A Special Season

Today, I performed the sad ritual of taking down the red Ohio State banner hanging in my porch as the last Buckeye basketball team made its exit from the NCAA tournament. I was hoping this year I would be waiting for the men’s team to finish their season but, once again, the Lady Bucks outlasted them, albeit, by less than a day. Its been a special season. The men’s team had an incredible year up to their premature ejection in the Sweet 16 round. It has been so much fun to be able to watch the team of my allegiance and alma mater establish themselves over the entire season as the best team in college basketball that just happened not to do so great in the tournament. This year, thanks to friends, I had a chance to see them play at the Schot five times, allowing me to do my yelling and screaming with thousands of fellow fans. But for the rest of the games, instead of watching it at a friend’s place or being comfortably ensconced on the couch at home with the cats...until they scurry off in fear of my sudden outbursts...I took the opportunity to travel out to my parent’s home in Whitehall to watch the games with Dad.

Actually, I began watching OSU football with Dad when he was hospitalized last fall. After he came home, I continued to watch all the games with him as the sports season changed to basketball. His illness made me realize that I didn’t have much time left to spend with him and the games were the perfect passive activity for us to share. Dad can’t do much more than sit and watch TV these days. Fortunately, he loves the Buckeyes almost as much as I do so we had plenty to talk about. There aren’t many other subjects of conversation to get into with Dad so I’m very thankful we have OSU sports to share. I could tell he enjoyed my company and attention. I felt like his little boy again when he would ask me to sit close to him on the couch while we watched. I chattered a lot and he listened, acknowledging me with his wry smile, a funny face or an occasional whispered comment. He would sit or lie there in his pajamas and I would lightly poke a frail arm, grab a skinny leg or slap a hesitantly offered hand to celebrate a good play. He would ask “Who did that?” and I’d tell him. I never felt more comfortable with him. never more like his friend.

I’ll rehang the OSU banner the week of the next OSU football game. I don’t know whether we will have another one to share but I’ll always have this special season with Dad to remember.

Remembering Ronald Koal & the Trillionaires

I was proud to call myself a hard-core groupie of Ronald Koal and the Trillionaires. My love was not for Ronald personally but for the art and performance of Ronald and his collaborators. They wrote great songs, songs that should have been shared with the World, songs that could have become staples of classic rock radio formats and part of our cultural consciousness. They were as good as anything anyone anywhere was writing and performing in the early 80s. There were strong, memorable melodies and lyrics and the music was fresh and innovative with rhythms that were extremely danceable.The musicians backing Ronald and helping him write were very talented and they just kept getting better as they worked with each other. Even today, echoes of the Trillionaires reverberate in Columbus. My favorite local band, The Randys, features the incomparable guitarist, Matt Newman, and drummer Jimmy Castoe has been omnipresent in the Columbus jazz and rock scene for 30 years. I even remember being pleasantly surprised when Ronald came back after the Trillionaires with some really excellent bands that included Todd Novack and Ed Shuttlesworth playing some great new material.

Ronald’s appearance on the music scene happily coincided with a turning point in my life. I got divorced and graduated from law school in 1980. I had been hanging out with the same Eastside crowd of musicians and friends since high school and I was ready to move on to a new life. I don’t remember how I found Ronald Koal and the Trillionaires but once I did, I was hooked. I discovered a whole new world in Columbus’ music underground. My current family tree of social relationships begins with the people I began meeting around the music of Ronald Koal and the Trillionaires. The dozens of performances that I was lucky enough to witness were the graduate level of my continuing education in rock and roll that began with my garage bands and involvement with the Dave Workman Blues Band.

Those years of going out to hear the Trillionaires were, for me, joyous, golden days of a great girlfriend, great sex, great drugs (714 sopors) and great rock and roll. There was a small group of us who danced to every song, all night long. We knew most of the lyrics which we would sing at the top of our lungs and interpret, as if for the hearing impaired, with practiced hand and arm movements and facial expressions. I experienced so much happiness listening to Ronald Koal and the Trillionaires and I am so thankful to them. I will certainly never forget them and I’m glad to see that others are trying to perpetuate the memory of this high point in the history of the Columbus music scene.

