Oil, Water and Skin

The bathtub was one of those old kinds, yet not old enough to have those claws around those orbs. Oh well. The fixture was old too, brass and tin plate that hung from the iron behind it like a flaccid penis. The handles, the cocks, were satisfying to hold and turn. They occupied her hand like they were holding it. She put the stopper in and turned the handle marked C, chaud and steam-flanked water came forth, pummeling the stopper. She let the room steam as she prepared for the bath.

The bath pillow had been exchanged for one of those water worm kids’ toys, the better to hold her arms and shoulders out of the tub. It was now permanently bent in a U shape, to accommodate the tub. There was oil now instead of the bubble bath, which had always dried her skin. The oil let that part of her body survive the winter, stopped the islands of crust that would appear on her upper arms before they had a chance to become permanently settled. There was the shower attachment, rounded at the female end like the tail of a condom to perfectly circle the bathtub spout. She hung this from the rounded end of the tub, its shower end twisted off, now a headless tube, beige like her skin in the summer or the faux generic color of Band-Aids.

The room properly steamed, she shut the door tightly. The lock had long ago ceased to work, but the house had settled enough for the door to hold fast. It would take three good shoves to open, give her enough time to prepare for visitors. No one ever knocked in her house. She turned the other cock, marked F, froid, and the water, a little tamed now in temperature, came down in a cataract, causing Niagara-style chaos below. She put a washcloth down, tested the water, made adjustments and slipped a toe inside. Always toe-first in the water, the land always hands first. Imagine the first fish stepping out onto dry land with its rear fins. She returned to the pond and found it body temperature, warm oil slicks floating cheerfully on top, waiting to coat her in citrus-scented softness. A single candle on the toilet seat coloured the room in orange-yellow, her eyes adjusted to it now, she pulled the other leg in and lowered herself, gracefully, to the iron floor.

A hot bath is cruelty, she thought, a forced sweat and skin on your toes shriveling fast like overcooked hot dogs. A cold bath is nice in the summer for a while, but eventually turns cloying, wishy-washy, boring. A thirty-seven point zero Celsius bath is like floating in nothing. In the dark, it’s easier to imagine. She could close her eyes in the candlelight and feel as though she were suspended in the air, could take up flight if she felt like it. She didn’t feel like it, preferred to hover in the ether. It strangely made movement harder, but her weight less consequential. She put her legs up on either side of the spigot and waited until she was covered.

She watched the water crawl up her skin, the curl of its surface tension up her stomach. Her breasts began to float, the nipples hard and pointing up, too stubborn to drown. She hooked a toe in the ring of the stopper and pulled it out. The drain, choked with the influx, fought before it gave in to a steady flow. It matched the incoming flood from the faucet. She attached the condom end to the spigot and waited, her thumb at the other end, the headless tube between her thighs. And then, the stream, the pressure, which played in her public hair and blew the lips of her pussy apart.

It was manageable, almost imperceptible at this strength. She could see only a minor dent in the skin of her thigh if she pressed it in. It was almost silent too, just a dull swish under the water. Years ago, an old boyfriend used to clean her asshole this way, would press the headed shower extension between the cheeks of her ass until it was power-washed. He’d then lift it out of the water for a good suck, a good lick and kiss. She moved this softer, subtler stream down to it now first thing, closing her eyes and remembering his lips, the euphoria of it, the intimacy. She then put her thumb over the open end, just a little bit at a time, until the force was almost unbearable and she had to stop.

Then up, slowly, a forceful beating at her hole, then slowly, teasingly, further up, the thumb released again, up, and there, just there, the soft, continuous stream of pleasure, twisting into elation.

She could leave it like this, often thought of trying it, seeing how long it took to bring her up and then down, the slowest growing orgasm in her life, but she’d never made it. Her thumb did what it had to, and dropped over the end of the tube, sending the slow, oxbow-forming, wide river into crashing rapids, the kind that wrap around her clit like whitewater grudgingly wearing away at a stubborn rock.

She wasn’t thinking of this, had perfected this dance ages ago. Her mind was full of skin and hard cock. It was at her face and in her mouth. It was in her pussy or in her hands. She was watching men masturbate, or watching them get sucked. Their heads lolled behind them, their hands clenched at the air. She was tied down sometimes and used or whipped or spanked. Sometimes there were no men at all but machines or dildos on walls. Sometimes there were women suckling her nipples. Sometimes there was nothing but her and the shower extender, her clit, the little, helpless pearl, out there to be battered.

Sometimes soon, sometimes later, her mind would rise and her back would tense. Her mouth would open and she would only have the weakest sense of herself in the world. She would suffer and she would whine quietly and she would lose the crank in the cogs in her head. She would burst with it, a supernova in miniature, and slowly, over the period of the remainder of her bath, shrink back to herself, a little better than before.