The Banya

“What pictures flash in your mind when you hear something about the public baths? Probable like most people, not very nice, do not have nothing to do with cleanliness, hygiene and enjoyable pastime. But it’s all superstition, friends. Currently, public baths, for example, up to 20 people, for the comfort of not much different from private ones… We are waiting for you to look in the Russian bath!”

-From www.banya-lefortovo.ru (translated by Google)

When my roommate John Mark and I began preparing to travel to Russia, we knew a visit to a banya would be in order. In our research we had read accounts of the renowned Hermitage Museum and the Mariinsky Ballet, but it seemed to us that nothing would display this country’s soul better than a steamy room full of naked old guys beating themselves with birch branches.

For the uninitiated reader, a banya is similar to a sauna, differing only in its steam, which is wet rather than dry. For centuries, Russians have visited banyas to wash, recover from illness, and enjoy community. As one Moscow banya claims: “In the life of a Russian man, the tradition of the washing bath holds a special place… banyas in Moscow bring the magical health benefits.”

Choosing the right banya was no easy matter. Like most tourists, John Mark and I were eager to escape other tourists. With this in mind, we bypassed any banya website written in English. Instead, we found websites made for Russians, and we relied on Google for a translation. Which is always a good idea.

The first website we found offered various banya experiences, including but not limited to the following:

-Russian bath on the 1^st person: 600 rubles, at one o’clock

-Starorussky massage – a broom in the steam room – 1 person (brooms not included): 1000  rubles

-Hovering in the steam room of honey – 1 person (honey is not included): 650 rubles

The banya also offered a service called “massage and the guy.” Massage and the guy was available for “honey massage the belly,” “lymphatic drainage massage,” and “massage cervical zony,” none of which sounded remotely appealing (or possible, considering my lack of a cervical zony). And although hovering in the steam room of honey piqued my interest—I’m only human—I worried this one was for pros only.

So we kept looking. After scrolling through pages of banya websites, we found Coachman’s Banya and decided it was the one. According to their website, “the walls of [their] baths remember Lenin, Dostoevsky, and Mussorgsky.” This would seem to go against our aim to avoid tourist traps, but the entry price of 150 Rubles ($2.17 USD) gave us hope that this banya was a local joint.

Owing either to a busy schedule or to sub-conscious trepidation, we waited to visit Coachman’s until our last day in Russia. Inside the poorly-marked building, a woman on the first floor sent us up three flights of stairs to the men’s banya. Walking through the door, we expected to find a lobby where we could pay. Instead, we’d entered directly into a dank locker room filled with wrinkled men in various stages of nudity. Inside a booth at one end of the room sat a dour man who would take our money.

When we travel, John Mark and I try to keep a low profile. We talk in low tones and try not to act blatantly American. I walked to the booth and blew my cover right away.

“One—um—one banya, please.”

I gave my rubles to the man, and he returned a few coins change. John Mark offered his credit card, but the man wouldn’t allow it. John Mark left to find an ATM, and I motioned to the man that I would return in a few minutes, but the man wanted me to take my money back first, an awkward process involving my counting back to him the change he had given earlier. John Mark and I descended the three flights of stairs, found an ATM several blocks away, and returned fifteen minutes later. So much for a low profile.

We found a locker for our clothes and walked into an adjoining room to shower. The room was lousy with naked men. I’d visited the Hermitage museum the day before, where I’d beheld the beauty of the human form in myriad paintings and statues. I’d seen men so elegant they resembled women, women so resplendent they looked like angels. Collarbones burst forth into marble wings.

The banya welcomed me back to Earth. No painting had depicted such lumps and sags; no marble bellies had grown so large as to fold into themselves. These men resembled nothing so much as spuds, which, if forgotten in a cool, dark place, might soon sprout roots. Looking at them and trying not to look at them, I thought, this is what I will look like in thirty years.

Not that my body is anything sculpture-worthy. After comparing myself to human perfection in gilded halls, there was a part of me that felt relieved to be back among my fellow unshapely men.

I showered and walked to a heavy wooden door in the back. This was it. I opened the door to an explosion of steam and walked in. My lungs seized and my eyes stung, and I stumbled toward a place to sit in the darkness. Several men shouted crossly at me, and I realized I had left the door open. I trotted to the door and closed it, trying not to laugh hysterically—my reflex response to awkwardness.

I sat. The room resounded with the sound of men beating themselves. I had read about the use of the venik, a bundle of birch branches soaked in water and used to beat oneself. Ostensibly, the practice draws blood to the surface of the skin and opens the pores. Somehow I had not imagined the beating to be so loud, so heartily administered, or to release such a pleasant aroma. The men employed the venik with gusto, boisterously whacking their arms, their chests, their thighs. I could feel the spray of their branches on my skin. They grunted and breathed; they loosed throaty yelps. It was hard to imagine women doing the same, only one floor above.

For me, there was something inherently masculine in the Russian banya. How many Russian men I had passed on the street, looking formidable and impassive. Here I saw these same men with guards dropped. Whatever burdens they carried through life, whatever bulwarks they raised to steel themselves, were here abandoned. Here they were only men. I wondered if they knew I was American.

