Clean Dining

There was a period in my life when I started eating in the bathtub.  Not all my meals, mind you.  Just once in a while for fun.  I was in my “needless decadence” phase or something.  I’d always preferred to take long baths instead of showers when the tub was clean.  That some people find them gross is a mystery to me.  Well I found my own way to make them gross.

I was not altogether unfamiliar with eating in the bathroom to begin with, which is why eating in the tub wasn’t, for me at least, the tremendous stretch into the realm of the disgusting people think it is.  I’d grown fond of eating high-fiber cereal while sitting on the toilet in the morning.  The two things just seemed to go together so very appropriately to me.  It wasn’t long before the tub just seemed like a relaxing place to eat.  You come out of the tub not only clean and feeling super but full and satiated.  What’s wrong with that?

Let’s just say that certain plants that people like to smoke that are illegal sometimes make a person take on strange habits.  Yes, I’ll put it like that.

So I started with little things like potato chips and bowls of ice cream and later worked my way up to actual meals.  A Wendy’s cheeseburger here.  Cold, leftover fried chicken there.  Things you eat with your fingers.  I quickly became aware of which foods worked and which ones didn’t.  Bowls of soup worked really well.  A dish of say, peas or noodles was disastrous.  There was always the chance I could drop some food in the water and on some occasions this happened and it was arguably the most depressing thing that could ever happen to a person not involving horrific accidents or life- threatening illnesses.

It went to ridiculous ends.  The most ridiculous was when I cooked a whole dinner and ate it in the tub.  Lamb chops, roasted potatoes and garlic bread.I sat the large plate of food on the base of the tub and had to cut the meat with a knife and fork.  What was going through my mind as I was cooking a whole meal for the express purpose of eating it sitting in water naked and soaking wet?  I’m there in the kitchen, seasoning the meat with Greek seasoning and stuffing it with cloves of garlic, peeling and dicing potatoes and dousing them with olive oil and then I have to draw a bath and disrobe and ready the soap.

Keeping the plate on the narrow bit of the tub ledge while cutting the food was a definite problem.  The less-narrow corner of the ledge would have been more adequate but then I would have had nowhere to put my glass of wine.  I knew the wine was a bad idea, but something had to compliment the flavor of the meat and cleanse the palette.  What am I, a peasant?

Everything was going fine until I knocked the glass over the other side and it broke on the floor.  Right then and there should have been the red flag to end my tub eating days but again-certain plants, etc.

I got walked in on in the worst way.  My college roommate unknowingly came in to find me asleep in the tub.  I had been eating chocolate cake, the worst possible thing to eat in a bathtub, and had placed the paper plate on the corner ledge before hunkering down in the hot water and passing out.  I can only guess that at some point I had involuntarily knocked the plate into the tub where maybe a thousand flaky crumbs turned into little sponges and floated around my body like asteroids near a massive star.

After the cleanup, an explanation to the roommate was in order and I assure you it was no where near as detailed and diplomatic the one you just read. When you become dirtierin the tub than out of it, it’s time to maybe stick to the one function the tub is for.  Or invent some kind of plastic tray-tub caddy.

posted by: Lee Kepraios