I knew that Ronald was the stereotypical tragic genius bent on self-destruction. My best friend from my old crowd had the same problem. I never got close to Ronald but he knew how much I appreciated him and I knew that down deep underneath the cool rock star image he was a warm and gentle human being. Towards the end when he experienced some legal difficulties, he called on my expertise to help him out. It was pretty simple, I didn’t do much but he appreciated it enough to make me a laminated card that I have carried in my wallet ever since. Yes, it is sad that Ronald ended his life and who knows what he might have accomplished if he had survived the difficult turns of fate that came his way. Who knows what happiness he may have been able to find for himself. He may not have known what he was he was doing when he pulled that trigger under the influence of those little yellow pills but I suspect that maybe he knew that he had created something truly wonderful and beautiful during his life but that maybe he believed he never would again. I’m going to respect his decision to not live in a world where he might finally be arriving at Destination Zero. Hopefully, the rest of us can keep alive the memory that he once was Living For Something.

What Is Up With Mark?

A Hole In One

I’ve never been into making New Years resolutions and actually trying to keep them but this year when someone asked me “What’s your New Years resolution?” I came up with a real one. “I resolve to resolve my relationship with The Girlfriend, one way or the other.” I hadn’t seen her for three years. That’s not a good sign. It wasn’t as if one of us was away at war. Hell, soldiers get leave to come home occasionally. I assume maximum security prisoners get to have visits where they can make eye contact through thick plexiglas. They don’t even send astronauts or cosmonauts up in space that long. No, there aren’t many good explanations for not seeing someone you’re in love with for three years especially if you’re both living in the same country that has a system of highways and regular air flights.

And yet, such was the case with The Girlfriend and I. So, what was my explanation? For three years, she had kept me at bay by making repeated promises to come home from the place in which she was working, even making plane reservations at times. I wasn’t invited to come down to see her.  The nature of her work was so secret, I couldn’t be entrusted with her address, only a post office box. She insisted that she be the one to make the trip because she wanted to see our cats. But every time, just as she was about to leave, something prevented her from coming. I never kept count but I’m sure that happened over a dozen times. Occasionally, I was given a reason that seemed plausible like a health problem but usually it was just generically related to her work which could never be explained in detail. Each time, I would go around and sheepishly tell people “I know you think I’m crazy but this time I really think she’s coming.” It worked out well for inspiring me to do those extra-effort “company’s coming” cleanings that a house needs occasionally.

My faith in our relationship was never completely shattered by the repeated blows of disappointment because, when she would find time to call me, she made me feel like nothing had changed between us. Her voice was like an aural narcotic, washing my brain in a calming euphoric glow, releasing memories of the comfort I’d felt during the years we spent living together, the days when I felt like I was sitting on top of the world. As the calls became less and less frequent, even an email or a text message could trigger the endorphins. These regular reversals of paranoia led me to believe and often remind myself that when it comes to figuring out what she is thinking, I’m always wrong. No matter how high the evidence was stacked or how indefensible her failures to come home, communicate or provide explanations seemed to be, I just assumed it had to be my failure to understand her and have faith in her. This interminable rollercaoster ride took its toll. I was just hanging on by a thread and I was ready to fall but I couldn’t be the one to cut it because I was ready to climb back up if she still wanted me. I had to hear it from her. I told her I was a big boy and I could take it but she never threw the punch.

Recently, the signs had gotten worse. After begging her not to let three years go by before we saw each other, she informed me by text that she had cancelled her flight to come home for Christmas for the second year in a row. Additional texts outlined additional cancellations but never any explanations. Weeks went by with nothing but a text here and there asking if I was snowed in or claiming she’d call later but never doing so. Then the texts stopped and after receiving no calls for 2 months, I looked at my calendar, saw a week with nothing scheduled and decided to go find her. I’d planned on doing that the year before but she talked me out of it before I had a chance. I had put together some clues to her whereabouts that allowed me to triangulate an area with a beach she might frequent. I spent quite a bit of time visiting it on Google Earth and imagining how I might find her. When the call never came that might dissuade me, the morning of departure arrived and the momentum of my fantasy voyage launched the black BMW Loveboat down the road.

I realized that I might be doing something really stupid. Driving a thousand miles to visit somebody who doesn’t know you are coming, who may not want you to come, whose address you don’t know, who may have travelled out of town herself, who may or may not be visiting a certain beach at any particular time is a plan that doesn’t seem well thought out. I didn’t want to warn her I was coming because I seriously thought she might hide. The success of my plan was definitely a long-shot. NASA engineers could at least calculate where the moon was supposed to be once the lunar lander arrived. I was heaving a basketball a thousand miles and hoping it would swish through the net. It was like stepping up to the tee and swinging for a hole in one.