John Mark sat beside me, and we sat and sweated in silence. Somehow, after anticipating the banya for several months, we had at the last moment forgotten to buy our venik. In the shower room, I’d noted rows of benches with buckets holding birch clusters. I considered taking one at random, but feared being confronted by a burly, nude man deprived of his birch. (Come back, birches!)

A man behind us lay down full length across a bench and enjoyed the beating of two friends on his back, buttocks, and legs. He seemed to enjoy it. As one banya’s website describes so poetically, “And what an unforgettable feeling of lightness and purity will give you an effective use of a broom experienced master!”

I wondered what a banya would look like in America, but I couldn’t imagine it. There is something too self-conscious in the American man, too well-groomed. Glancing discreetly at the other men in the room, at their slack, contented faces, I felt our key difference: None of them were thinking.

The heat rose. Or maybe it simply maintained its sweltering pitch. My body temperature climbed until sweat pattered on the floorboards between my feet. I couldn’t help thinking of an oven, and of poultry that I’d made edible in heat not much more than this. I finally fled the room and found the cold water tank in the shower room. I am squeamish about cold water, and also about tanks where hundreds of sweaty men have bathed, but none of that mattered as I climbed the ladder and dropped into cool, refreshing water. My muscles chilled. My whole body relaxed.

I was ready for another round.

At the door to the banya I found a trashcan of discarded birch clusters and stared into it enviously. Was I desperate enough to use another man’s venik? I grabbed the one on top and examined it, reevaluating my hygienic spectrum. These branches certainly weren’t “Used—like new.” The leaves were withered and still damp; worse, I had witnessed the most recent departure and could give their former owner a face—along with a belly and jocular buttocks.

I didn’t care. I hurried into the banya, climbed a platform where the heat was greatest, and commenced the beating. The leaves stung, and their bite only grew as the air baked them. My skin burned. I lowered my head and breathed deeply, letting my thoughts slow to a halt. John Mark came in from a dip in the tank, and he leaned forward so I could hit his back with the branches. I leaned forward while he returned the favor. All around, men were enjoying the “magical health benefits” of the sauna, and I too could feel the magic. Bowed and naked, sitting blankly in the primal heat, I felt like a man.

Crop Signs

The water rose to my chin, and splashes got into my mouth. I was quivering in the frozen water. The sound was deafening. “Let’s get out of here,” I gurgled… Swimming against the sub-zero current that was trying to bring me back into the bus was complicated.

----

This is an excerpt from my first novel, The Captives. I wrote it in Junior High. The storyline is so convoluted that it’s hard to give a synopsis, but here goes:

On his birthday, a Christian teen named David is on his way to school when his bus crashes into a river. All his friends drown, but David escapes only to be taken CAPTIVE by a ruthless gang which is touring the country kidnapping Christian teens and martyring them. He falls in love with a fellow Christian prisoner, Megan, and together they lead a revolt against the terrorist gang.

Obviously, The Captives is a literary masterpiece. I can’t resist offering a few more of my favorite quotes:

----

What I saw made a shower of fear grip me and shred me to pieces.

----

I didn’t want to stand there anymore—and I had gained a little bit of strength—so I walked towards the road slowly, mourning the loss of my friends… Some birthday this was turning out to be!

----

“Were there any survivors?” My mom asked it, hoping for a glimmer of hope.

“No.” Mom’s tears flowed like the unstoppable river that had drowned so many people earlier that day.

----

The whole hallway echoed with cheers after Joe left. “Man, you were good!” “Yeah, you told him!” “I can’t believe you said that about his breathe!” “Too bad you have to die on a cross.” “I hope that you escape again and rescue us all!”

I yelled over the roar, “Thank you! But it wasn’t just me. It was God who gave me the courage.”

The applause thickened. “You’re too modest, Mike!” “I hope that your God saves you!”

                “I hope so too!”

----

I stopped working on The Captives around page 100. I can’t remember why, but I think it had something to do with how excited I was for my new project, The Warrior’s Heart. Here’s a brief synopsis:

A Christian teen named David is on his way to Argentina for a missions trip when his plane crashes, and he alone escapes by parachute to a mysterious island, only to be taken hostage by a ruthless band of natives. He falls in love with a girl named Megan, and together they hike through the mountains, escape an avalanche and keep warm in a frozen canyon by hugging through the night. Then they kill a dragon and save everyone.

I wrote The Warrior’s Heart for several years in high school, rushing to the theaters every December among a host of other teenage novelists who found inspiration in The Lord of the Rings.

However, I never completed The Warrior’s Heart. I stopped around page 100. I’m not exactly sure what happened. I remember reading through the chapters I had written and noticing their enormous shortcomings. I remember despairing of ever being a real author, and consoling myself by starting a new novel: The Five Fates.

I worked on The Five Fates for a couple years, wrote about 100 pages, and stopped.

Exactly a year ago, I started The Red Road. This week, I passed page 100. I can feel the chapters dragging behind me, slowing my momentum. The past few weeks of writing have been hard. Reading backwards, I am not proud of everything I’ve written. Looking forward, I’m not confident I can write anything better. Maybe it would be best just to start from scratch with a new story, a better story.

In some ways, writing has only gotten harder as I’ve grown older. I’m not the Junior High student writing about dragons anymore. Each year that passes adds greater stakes to dreams like these.

