“Bathtubs have this aura of latent possibility about them, not like showers.” This sets the tone for the entire mesmerizing story. Tell me about the pacing of this story. It had a tranquility, yet build up of tension throughout that called to mind the buoyancy of the tub experience. And I love how the story is framed with the narrator’s present day experience with his sensual bathtub love.

 

Yes, I think "floating" is the key to the pace and the tone. The memory of this experience floats in its own tub in the narrator's mind, has always been floating there since it happened. Most of the time it is largely submerged. Every now and then it bobs to the surface and creates ripples.

 

There was a real Mike Phillips and his mom, and all those rubber monsters were dear treasured friends of mine. Mike did not, however, have a sister, nor do I remember having an experience like this. The description in the first paragraph of the slow immersion in extremely hot water is something I do occasionally, have done for many years, when I really feel the need to relax. I have also sometimes found it an effective way to break a fever.

 

 

 

In the BDSM community, it's a bit of a truism that the submissive is actually the person in control. They take no action but they hold the power, the power at any point to call the action to a halt. By not calling a halt, they are to a certain extent creating what happens. I think this scenario is enacted every day in all our lives, probably more often than any of us realize. If Louise is really awake, that's pretty clearly what is going on here. The kid's innate understanding of this may be simply because at his age he is used to someone else always having the power and being in control. What's this kid's name, anyway?

 

I have a degree in film production, but I rarely if ever write a story with film in mind. I do see things clearly in my head, and try to describe what I see. As often as not my short stories start with the first sentence, something that enters my head which I write down with no clear notion where it is going to lead. At least one of my novels, Miss Shellagh's Miniskirt, began the same way. I followed the lead of the opening sentence and by the end of the second paragraph all the basic blocks had been laid down for the entire novel. Another novel began as a list of funny character names. A recent short story (Mexico Down By Jack's, which I'll probably be sending you soon) began as a snatch of song, music and lyrics, that I dreamed one morning and woke up with in my head. I am not what you'd call a good planner. I start writing, things work or they don't. I finish or I give up. Frequently, I start without knowing what I'm doing and things fall into place along the way so, that by the end, it looks like I had it planned out all along. It's pretty intuitive.

The book I'm reading at this very moment is The Doll, a collection of "lost" short stories by Daphne Du Maurier. I am surprised (as well as somewhat pleased) to discover that, like me, she apparently was unable to write anything that was not in some way about sex.

Your non-fiction editor, Robert Clark Young, will kill me if I don't credit him. We were in the U.C. Davis Graduate Writing Program together, and he is responsible for everything good about my prose. All the bad stuff is where I didn't listen to him.

 

Experimenting with more short fiction, and on-again-off-again trying to find my way through Being Patty's Dad, the sequel to my 2007 novel Miss Shellagh's Miniskirt. I still don't know if I'm going to succeed, but I don't think I've ever written this much of a book without finishing it. Except maybe for Beds At Home, which Bob Young and the rest of the U.C. Davis workshop ripped to shreds with every new chapter until I abandoned it in despair. Oops, wandering off-topic here …

Thank you so much, Scott, for sending Connotation Press some of your pure brilliance of the sexual awakening kind! I expect that many folk will experience the bath in a more enterprising way after reading this memorable piece!