On the drive down, I had time to think about why I was making this quixotic journey. Winter was coming back to Columbus after a brief respite and my last escape had been Christmas and New Years 2007 in Key West. But I wasn’t going because I needed a vacation. I just needed a simple answer to a simple question and I felt like the only way I could force her to answer me was by holding her there with my eyes so she could see the tortured soul that needed to be comforted or released. The separation was killing me softly and silently, like being smothered by your lover’s pillow. I needed to momentarily defeat the distance and the silence by pushing back the miles, breaking through the sound barrier and gasping for just enough of a breath to ask her if she still wanted to be with me. I wasn’t hoping to accomplish any more than that and was prepared to make a quick obsequious exit, figuring the chances of her giving me the answer I wanted to hear were slim. Yet I continued to bet against myself and fantasize about a sweet reunion.

I wasn’t looking forward to the long drive but I soon remembered how pleasant a road trip can be despite the aching neck and sore butt. The miles and the hours flew by as I entertained myself. In between discs of David Sedaris reading “When You Are Engulfed In Flames”, the new Gregg Allman was perfect traveling music and it was good to get reacquainted with Tom Waits, Gorillaz and Emmy Lou Harris who contributed the inevitable song that seemed to be written for the occasion. “One of these days I’m going to take that ride/Though there may be nothing on the other side”. As I crossed into the South, I smelled the steamy broth of life cooking outside, warming the inside of my nose and causing me to radiate under my sweatshirt.

I planned to spend the night with my cousin in Goosecreek, S.C. I exited the freeway just as night fell and my fear of having trouble following the directions to her condo in the dark turned out to be well-founded as I drove back and forth looking for a hidden street sign and discovered I hadn’t been given her correct phone number. After finally figuring it out and getting some sleep, I got back on the road in the dark at 5 AM. As the daylight returned, I felt a strange hopeful sensation when I turned off my headlights. I arrived at the hotel just in time to get ready to watch the Buckeye basketball game. Their defeat, which I took to be a bad omen, didn’t dampen my excitement and enthusiasm for the job ahead as I immediately headed out to do some preliminary reconnaissance of the target area.

I confidently navigated through the area I had often visited on maps and in satellite photos, parked in the public lot and took the path to the beach as imagination became reality. On the bridge, dappled with patches of sunlight between the shadows of the trees and bushes, it occurred to me that she probably walked through this intimate wooden space many times and now I was moving through her lingering presence. I emerged and was drawn to turn north where it seemed less populated. It was a beautiful warm day and the beach was full of people near the entrance. Even though I didn’t plan to start looking for her until the early morning when I imagined she would most likely be there, I soon realized that I was going to be unable to resist looking for her in the face and body of every woman I saw there.

I reached the smooth wet sand of the shore that gave ever-so-slightly to the impact of my bare feet. After strolling a short distance with my eyes wandering between the waves and the beach population, I noticed the translucent heart-shaped water balloons with purple stitching and tassels in my path. Remembering the warning on the chalkboard at the entrance about the presence of man o‘ wars, I wondered how many I had just missed stepping on. Then I saw a woman at the top of a dune, lying on her stomach and a blanket wearing a floppy hat, big sunglasses and an orange dress. I couldn’t get a good look at her face but I noticed her hair was the right color and the body-type was close. I wondered how many times I would see women in the next few days that would look like possibilities. I didn’t want to appear to be too obvious about checking her out so I decided to walk a little further and then double-back to get a better view of her. On my way back, I saw her running at me with an open-mouthed smile.

I’d been on the beach for 10 minutes. She had noticed me walking past her and wondered so she kept an eye on me. When I turned around, she saw the scarlet and grey “The Ohio State University” game day tee-shirt and suddenly I was telescoped into her world. It was unusual for her to be there. She hadn’t been to the beach much. Even then, she was working. That window of a couple hours on Sunday turned out to be the only chance I would have had to find her there. We talked easily and comfortably for about an hour. I was disappointed when she mentioned that I couldn’t come to her place which had to remain a business secret but she did ask how long I could stay and when I said all week she suggested I just remain at the reasonably-priced hotel I had chosen.