I’ve talked to military kids who grew up moving every two years. When they finally decide to stay in one place for good, a restlessness assaults them at the two-year mark. They experience an impulse for flight as strong as that of migratory birds, an impulse which seems wrong to resist. For them, breaking the two-year cycle requires a feat of perseverance, a breaking of wrong instinct.

I think this is common to all of us. Who knows what wrong instincts we are all harboring in our bellies, unbeknownst to others and perhaps even to ourselves? Only you can know what secret, often nonsensical, urges you must work against.

For my part, I must break the 100-page barrier (among many other, more sinister, impulses in my life). Communicating how I feel is half the battle. As any verbal processor knows, there’s great significance in winding your way toward the perfect words. Some conversations I’ll spend hours processing through the same vague impressions, turning over the same words again and again until I’ve come by that perfect, distilled image or phrase. When I find it, I may repeat the phrase for days or even weeks, trying to remember which friends I’ve shared it with so the revelation doesn’t seem rehearsed when I process it for the tenth time.

Finding a good phrase is like discovering a diagnosis for your sickness. These muscle pains, fevers, and wheezing cough aren’t just random symptoms anymore: they have a proper name.

There are many truisms we writers use to encourage ourselves. One of the most famous (and one that’s helped me from time to time) goes roughly like this:

Writing is like driving at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole journey that way.

I recently stumbled across a new metaphor that makes sense of how I feel today as I sit down to write:

Writing is like making crop circles without a ladder.

I start the day where I left off, tracing the previous day’s curve until I arrive at a dead end of corn. Then I start clipping away, projecting from the previous day’s trajectory to guess today’s. Some days I take a machete with me and cut stalks in wide swaths. Other days I bend them with tiny scissors, troubling over each stalk.

In the beginning I had a clear picture in my mind of what I wanted this crop sign to look like. But it’s been a year, and the picture is getting blurry. I don’t have a helicopter or plane, and even when I drag my stepping stool into the middle of the field, it doesn’t afford much perspective. The stalks rise over my head. I try to measure out the distance between lines and circles, but there’s no way of knowing whether it’ll look right from the sky. I’m lost in my own corn maze with a pair of scissors.

So there’s my picture, my phrase. It doesn’t solve my problems, because novels can’t be solved, only made. But at least I have a few words for why this is so hard. Like David from The Captives and The Warrior's Heart, I am committed to surviving, slaying my dragons, and—most importantly—romancing a girl named Megan.*

*The name Megan, like the dragons I'm slaying, is metaphorical. Just in case you were wondering.

Becoming Korean Part 4: Things You Don't Say to a Korean Momma

Never tell a Korean momma that you don’t feel good.

I walked into the Kim’s house last night with a sore throat and stuffy nose. When Joy, the mother of the house, asked how I was, I told her I was good but feeling a little sick.

Five seconds later she was pouring me a thick tan smoothie from the fridge. “Homemade!” she said. “Whole grain, vitamins, seafood!”

The moment I finished it, she swapped my empty glass for a full one, this one filled with a dark brown liquid. “Drink!” she commanded. As I raised it to my lips, she added, “Tastes bad!”

I hesitated, but she urged me on, and I took a sip. It did taste bad. I couldn’t nail down any of the flavors, and I didn’t have time to try, because Joy Kim was not done with me yet. Not by a long shot. She pressed her finger against the base of her throat and motioned for me to do the same. I did, pushing my finger into the soft space beneath my Adam’s apple.

“Press hard,” she said.

I shoved my finger deeper into my throat and tried not to wince. This was made more difficult when she insisted I continue drinking. Finger lodged deep, I tipped the cup back and downed the rest of my glass.

For a few minutes we made small talk. Much of our talk is small, even when I’m not cutting off my respiration. Mrs. Kim is not as good at English as Mrs. Choe last year. Talking with her is good practice for using short sentences and inventing new sign language. Here’s a short conversation I recently had with her:

Joy: “John Wesley?” [grins and nods vigorously]

Me: [nod]

Joy: “We see where he die.” [clutches throat and lolls head, still smiling]

Me: [smile]

Joy: “In Fiji…” [makes outline of an island] “…people eat… other people” [brings her arm to her mouth and gnaws, tilts head, smiles]

Me: “Yeah. Cannibals?”

Joy: “Yes, yes! Cannibals! John Wesley, they eat him.”

Me: [smile and nod]

When talking to Joy, I always feel a pressure to smile as big as she does. I don’t want to seem unengaged. After many grand attempts, however, I’ve decided that I simply cannot equal her smiling power.

Still standing in the kitchen, I tried removing my finger from my throat.

“Joshua,” she said, her voice stern. “Keep press.”

I keep press another five minutes.

While we talked small, she mentioned that she did acupuncture. I nodded and smiled, but then I realized she was offering to do it to me and I quickly said, “No, that’s okay.”

Disappointed, she released me to go tutor the students.

When I came back up an hour later, she asked, “You feel better?”

“A little,” I lied.

“Not better?” She seemed shocked. But then she smiled. “I do acupuncture after dinner.”

“Okay,” I said. Why did I say that? I don’t know.

“I put needle in throat and ear.”

“Okay,” I said.

She studied my face. “Fear?” she said.

“No.” I lied again.

