BATH

Bath Abbey (note Vivian's Umbrella)

Outside the Roman Baths Vivian is brandishing the umbrella over the top of her head like some sort of torch. We follow the umbrella as if pillar of light leading the Israelite across the desert of bodies across a carnival of motion. There are several jugglers.  Most of the gentleman are bald and syringe-width lanky. One is puffing at the stem of a baton and breathing fire poofs of flames from it. A harlequin on stilts is tilting his head up and then exhaling a plume of smoke. Vivian tells us that we are welcome to acknowledge and clap but if we mill too long in front of them they will expect each of us to toss some pounds at them and that would be quite costly now wouldn’t it. As of yet no one on the trip has been able to glean my joke about correlating weight lost to spending pounds which makes me feel very unwitty.

I check the film in my camera and look at the abbey ahead.

Vivian states that we will enter the Baths first and then conclude our tour with the Abbey. Our first stop we see where the ancient spring waters siphon through the crust of the earth, enter a sieve which later leads to the Bath.

None of the Big Ten seems impressed.

“Don’t you think it’s pretty cool? I mean how the spring water just seems to erupt out of nowhere and how it’s been doing so for thousands of years.”

Jim Baker says that it looks like mother earth is menstruating. Where’s Daisy. If Spencer were around we could borrow a tampon.”

I try to add something about Mormon’s using something called temple garments but it seems like the joke has flown the coup and everyone is talking about how weird the statues look.

“Everything in this country is gay.” I mean shit. Everything here is a fruitcake."

“Someone in the back notes that we are in England. It’s not called fruitcake. It’s called figgy-pudding, which another retort says is probably short for eff-you pudding.   There is laughter.  I feel like I am the only one paying attention . Vivian notes on how the mineral springs were used for Centuries by the Celts worshiping their deity Sulis for 800 hundred years before the birth of Christ. Legend had it that the mineral springs were founded after the mythological King Bladud after he contracted leprosy and sought a cure. After the Roman invasion statues were added and the sight was dedicated as a shrine to the roman God Minerva.

We enter the main baths. There is a sheet of azure glazed in the center of what looks like a diminutive Acropolis. It is placid and spiritual all at teh same time.

Vivian notes that the spring water is rumored to have healing powers and that daily sick

Vivian makes a strong accent about how you can see the celtic give birth to the Roman influence then transition into Christianity with the Abby. Vivian talks about the Roman occupancy and how, before entering the mineral film they would shave all of their body hair, including under their arms and their pubic hair. 

“All the guys who used to bathe here were a bunch of fags. They were probably butt-fucking each other all the time."

I ask Jim how he won the trip, if he was a paper boy or if it was through some Newspaper in education contest. Jim notes that they pretty much just pulled his name out of a hat and then gave him a plaque and a passport and sent him through customs.

 I want to add a that figures only I refrain.

 "Of Course When your Christian appropriated the land they felt the need, to of course, erect a parish, which, invariably, the did." Vivian points in the direction of the Abbey.

I am fascinated by pool of cerulean, the Roman statues overhead resembling chiseled chess pieces. Vivian still has her Broelli raised so that the group is able to follow her.  She begins to talk about a number of tablets that are cursed.  No member of the iconic Big Ten is paying attention. From a distance I can make out Mark and Heath and several other members of his group walking along the far edge of the pond. I am standing close to the edge of the water but for some reason I cannot discern my reflection. I reach in my side pocket and place my glasses on.

I look again.

Still I see nothing.

Not even a blurred fingerprint reflecting the outline of the individual I have become. 