She said she would have to leave in a little bit to finish up her work but that she could be back around 7. I was just glad that I’d found her so quickly and that we had so much time to spend together. I saved the question I had travelled so far to ask for later. She came back after just a couple minutes to tell me to watch the moonrise which should occur around the time she returned, then left again. I was brimming over with happiness, luxuriating in my good fortune. I didn’t need to walk to the bar down the beach to get a beer. I was exactly where I wanted to be, laying on her plush red towel on top of a pretty blue and white bed sheet, watching the waves breaking and the people walking. The sky began to darken and the stars shyly revealed their whereabouts. As night fell and I was left alone on a deserted beach, the moon and The Girlfriend were no where to be found. I texted her “Nothing but stars”. She called and said a business emergency came up and we wouldn’t be able to get together that night. I quietly conveyed my disappointment and gathered up my stuff as best I could for the long slog through the sand, but the blindly-constructed arrangement of objects fell apart at the entrance to the bridge.

A hole in one can be deceptive. There might be some skill involved in getting the shot close but its luck that guides that little ball into the cup. Making one gives you reason to celebrate for a moment but its not as if you can just stand there and admire it until night falls and everybody’s gone. You’ve got to move on to the next hole where odds are you’ll be lucky just to shoot par.

What Is Up With Mark?

I rationalized that I haven’t written anything lately because all my creative energy has been spent on the production of Christmas cards and Valentines since the day after Thanksgiving. Well, I made it through another two months of monkish devotion to small repetitive motions and once again I am left to consider what I have wrought. The Christmas cards are usually safe for holiday consumption although the naked Santa in my take-off on the Birth of Venus may have been an exception. I want receiving one to be like unwrapping a present that makes you say “Wow!”. This year, the little monkey climbing up the tree decorated with fruit probably didn’t elicit much more than a smile. For the valentines, I want the experience of image and poetry to be passionate and disturbing. I imagine that people probably don’t have a hard time appreciating and maybe even being moved by my expressions of passion but I worry about how they react to the dark aspects of my art for a holiday that is meant to celebrate romance. A few years ago, the heart that was skewered on a pitchfork burning in Hell was at least full of warm colors and accompanied by an unrepentant lusty verse. This year, the stark simplicity of a heart behind jail bars did not do much to alleviate the poem’s painful irony about a lover who cannot let go of someone he has no power over, thus imprisoning himself. I can only hope that my recipients will feel the loving care I tried to put into the execution of the image and the abstract serenity in the symmetrical equilibrium of the delicately pale gray bars and perfectly centered heart looking out at a sunny day and realize that I am celebrating the indomitable power of love that lights the darkness.

            With that said, I would like to reprise from last year’s Valentines Day blog, the reading of Oscar Wilde’s letter written in prison to his lover. Happy Valentines Day and may it be a passionate one for you.

"My sweet rose, my delicate flower, my lily of lilies, it is perhaps in prison that I am going to test the power of love. I am going to see if I cannot make the bitter warders sweet by the intensity of the love I bear you. I have had moments when I thought it would be wise to separate. Ah! Moments of weakness and madness! Now I see that would have mutilated my life, ruined my art, broken the musical chords which make a perfect soul. Even covered with mud I shall praise you, from the deepest abysses I shall cry to you. In my solitude you will be with me. I am determined not to revolt but to accept every outrage through devotion to love, to let my body be dishonored so long as my soul may always keep the image of you. From your silken hair to your delicate feet you are perfection to me. Pleasure hides love from us, but pain reveals it in its essence. O dearest of created things, if someone wounded by silence and solitude comes to you, dishonored, a laughing-stock, Oh! You can close his wounds by touching them and restore his soul which unhappiness had for a moment smothered. Nothing will be difficult for you then, and remember, it is that hope which makes me live, and that hope alone. What wisdom is to the philosopher, what God is to his saint, you are to me. To keep you in my soul, such is the goal of this pain which men call life. O my love, you whom I cherish above all things, white narcissus in an unmown field, think of the burden which falls to you, a burden which love alone can make light. ... I love you, I love you, my heart is a rose which your love has brought to bloom, my life is a desert fanned by the delicious breeze of your breath, and whose cool spring are your eyes; the imprint of your little feet makes valleys of shade for me, the odour of your hair is like myrrh, and wherever you go you exhale the perfumes of the cassia tree.