Throat and ear? Before yesterday, I’d had no experience with acupuncture. The pictures I had seen were all of people lying facedown on a clean white sheet, needles protruding from their backs. On the list of places I wouldn’t want a needle, throat is third (eyes and crotch claiming gold and silver, respectively).

Dinner was a short reprieve from the building tension. We were having one of my favorite Korean meals—Bulgogi, a kind of Asian barbeque lettuce wrap. (Note: Don’t verify this definition with a Korean.)

Joy finished eating last, which meant that I had a lot of time to observe her deft use of chopsticks. I kept imagining her plunging one into my neck.

She ate with careless delight, and I began to hope she had forgotten. But after rinsing her plate, she washed her hands and said, “Ready?”

She motioned for me to wait on the couch, and a few minutes later she returned with a tray, loaded with foreign instruments and needles.

“Fear?” she asked again.

“No,” I laughed.

She gave me a container of vitamins, and I ate one. She gave me another container. I ate another vitamin. She gave me a small packet like one Americans would use for sweetener. I tore off the top and choked down a chalky substance. She gave me another packet, this one bigger. I tore off the top and tipped it back, spilling tiny beads into my mouth. She told me to hold them in my mouth for one minute, then chew and swallow. Then she added:

“In one half hour, you will… very sleepy time. Your nervous system… down.”

It was at this point that I began laughing uncontrollably. It was like a case of the laughing hiccups for the next fifteen minutes.

She prepared her instruments, removing tiny needles from a package as she described how she had learned acupuncture. “In Korea, I am healer,” she said. Later, she added, “I do five years ago.” I wasn’t sure if this specified the last time she’d done acupuncture, or the year she graduated from healing school in Korea.

“I learn healing from Dr. Wong,” she said.

Ah yes. Dr. Wong.

I know all about Dr. Wong.

Dr. Wong is to South Korea what Steve Jobs is to America. His name has popped up in conversation throughout the year I’ve worked with the Koreans, always spoken with a hushed sense of awe. Throughout the house, you will not find a single picture of the Kim family—but you will find several of Dr. Wong and his family. When you eat dinner, Dr. Wong looks over your shoulder like the dining room’s own personal Chairman Mao.

Somehow, Dr. Wong was the one who had taught Mrs. Kim acupuncture. I didn’t know what to feel about that.

“How does it work?” I asked.

She tilted her head, confused.

“The acupuncture. How does it work?”

“I don’t understand.”

“How do you do it?”

Nothing. I tried again. “What happens when you do the acupuncture?”

“Huh?”

“Like… what does it do to make health come back?”

“Oh!” she exclaimed. “It make blood cells come together and heal you.”

Thank you, Dr. Wong. I watched Joy compile the needles. Have you ever taken apart and reassembled a pen? It was kind of like that. She loaded each needle into a metal socket, and then affixed a spring over it, followed by a metal, torpedo-like canister. Each was about the length of my thumb.

Watching her, I felt myself getting light-headed, and I remembered how many times I’d passed out because of needles. (Three times. Twice while giving blood. Once in health class watching a video of a heroin addict shooting up.)

Assembly complete, she brought the first torpedo toward my neck. She whispered, “Very dangerous!”

I burst out laughing and pushed her hand away from my neck.

“I’m sorry,” I said, trying to calm down. She looked at me, confused. “I’m sorry,” I said again.

“Be very still,” she commanded.

I felt the metal tip against my throat, which was still sore from finger pressure. Four quick needle stabs burst through my skin, and then it was over. I cautiously reached to feel the needles protruding from my neck, but there was nothing there. Apparently, this kind of acupuncture only pierces with the needle, but doesn’t implant it.

Next, she started applying tiny needle pads to my ears. These are like miniscule Band-Aids, with a needle protruding from the center. The pain was minimal, and after a few minutes my ears were covered in the little things.

She looked at me straight on and grabbed an ear in each hand. Then she squeezed so hard that I felt the pain in the back of my neck.

“Hurt?” she asked, smiling.

“Yes!”

She seemed pleased. Perhaps this is the Korean version of a knee reflex test.

She brought the needle-torpedo to my left ear and punctured the top. Then she fled from the room and returned with a paper towel. “Bleeding,” she said.

She did the same to the right ear, but this time she looked concerned. “Dark blood.” Her face dropped, and she gazed at my ear as if seeing a bad omen. “Daaark blood.”

I nodded solemnly to show her I appreciated the gravity of the situation.

She replaced her tools in the tray and grabbed my left hand. She singled out my index finger and stared intently at it. After several beats, she met my eyes and said, “Intestine, not very good.” This she said with a motherly, scolding tone. I almost wanted to apologize. But then she looked at my pinky and smiled. “Kidney good.”

“How can you tell?” I asked.

“Finger shape… color…” Trying to reassure me about the intestines, she said, “Many Korean, their intestine very bad. Yours, a little bad.”

“Oh good,” I said.

“Feel better?” she asked.

“Yes,” I lied. "I feel good."

Too Soon?

A few life rules: Don't read See Spot Run to a child whose dog has just died. Don't sing Whitney Houston's "I Will Always Love You" to a friend whose girlfriend just broke up with him. Don't watch Nacho Libre with a family who has recently been terrorized by a luchador.

And don't write a funny blog piece about wildfires in Colorado Springs.