For a second I blink I swear I see an older man. Perhaps the pool of Baldud is portending my future. Perhaps it is showing me a mirrored facet of myself 50 years from now. It is a blurred. The man is bald-headed. He is wearing glasses. There is a slightly rubicund freshness endowed to his brow. He looks learned yet not stuffy. He looks convivial. I think about how I am almost certain that when I left Peoria and at the Bookstore of O'hare I sauntered into different cosmic fractals of myself. From a distance I can hear Mark's group laughing. They are forming triangles and taking pictures of each other behind baths. Mark is bending down on one knee taking vantage shots as if he is a freelance journalistic stinger.  I ignore Jim Baker’s harangue addressing me as Harry, admonishing to me quit looking for sea creatures because your gay ass couldn’t even make a mermaid wet. I continue to scrutinize the image in the water. The older gentlemen is Coach Mann, my cool history teacher from back home. I remove my glasses and place them back on again.  I tilt my head but fail to glean an image. Vivian stats that most people don’t realize this but we are actually in a Roman temple before warbling again that the Christians of course have to appropriate everything. I am thinking of Coach Mann who I swear I just saw. I can see Coach Mann on this trip, smiling, looking at the architecture, intellectually getting off that he finds himself in the pages of the subject he teaches to non-attentive students. She asks if any of us can looking around and identify the types of columns found in the building.

I did a column project for Coach Mann last fall where I drove up and down High Street and Grandview drive snapping pictures of every Column in sight. Vivian is looking above the group using her prominent British chin as a periscope. She quickly says anybody.

I raise my hand.

“Corinthian.” I state, sounding as if I am quote an epistolary book of the bible.

She nods.

“Well done.” She says pointing to the architecture. Jim is making snide remarks. I am still thinking about Coach Mann. I think about Mr. Reents as Vivian gesticulates with her umbrella towards the Tritons. I remember Tritons from Greek mythology. I think about Mr. Reents and how cool it was for him to go out of his way and compose a letter of recommendation during the last Young Columbus contest. Vivian asks if we have any future architecture majors amongst us? She asks if anyone knows what a pediment is?  I have no clue but I am willing  to learn. Employing her umbrella Vivian again points at the neoclassical tri-force overlooking the blue pond. In the center is a creature she identifies as a Gorgon. I remember Gorgon from mythology as well. I can see Mr. Reents straddling the front of his classroom playing classical music as we take our weekly scantron vocab test, the scent of coffee wafting in the air.

Vivian again elevates her prominent British chin inquiring if can tell her the most conspicuous, well known Gorgon of all time. 

There is a pause. I know the answer but don’t want to seem like a toady

Vivian inquires again if anyone knows the answer, anyone.

Medusa, I say, sans raising my hand. I am two for two.

 

“Well done A plus young man.”

The rest of the big ten is looking at me with a half-smile. Sir Charles adds something about that’s my boy. Baker is looking at me the way Aron Rothman looks at me in Coach Mann’s class. The way Nat has been glaring at me the entire trip.

He looks at me with an upper-lip scowl.

                                                                            ***

Our final peg on the tour of BATH is the Abbey.  Vivian is pointing at it. She talks about Gothic architecture. On the flank of the abbey Vivian points out a frieze. She says if you look closely you can see cherubs clambering up the rungs of the ladder all the way to the top of the Cathedral. 

She says that what we are witnessing is the architects re-enactment of Jacobs ladder.

A collective awe combs over the group. I begin to take pictures. Baker is next to me. He is mumbling something into the direction of his shoes.

"This is amazing," I tell Bake. Bake says bite me. I ask him if doosn't find this fascinating. He says no. 

"I mean shit Bake, what we just saw was almost 3000 years old.  Like way before Christ.  Like our country wasn't even discovered until 500 years ago and our nation wasn't even constituted until another 300 years after that. People have been coming here, worshiping, praying for longer than we can fathom.

Baker is making little hand-puppet no-one-is-paying-attention-to-your-prattle motions with his right hand.

"Yeah Harry. Keep on talking. People have been coming here for 3000 years to shave their balls."

                                                                  ***  

It happens on the way home from Bath. I am looking out the side window of the Coach bus breezing through the English countryside. Everything is green. I see my reflection. I see my glasses on my lap. It is Thursday. I have been in England less than 35 hours. I have known making friends, looked up to, and fallin in love with the strangers on this trip whom I have met only 2 days earlier. Somehow en route back to the hotel, to the Disco tonight it occurs to me, one week from today I will leave this place. One week from today I will board a plane and return back to P-town after a series of aerial hop-scotches. One week from now everything I have wanted 

Somehow in that moment I give birth to a catharsis and realize that in exactly one week time I will be back in the states and everything will be gone.

I can’t help but internally  ponder what will happen at the dance tonight. I can't help but vividly contemplate if somehow if I will meet someone whose blink I will see England.