"Love me always, love me always. You have been the supreme, the perfect love of my life; there can be no other..." Oscar Wilde

What Is Up With Mark?

 Just A Little Monkey

On an unusually warm and bright November afternoon, I took the day off and drove down to pick up Raad and his mother at their outpost in the backwoods of Athens County. Of course, when you take an infant anywhere, its like moving day. So while she was loading up my car with various baby paraphernalia and provisions for the weekend, it was my job to keep the little one happy. These days, happy means anything that doesn’t involve the abject despair of contorted, red-faced wailing. Its really quite amazing the way he can instantaneously metamorphosize from calm, phlegmatic indifference into a cataclysmic eruption of anguish and suffering without the slightest change of observable circumstance. There must be a fine line in a baby’s mind between existential terror and oblivious tranquility. Locked in a marathon dance with a schizophrenic partner, the adult is continually trying out moves to keep swinging the child back from the abyss until victoriously delivered across the finish line to angelic slumbers. When sucking on something no longer suffices, the most successful choreography involves embracing the child while orbiting the hallways of your home, or perambulating outdoors, moving with a rhythmic gait that lightly jostles your fellow traveler. This day, we found ourselves deep in the untamed fields of a peaceful countryside, following wildlife paths through a maze of tall grasses, adhesive weeds and thorny branches. I accompanied the percussive crunch of my footsteps on the dry hay with the mesmerizing repetition of a simple song that seemed to spontaneously combust from a desire to soothe a fragile temperament, sparked by the joy of sharing a sunny, intimate moment with an innocent perched in my arms.

You’re just a little monkey
You’re just a little monkey
You’re just a little monkey climbing up a tree
You’re just a little monkey
You’re just a little monkey
You’re just a little monkey climbing up a tree

mark

What Is Up With Mark?

I Didn’t Think I Had It In Me

Today was Dad’s birthday. So was yesterday. I always enjoy telling the story about when he was applying for social security he had to find his birth certificate, at which point he discovered that not only had he been celebrating his birthday a day late for 65 years, it turned out his name was actually Elliot not Elmer. This was blamed on his mother’s faulty memory. As unfortunate as the mix-up in names might have been, he kept Elmer but we did start marking his birthday on the corrected date. This annual occasion also marks the end of my summer vacation from card making. I tried to slip by one year without making a birthday card for Dad figuring he really didn’t care and I incurred the withering wrath of Mom. Coming up with original ideas to put in a birthday card for my parents year after year is one of my toughest assignments. This year there was inspiration in the events of his life but it wasn’t happy.

He was hospitalized recently with pneumonia and spent a lot of time in intensive care. He’s been through hospitalizations before but this one left him a frail shell of his former self so he transferred to the Wexner Heritage Village for rehabilitation therapy. He suddenly seemed to age about 10 years and for the first time, I saw him as a helpless old person. Our large family rallied around him and his room looked like Grand Central Station at times. At his meals, there are usually at least two people there watching and helping him eat. All the attention doesn’t seem to do much for his spirits. He feels like he is wasting away and he has little appetite for the effort required to make it through another day of indignities. When I tried to find words of wisdom to give him to put this final period of his life in a serene perspective, the best I could come up with were the typical platitudes about being thankful for the simple things like the love of his family.

I attempted to transpose that cliche through my idiosyncratic imagination in the birthday card with a childlike drawing of one large daisy on the face of the card headed by the caption “When you get to be 89” and continuing on the inside with “All the people you helped  Get to lend you a hand.” illustrated by a group of hands each grasping the stem of their own daisy. Maybe that was a little too metaphoric for Dad. At the birthday party, when I gave it to him, he looked at it for a long time and his face slowly twisted into a painful smile that either indicated he was emotionally moved or hopelessly confused. He simply said “Thanks Mark.’ in his high-pitched, weak voice and I apologized for making it so weird.

Mom brought a beautifully decorated chocolate cake and I stuck two candles in it. Dad’s old sense of humor surfaced in a proud smile when he said there wasn’t any way he could blow them out and that he would just have to throw his cup of water on them. I lit the candles, we sang “Happy Birthday” and I pushed the cake near him to encourage him to  give the candles a try. Despite his previous protestation, he took a shallow breath, leaned into it and blew. I was still hovering over the cake and surreptitiously puffed just enough to make sure they went out. He happily exclaimed, “I didn’t think I had it in me”.

mark

What Is Up With Mark?