One year ago, on June 26th, I started working on a blog about the wildfire which was then sweeping through the region. Few homes had yet been affected, and the entry is light-hearted and comical. A few hours later, the entry became unpublishable, as the fire destroyed over 300 homes. What had been amusing was now devastating, and the last thing a fire victim wants is a blogger making light of a heavy situation.

But a few weeks ago, I thought to myself, "Maybe enough time has passed, and I can pull that blog out of the archives as an anniversary piece."

Enter: Black Forest Wildfire. The night it began, I tried driving to a friend's house to help her evacuate, but was met by policemen guarding her neighborhood. Seeing the way blocked, I parked a half mile away and sprinted through backcountry to get to her house, barely able to breathe through all the smoke and my crippling lack of fitness.

In between loads to the car, I watched the fire grow in the distance and said, "I don't think this one will be as bad as last year's."

But my friend's cousin knew the truth. A tattooed sage, he gazed into the distance and exclaimed, "F-, this sh- is about to f-ing explode!"

The sage was right. The most devastating fire in Colorado History, the fire burned down 500 homes in my city. The most trivial result being, my light-hearted blog was once again unpublishable.

But you know what? Screw it. I'm posting it anyway.

Enjoy!

Fire! Brimstone!

The house smells of smoke (and has for days), and I can hear planes overhead, rushing to dump water on the Waldo Canyon Fire, which just two miles away has “literally erupted,” according to news reporters. I literally have not heard so many uses of “literally” or “erupted” in my life.

It started on Saturday. I was swimming at a lake in Boulder and relaxing on the beach (non-Coloradoans should probably imagine a pond with a sandbox, but to us it’s a beach). When I returned to my phone, I had twelve missed calls and a voicemail from my brother. Panting as if he’s sprinting mere feet ahead of the fire, he yells: “Josh Skaggs, ANSWER YOUR PHONE! FIRE. BRIMSTONE. We’re evacuating. We’ve tried to call you a million times. Answer your phone. Bye.”

I called him back, and he relayed the news that a fire was burning near our house, and our neighborhood was under “suggested evacuation.”

I took off my floaties and changed out of my Speedo. Time to go home.

On the two-hour drive home, watching plumes of smoke smother the skies and wondering what to pack once we reached my house, John Mark, Kandilyn, and I began to discuss related matters—namely, the apocalypse. Right now, smoke towered above one mountain, but what would it be like when the very sun was blotted out of the sky? And what would we grab from our houses? Water, food… what else? Paper towels? An iPod?

John Mark, who had already considered this question, was fully prepared with a list of packing items for when the last days began. I mentally scolded myself as he reminded me of such items as knives, a fire-starter kit, a tarp. He concluded by sharing his plan to break into the local library and take its books on surviving in Colorado.

This is why John Mark and I are friends: when the end times hit, and everyone’s busting up grocery stores and Best Buy, he’s going to loot the library.

Shortly after I arrived home, my grandparents pulled up in front of my house with a trailer hitched to their SUV. I didn’t know whether to roll my eyes or start hyperventilating. I was upstairs, and I heard the front door open and then Grandma’s voice shakily calling: “Is there anyone in this house? Is anyone HERE?”

I came down and helped them go through the house, instructing them only to pack the most necessary items. During the next hour, Grandma continually consulted me about such items as “these towels” and “a pile of old shoes in Victor’s room,” to which I repeated, “Only what can’t be replaced.”

Anna, my seven-year-old sister, could barely restrain her excitement at the adventure of fleeing the house. As we scoured our home for anything important, she directed us to what she considered to be valuable, at one point handing me a quarter and two pennies and soberly telling me, “We should probably take this.”

...And that's it. I never finished this blog entry, because that afternoon a fire came roaring down the mountain, and cops were suddenly patrolling my street, ordering everyone to evacuate. It was two days before I heard news that my home was safe. I let go a sigh of relief, one which was shortened by the news of a friend whose entire neighborhood had burned, just one mile away.

This year, just as I am settling into my normal state of complacency, good ol' Colorado reminds me that life can change in an instant, that even with all our technologies and the buffers we think keep us safe, we are at the Lord's mercy. How much time will pass before I forget again?

New Culture, Clean Bum

At the Choe’s house (click here if unfamiliar with the Choe’s), there is a bathroom with a strange toilet in it. The toilet has an arm with about a dozen buttons, some with a symbol (a butt with water spraying it, for example), others with a word (“massage” and “dryer” are two options).

If you’re familiar with a bidet—pronounced “bid-A”—you know what I’m describing. Bidets are common in parts of Asia and Europe. They’re like normal toilets, only more high falutin. These toilets do all the dirty work for you, making toilet paper superfluous. They shoot a refreshing stream of water to clean your nether regions.

I had heard rumors of such a thing, but had never had the chance to use one myself. So when I saw that the Choe’s owned a bidet, I knew I had to take this opportunity.

Even so, months passed before I worked up the courage to try it.

My fears were legion: Where is the water coming from? Is it recycling the same water I just used for my business? What if the water pressure is too much? Or too cold? Or unbearably hot? What if it makes a loud noise, and all the Korean students turn and give “Mr. Josh” a knowing look when he leaves the bathroom?

Finally, I overcame my fears and made the decision. It was D-Day.

