have my own line of premium meats, like Oberon’s Eight-Spice Triple Boar Turbo Sausage and Oberon’s Chop-Licking Beer-Braised Hogaggedon Brats.>
Sounds like a thrilling odyssey of arterial plaque.
<We will show Abe From an what it means to be Sausage King! And don’t try to tell me he’s not real.>
Later on, I shifted back in and waited to be attacked, but Gwendolyn the poltergeist wasn’t lurking by the oak. She had probably returned to the building she had haunted before, but there was no way I was returning to check. I picked up what few things I had at my lodgings and took off before she could locate me again, never to return to Toronto until today.
<So that Gwendolyn Lady in Red could still be out there right now?> Oberon said as I rinsed him off.
Yep.
<And she could still be very mad at Nigel?>
Yep. She appears to have quite the impressive memory for a ghost.
<And you’re going to dress up as Nigel Hargrave again on purpose?>
That’s right. Except this time I will try to be her Nigel instead of the pre-med student she mistook for him. She’s capable of talking—she has things she desperately wants to say to Nigel, you see—and I have something I need to say too.
<You should sing her a love song. Music soothes the savage ghost.>
Uh, that’s breast, Oberon, savage breast, not savage ghost. William Congreve wrote the original line, and he gets misquoted a lot.
<Well, it’s no wonder. I’ve never met a savage breast. Tasty ones, yeah, fried up and covered in gravy, but never savage.>
You’ve been a good hound in the bath. Let’s get you dried off and feed you a sausage or two.
“Hey, Oberon,” I called, filling up the tub for him, “it’s time for your bath!”
<It is?> He sounded doubtful. <Do you have a decent story?> Oberon wouldn’t sit still for baths unless I told him a story—a real story about historical figures. He never settled for faerie tales.
“I’m going to tell you the true story of a man named Francis Bacon.”
<BACON?> He came running so fast that he couldn’t negotiate the sharp turn into the bathroom very well, and he slammed into the door awkwardly and then splashed into the tub, soaking me after I’d just finished drying off.
<Oh, this is going to be great! I can tell I’m going to like this man already. He had to have been a genius with a name like that. Was he a genius?>
“Yes, he was.”
<I knew it! I have an instinct for that kind of thing. But I hope this story doesn’t end with him chopped into bits and sprinkled on a salad. That would be tragic, and a story about bacon should be uplifting.>
“Well, Francis Bacon was quite inspirational to many people,” I said, pouring water on Oberon’s back. “He’s the father of modern empiricism, or the scientific method. Before he came along, people conducted all their arguments through a series of logical fallacies or simply shouting louder than the other guy, or, if they did use facts, they only selected ones that reinforced their prejudices and advanced their agenda.”
<Don’t people still do that?>
“More than ever. But Bacon showed us a way to shed preconceived notions and conduct experiments in such a way that the results were verifiable and repeatable. It gave people a way to construct truths free of political and religious dogma.”
<Bacon is the Way and the Truth. Got it.>
As I shampooed Oberon’s coat, I explained how to craft hypotheses and test them empirically using a control. And then I stressed safety while I rinsed him off.
“It’s best not to experiment on yourself. Bacon practically froze himself to death in one of his experiments and died of pneumonia.”
<Right! Bacon must be heated. Knew that already, but thanks for the reminder.>
I love my hound.
“Fewer than most prescriptions nowadays,” I said, applying a sudsy sponge to Oberon’s back. “But back to the Pranksters. They dressed in Day-Glo colors too, tie-dyes and funky hats, and all had really cool nicknames like Mountain Girl, Gretchen Fetchin, and Wavy Gravy.”
<Wavy Gravy? Seriously?>
“Every word is true or I am the son of a goat.” I had him now.
<Wow! That’s the coolest name I have ever heard in my life! What did Wavy Gravy do?>
So I told Oberon all about Wavy Gravy and the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Tests, the origin of the Grateful Dead, the entire hippie scene, and the moral imperative to Stick It to the Man. I made sure he understood that Mr. Semerdjian was the Man and we had been sticking it to him really good so far. He came out of the bath all clean and ready to put on a tie-dye shirt with a peace sign on it.
As Oberon paraded around our living room spreading peace and gravy (Gravy is Love, he explained)