They say “The best things in life are free.”. These days, I’m searching for the best things in life when it comes to entertainment. One night last weekend, I uncovered a treasure trove of cheap thrills. In particular, I felt that three experiences were connected by that night like the stars decorating Orion’s belt. As might be expected from this heterosexual astronomer, they all involved beautiful women. The beauty of the jewels in this tiara, however, ranged in quality from superficially brilliant to violently dark to disturbingly convoluted.

... are free

I learned about the band Gram Rabbit when I reviewed their latest CD for Curt Scheiber’s Invisible Hits radio program. When Curt gives me a batch to listen to, there always seems to be one that ends up growing on me and this was the one that stayed in my car’s CD player for repeated rotation. Their inclusion was in conjunction with  an invite-only performance coming up at Rumba to which I wrangled an invitation. It was my understanding that a promoter from Cleveland arranged to have a band that he really liked do a free show for his friends at Rumba. Gram Rabbit is from Joshua Tree/L.A. and it was evident why they were known as one of the best from that area. The songs were solid rockers with great vocals and interesting instrumentation. Lead-singer, Jesika von Rabbit was lovely in a strategically revealing black ensemble that contrasted nicely with her shining platinum hair adorned with a spray of black mesh and a miniature top hat attached at a jaunty angle. Ms. Rabbit’s voice had that pure childlike quality that reminded me of another L.A. rocker, Martha Davis of The Motels. Their fan cult known as “The Royal Order of the Rabbits” were identifiable by their bunny ear head gear. The band was throwing the furry white ears out into the audience and I considered competing for a pair because I knew I was heading for a Halloween party later but decided that would be a feeble excuse for a costume. I thanked the generous host for bringing such a great band to my attention and headed out for the party.

Usually, I’m always game for dressing up. I love do-it-yourself costumes. I’ve created a great Hunchback of Notre Dame and a zombie with an axe in my head that I can always use. And I’m known to put on a dress and fishnets at the drop of a hat. However, besides the fact that I wasn’t sure I would have time to stop by the party, Halloween was over a week away so I didn’t feel the inspiration to even don a frock. I wished I had because it was embarrassing to be dressed so uncreatively at a party with so many good costumes. One lovely young woman in particular riveted my attention with a very sexy outfit consisting of not much more than a few scanty items of lingerie and some big punk boots. This annual party always has great dance music and lots of dancers so when my favorite cut from the Plastic Beach CD came on and I found myself partnered up with the attractive punk tart, I was inspired to dance with as much zeal and creative flourish as I could. Later, I noticed that she was engaged in what seemed to be innocent sport with a guy dressed up in a tunic and boxing gloves as the Fighting Nun puppet. However, it soon became apparent that the Fighting Nun may have played a little too rough with his not-so-delicate opponent. She started throwing some serious punches and roundhouse kicks with those big boots. He might have been bravely laughing off these assaults as she forced him out the front door but the deadly serious look on her face made it clear that she had just furiously unleashed a lot of pent up anger. Now, that was scary and I took it as sign that it was time to move on to the next event.

The after-hours party was a good one full of people who had already been partying long and hard. There was a beautiful baby grand piano there for me to play. I did a slow, haunting instrumental version of my wedding song and then joined in on some jamming when others picked up guitars and percussion. Eventually, the crowd thinned out leaving a group of us in the hot tub. I’ve had one at my house for years so I’ve seen my share of hot bubbly fun but this was cinematic. I sat back and watched some really beautiful women take advantage of each other in what was apparently quite a mutually satisfying manner. Some of their male friends joined in but since I had just met most of them, I kept a respectful distance. Even so, the feet of one of the busy young ladies happened to press up against my foot and I pushed back like a high school gym class partner doing isometric exercises. Without any sign of acknowledgement, she obviously had decided to incorporate the forceful resistance she was getting from me into the overall effort in which she was engaged because we held the stalemate for quite a while and even came back to it later. It reminded me of how I would use my hand to push back against baby Raad’s leg kicks in a primitive effort to play a game with him. That seemed like quite a perverse thought at the time but I suppose in the context of the surrounding activity, it was relatively innocent. Having had more than enough voyeuristic pleasure for the evening, I left my sybaritic tubmates to their aquatic devices as the morning dawned.

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