All through tutoring, I could feel my nerves winding tighter and tighter. I worked through math problems with Bella, but in my mind all I saw was THE BIDET. I was planning to excuse myself and go to the bathroom before dinner, but chickened out at the last minute. I sat down at the dinner table, almost too nervous to eat. Luckily, my lack of dexterity with chopsticks meant each bite was tiny and easy to digest.

Dinner ended, and it was time for me to leave.

Now or never.

I walked into the bathroom, shut the door, and attended to my fecal function. (Sometimes, euphemisms make things worse, not better. Sorry, ladies.)

Finished, I studied the panel beside me and ASSayed which BUTTon to push. (See what I did there? I’m so clever with LANGuage.)

I decided to go with the straightforward choice of the butt emblem with water spraying it. My finger hovered.

My biggest fear was that the spray would somehow gush out of control. I lacked an instruction manual, which is fine for common household items like blenders or toasters, but terrifying when your bum is involved. My bum was involved! I could imagine the spray launching forth like a fire hydrant, ejecting me from my position on the porcelain, soaking me head to toe. I imagined myself exiting the bathroom, dripping toilet water onto the hardwood floor, Korean eyes cinching shut with disgust and laughter.

I lowered my finger, pressed the button.

…Nothing happened.

I pressed it again. Nothing. I pressed a different button. Still nothing. All that anxiety and it doesn’t even work! I thought.

I drove home. Before visiting the Choe’s, I had texted John Mark, “I’m going to use the bidet today.” (Yup, that’s my life.) Now, I sent a new text, embarrassed and defeated: “It didn’t work.”

In the wake of such failure, his reply was maddeningly practical: “Did you wipe?”

Of course I wiped! It’s not like, “Oh no! The bidet didn’t work! If only—OH GOD IF ONLY—there were some other option I could use!”

Later, we discussed possible reasons why the bidet had malfunctioned, and he suggested that it wasn’t plugged in. Which seems absurd, but turned out to be true.

A few weeks later (I had drained my courage tank on the first go, and had to refuel) I tried again. This time, I made sure it was plugged in before ascending the throne.

When I was finished with my you-know-what (Is the vagueness really necessary at this point? I pooped, okay?), I was ready. I pushed the button. A stream of water immediately rinsed my hind quarters like a… river flowing through an... upside down canyon…? (Metaphors are hard, yo!)

It was not scary. Neither was it the pinnacle of European comforts. It was actually… remarkably unremarkable.

After fifteen seconds of washing, I thought, Surely I must be clean by now. After thirty seconds, I thought, Seriously, who has time for this? After a minute: Am I stuck here forever?

Finally, I noticed the red STOP button, the most noticeable button on the whole panel. I pressed it and, with a single wipe to dry myself, I was done.

I had conquered the bidet.

(Come back soon for the epic conclusion: “Hitler, and Toilets Again”)

Becoming a City Slicker, Dawg

When I visit Chicago, a constant track plays through my head. It’s my voice, only a little gruffer, and it sounds like this:

That’s right, suckas, I belong here. I’m a city man just like all of you. See this swagger? I ain’t messin’ ‘round, boys. I may look like I shop at Gap, but this shirt is actually from Goodwill. And it’s concealing a giant tattoo. Of a dragon. Coiled around a switchblade. Yo.

I prepare for a trip to Chicago as if rehearsing lines for a school play—an apt metaphor, since I’m no more convincing in my role than the preppy theater kids you knew in high school.

On a recent trip, I exited the plane at Midway, the more ghetto of the two Chicago airports, right around midnight. I was to take the orange line train from Midway to a downtown transfer, taking the blue line to Logan Square. Explaining this to friends back home, I made it sound as if I were Frodo entering Mordor, only a taller, manlier version—with less foot hair.

To be fair, the situation actually was a bit sketchy. 2012 has been one of the worst years for shootings in Chicago in a long while. And although Logan Square isn’t the worst neighborhood in Chicago, it also isn’t, well… Colorado Springs.

I belong here, fools, I thought as I made my way down a long, dark tunnel to the orange line. I was raised in a dumpster and breast fed on city smog.

I purchased a train pass and tried to feed it into the turnstile. (You know those rotating tri-bar thingies you have to push through to board a rollercoaster? They have a name!) I kept changing the orientation of the card, people passing expertly through other turnstiles as I stood there fiddling. My plight was so obvious that finally a big black lady (there’s black people in Chicago!) came up to me, turned my card vertical instead of horizontal, and fed it through.

“Thanks,” I said.

No prob. I’m still cool. I drink my frappuccinos without whipped cream, dawg! I eat my yogurt with a fork! So dang cool.

My carry-on suddenly caught in the teeth of the turnstile, jamming. I worked at it frantically, jiggling the turnstile, which was now locked. I could feel the eyes of every gangster in Chicago on me, because, as you know, they all hang out at the Midway airport. (Conducting research this morning, I asked my mom what you would call a person in the inner city who was up to no good. She pondered the question and said, “A scoundrel… Or some word that starts with a ‘V.’”)

Finally, I worked the handle loose and lofted my suitcase over.

C-O-O-L, cooool.

Before going to Chicago, my cousin Chris warned me that there have been a lot of flash mobs this year.

