There was a swish of bathwater as Curry turned and looked at me quizzically. He fingered his lycra.
"That is true."
There was silence, punctuated only by the nervous dripping of the faucet. I tried to think of something to say.
"So," I said, slowly brushing some bubbles off my chin. "I bet when you got up in the morning you didn't think that we'd end up at this point."
"Oh no," he said wisely, "At this point in our relationship, nothing comes as a suprise to me."
There was silence again.
This was shattered as Carl and Julian sprinted, cackling, into the bathroom and vaulted bodily into the bathtub. Opaque water sloshed liberally over the side and soaked LJ's shoes. Carl is a lithe norwegian with flaxen hair. He was wearing bright pink Y-Fronts. Unfortunately they were already sodden when he entered the bathroom and had entered a phase of semi-opaqueness. It was like one of those magic pictures; stare too closely and an all-too-familiar shape begins to emerge out of the darkness. Fortunately I was unable to stare too closely, even though my eyes were unavoidable drawn in that direction, for Julian chose to leap into my half of the bathtub and I got a faceful of armpit. Julian is kind of tubby and covered in a fuzz of wavy body hair. He skin is all bumpy and weird. His nipples are misshapen and they look like they could fall off at any point. He was wearing boxer shorts; however he is one of those greasy little people who, when you look at them, you can't help but imagine them masturbating furiously into the early hours of the morning to badly-drawn Pokemon porn (Misty getting buggered by a Squirtle or something), and as his briefs were gaping and soaked through I was getting a far too vivid view of his stubby little choad. Chode? Choade? Who knows.
To make matters worse, Julian was holding a foam dart gun. He shot Paul in the head with it. Oh yes, there was a guy called Paul in the bath too. Paul was eating nuts and he dropped some of them into the water as he attempted to dodge the incoming green bullet. He splashed water at Julian, who naturally leapt sideways. I had just extricated my head from his armpit when suddenly I was bodily impelled downwards by the whiplash effect of Julian's meaty side-flab.
For a brief terrible second my head was plunged below the surface of the water. Underneath... oh God, it was horrible. The water, which was scoldingly hot as we were unable to figure out how to get the tap to emit anything but "Ice" or "Magma", was a murky shade of grey, what with the amount of sweat, blood and suncream that we had on ourselves when we first climbed in. Equally, there hadn't been any bubble bath at the hotel, so we'd improvised by squirting two mini-bottles of shampoo, some shower gel, a bit of sun-cream and a bit of deodorant into the throthing water while running it. This potent concotion had, indeed, been fragrant and had resulted in a not-bad level of bubblage, but I discovered - to my horror - that it also doubled as a horrible eye-acid that melted my retinas and scarred my conjuncivas. Thus, my sight was blurred and I think that I am glad that it was; for there were sights under that water that no man can see and live to tell the tale. There were all sorts of things flapping about under there, hairy legs, floating nuts and weird blobs of stuff that I just hope was suncream. I opened my mouth to scream in horror and the water flowed in. It was not pleasant tasting, I'll tell you THAT for free.
With a cry, I burst back into the relative comfort of the surface. The bathtub was only really designed for one -two at a push- so I was forced to slide out between Julian and Curry's slippery torsoes rather like a cow being regurgitated by an anorexic snake. I tried to rub some of the foul gunk out of my eyes, and no sooner had I opened them, then I was dazzled by the flash of a camera clutched by LJ, who was busily taking photographs of our slippery bodies, probably for blackmail purposes. I wanted to cry "What happens at Rowing Camp stays at Rowing Camp!" but I was choked by Julian, who got me in a half-headlock and raped my forehead with his armpit hair. LJ took another photo.
"You look HOT, Phipps".
[Quick note: LJ was not his actual name. His actual name was Thomas. However, at the beginning of the week, we decided to nickname him 'LJ' as he is a Lying Jew. He is a Jew because we think he kind of has a jewish face, and he loves money. He is a liar because he claims that he is not Jewish. He carries this rediculous fallacy on to extraordinary lengths; he eats pork, chomps bacon, observes no Jewish rituals or holidays, isn't circumsised (we asked his weird-looking but LOVELY girlfriend) and worships the Christian god. Basically, he is pretty unjewish. However, on the other hand, he bought Harvest Moon at the shopping centre and was really good at jacking up the prices. We also asked him whether he was for or against the Holocaust and he said "against". Sounds pretty jewish to me, m'lud. Oh man we were so mean to him. It's because we love him. IT WAS ALL IN A SPIRIT OF FUN. We love you Tom. You are probably the best rower in our boat too. xxx]
I thrashed about in the water a bit like a confused fish and decided to cut my losses and flop out of the bath. However due to the fact that I have literally no hair on my legs whatsoever, I was unable to get any purchase on the tub and I slipped deeper into the mire. Oh God, I thought, how had our pleasant shared bath turned so ugly so quickly? Only an hour ago, I suggested to a few pals that we all strip down to swimming trunks and jump into a bathtub together. It would be a good crew-bonding opportunity. And when it had been me, Paul and Curry, it was fine. A bit awkward, but fine. NB: Curry is a person. Not the delicious indian meal. I think that a candlelit ethnic meal for two in a bathtub could be misinterpreted as, you know, just a tad gay. As it was, it definitely wasn't gay. We are ROWERS, manliest of the manly men. We see danger and we laugh at it and then bite off its ears. The fact that we'd spent the past three days listening to Take That and Vanessa Carlton on pretty much a continuous loop had NOTHING to do with it (listen yeah, I made that mix-cd in the belief that we'd listen to it once IRONICALLY and then throw it into the lake and listen to proper music from somebody else's CD collection. How was I to know that nobody else was bringing any fucking CDs to the camp, and thus we HAD to listen to my Take That/Blue/Celine Dion ETC heartbreak mix on loop for ten days? Gah).
And so that's what we did. We ran the bath and we all sank into it. And yes, it was just a little bit awkward. And Curry was wearing yellow lycra. And we were just hangin'. And we were thinking about getting out. AND THEN CARL AND JULIAN RAN IN AND JUMPED ON US.
And it was horrible. We had such a beautiful dream, and it was ruined by Julian's stubbly back. That just goes to show that there is nothing too beautiful that humanity cannot find a way to utterly wreck it. I think that our bathtime has raised some really important and scary questions about mankind's future. It could be analagous to global warming. Because if three grown boys can't have a bath together without it being torn about by the warring conquests of some greasy little pot-belly and his blonde little twat sidekick, what CAN humanity achieve? I think that the apocalypse is coming.
Fortunately, Julian and Carl ran away again when we threatened to pinch their thighs, and LJ got to take some really good photos of us making badass motherfucker poses. Like, I was doin' rock'n'roll hands and Curry was looking damn seductive and Paul was just tonk. Unfortunately when the picture was uploaded onto Facebook it also appeared that he was fondling himself, but that takes NOTHING away from the power of the photograph. And the fact that we managed to achieve those awesome bathtub snaps shows that maybe that might just be hope for humanity after all.
It wasn't gay.
Seriously.
NOT GAY. Why can't three boys bathe together without it being branded gay? Let's ask rowing pin-up and official manliest man around Donald Macdonald what he thinks about communal bathing:
Fuck off. People who live in glass houses, mate. You were showering NAKED with a bunch of men in True Blue! Gay as Moby? What does that even MEAN? You're full of shit, Macdonald! You and your dumb bean-bag face.
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