"Awesome!" I said, imagining spontaneous musicals surrounding me like I've seen on youtube. "I've actually always wanted to be a part of a flash mob."

He stared at me as if thinking, You can't really be this dumb. Oh yes, Chris, I can.

He said, "Flash mobs are where people suddenly gang up on you, assault you, and steal your money."

Oh. Right... Are you sure there's no singing involved?

The next day, I took the blue line to a greenhouse just outside of Chicago. I was a pro now, no more fumbling with the train pass, no more carry-on. The train was packed with potential muggers and hoodlums, but I had enough street smarts to shift my backpack in front of me.

Ha! Thought I was an easy target, did you? Well guess what? I was raised in the hood. And although I look like I’ve never heard of “Fiddy Cent,” (as the gangbangers say) I actually listen to rap music every day! On my boombox, in fact. Yes, fools, I am what the local thugs refer to as a “dangerous specimen.” My street name is Cosprings.

After being at the greenhouse for half an hour, I felt my back pocket, and my wallet was gone. I’d been stolen from! (Later, a friend would mock my use of the phrase “stolen from.” Not “pick pocketed?” Or even “robbed?”)

Had I put my wallet in my backpack? No. Was my wallet in a different pocket? No, I distinctly remembered having it in my back pocket when I was on the train. There could only be one conclusion: some worthlah thug had ganked me some shady biznat (thank you, urbandictionary.com).

I berated myself for my earlier decision to move my backpack to the front. If only I had kept it in the back, it would have protected my wallet. How could I have been so stupid? I began to doubt whether I could ever show my face in the city again. I was an object of ridicule, unfit to ride the blue line…

“Josh?” I heard a voice call behind me. “Josh Skaggs?”

I turned and saw two young ladies, one of them holding my wallet.

“Did you lose this?”

“Yes!” I hurried over. “Where did you find it?”

“We found it on the twirly slide.”

Of course! The greenhouse happened to have a nice twirly slide, which I would have been a fool to pass up. (And a fool not to, apparently.) Not only had I taken advantage of this attraction, but I had done so upside down.

I received my wallet with a head bowed in shame and beaming red cheeks.

Three days later, returning to Midway and good ol’ Colorado Springs, I had recovered enough from my shame to resume the inner monologue, mentally talking smack as I walked the streets.

I ain’t lookin’ for trouble, but if trouble should find me, be warned—I got a piece, and I know how to use it. I could pump yo chest fulla lead, homeboy! Thas right. J Wack in the hizzouse!

My carry-on snagged on a crack in the sidewalk, and I almost dropped the ice cream cone I had been licking.

How I Stopped Hating People

This is a continuation of last week’s post, “How I started hating people.” If you didn’t read it, you will struggle to comprehend the meaning of this post, life, the universe, etc. Remedy that here.

When we last left our hero (Since this is my blog, that's me. Yay, me!) I was alone with my thoughts, overcome with the certainty that the root evil in all people overwhelms any potential good.

Then, while I was running headlong toward cynicism, two encounters brought me to a sudden halt. They were unexpected, and I’m grateful for them.

Encounter 1

The day after evacuating my house, I got a call from the enemy, my adversary—the CBS national news. The newscaster’s opening comments did little to abate my derision. Undershooting my age by four years, she gushed at the story of this 20 year old boy (the aww cute factor of “boy” set my teeth on edge) who had single-handedly saved his home. She wanted an interview for the following morning’s national news channel.

Without a moment’s hesitation I declined. It’s embarrassing, but I savored this opportunity to “stick it to the man.” I swirled it in my mouth like expensive wine (or expensive coffee, for you teetotalers). Never have the words “no thanks” made me feel so powerful.

Unexpectedly, the newscaster’s response was humane, compassionate even. “I completely understand,” she said. “If you don’t feel comfortable talking about your experience, it’s okay. What you’ve been through was horrific, and I don’t want to make you do anything you’re uncomfortable with.”

So there it was. I acted out of cynicism, and my enemy’s compassion trumped it. Convinced that newscasters were inhumane, I responded with callousness and was put to shame when my villain proved more human than my heroic self.

Encounter 2

The fourth of July, a week after evacuating, I went with a couple friends to Mount Saint Francis, a parish near my house with beautiful groves of trees and rock. We went there to escape, to find a measure of peace in the midst of a trial, and after an hour walking the labyrinth and meditating on God we all felt better.

As we were driving toward the exit, someone hollered at us. I spotted a middle-aged woman stamping toward my car and rolled down the window.

“Do you have reason to be here?” she asked gruffly.

“We were just walking the labyrinth,” I said.

“No,” she said. “You are not allowed to be here.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, feeling my newfound sense of peace, the one that had poked its head into view like a timid animal, retreat back into darker territory. How quickly my blockades returned! But they were not quite quick enough, and I could feel old wounds split with new injuries.

Cynicism, my new ally, rushed to defend me. Not even among nuns and monks will you find kindness.

“This is not okay,” the woman continued. Her eyes were angry, and she spurted more accusations in a frenzied tone, ending with, “Do you know how close the fire came to this place?”

“Yes,” I said, “I live right up that way.” I pointed toward the charred mountain.

The change in her countenance was immediate. Lines on her brow softened to accommodate concern, and her voice took on a motherly tone.

“Is your home okay?”

“Yes,” I said. “Some smoke damage, but it’s still standing.”

“Oh, thank God. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have… I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to get angry with you. It’s just that we’ve had—” She decided against excuse and again apologized, her tone softly pleading. “I’m sorry. I’m glad you came here. Stay as long as you need to find peace. Come back again. I’m sorry.”

“It’s alright,” I said quietly. Those open wounds, so vulnerable to an unexpected sting, were also vulnerable to unexpected healing, and I tried not to start crying. On a day when I was beginning to wonder if goodness was a sham, this woman’s kindness and humility brought new hope.

We left St Francis, quiet.

And what now? Maybe cynicism isn’t as trustworthy a counselor as I thought. Maybe all those lurking shadows are not as substantive as I believed. But am I to believe that everyone is a secret Mother Theresa, waiting for an opportunity to shine? Is every Darth Vader a father figure in disguise?

This morning, a 24 year old—a man my age—went into a movie theater an hour north of my house and shot over fifty people, killing twelve.

Is this man just misunderstood? Should I ignore the heinous crimes he committed, insisting that deep down he’s “a good guy caught in a bad situation?”

What is the cure for cynicism? If every person is ultimately depraved apart from God, as I believe to be true, then how can I justify an optimistic worldview?

I’ll investigate these questions, and more, in a concluding post coming in a few days.

(I honestly only meant to write one post on this subject, but I don’t want to cheapen the complexity of it by arriving at an easy conclusion. If you’re still reading and not bored, please bear with me for one more post. Not to toot my own horn, but I think it’s the best of the three—like the first Matrix. Or a girl who’s prettier than her two sisters.)

Spies #3

This is the story of how I became a spy.

It all started when I was enlisted to partake in a Quest, a scavenger hunt of sorts heavy with secret agent elements, put together by friends. My roommate, we’ll call him Bombador Ali, and I immediately began preparing clues for Sydney and Bristow, our challengers:

We hollowed out a book and placed a camera inside, researched matrices to encode messages, and printed maps on transparencies, maps which only revealed a path when overlaid with alternate diagrams. I climbed a fire escape ladder and hid a message at the top. Bombador removed ceiling panels and climbed into a dusty attic, finding his way by the light of his cell phone while college professors chatted one floor below. (A creak on the stairs!—we pause, Bombador’s foot dangling from a removed panel in the ceiling… the creak is a false alarm. We resume.)

We thought we were awesome. (And to be honest, we are rather awesome. Hollowed out books? How much cooler can a man get?) We worried that the quest they were creating for us would not measure up to ours.

Then the Quest was launched. Bombador was at a birthday party when I received the email initiating the quest, so I opened it without him. It read: “A friend (or foe?) sent you a self-destructing message. You have one chance to read it.” I clicked on the link provided, which sent me to a new website. Numbers in the upper right corner immediately started counting down from sixty seconds, and I read the message quickly. In short, the text stated that Bombador and I were to meet in the basement of a building on campus at 9:00 PM, wearing “the appropriate attire.” When the ticker hit zero, the message erased.

That was my first hint that their quest was of a high caliber indeed. Self destructing messages! This was a spy’s bread and butter, and I was swallowing it without even chewing.

Bombador returned. Being too poor to own a suit, I borrowed one from another roommate. Bombador wore a black wool cap and leather jacket. I looked like James Bond, and Bombador resembled a feisty henchman. At 9:00 sharp, we arrived at the specified location. I was more giddy than severe, and it showed. I became a chatterbox, spouting off words so fast that later, when Bombador repeated to me some of the things I’d said, I didn’t even remember them.

A dour stranger in a long tan trench coat approached us. I’m embarrassed to admit that I was smiling broadly, unable to hide my eagerness. The man handed me a briefcase, nodded once, and departed, all without a word.

Back at base, we watched the DVD provided inside the briefcase. Words scrolled across a black screen: “We’ve been watching you.”

Suddenly, I appear onscreen. A shaky camera follows me as I walk through the school cafeteria, tray of food in hand. I look in the direction of the camera, and the image freezes, zeroing in on my face. Next, the video transitions to show Bombador, standing in a stairway. A third scene reveals Bombador and I, standing and reading a newspaper.

As we watched this, Bombador and I giggled like children on a Tilt-A-Whirl. While I’m sure it might freak out a person who is less obsessed with spies, the fact that Sidney and Bristow had taped us without our knowledge was invigorating. I was impressed with the skill required to pull off such a feat, but more than that, I was impressed by their audacity.

Sidney and Bristow were not amateurs. Whereas before, Bombador and I had worried that their quest would pale in comparison to ours, we now worried that the quest we’d created wasn’t good enough.

So we made a plan. We would break into their apartment.

Spies #2

While hanging out at my friend Penelope Rubix’s house a few years ago, I discovered in her father’s desk drawer a wad of currency from a range of nations. (I made this discovery while searching for a stapler. I know, I know, this is just the sort of lame excuse you would expect from an amateur spy, but it’s true.) Upon asking Penelope why her father—we’ll call him Mr. X—would possess such a stash, she replied that he goes overseas a lot on business.

On business.

I knew exactly what those words meant. My suspicion only mounted when I asked what her father did for a living.

“He works with computers,” she said.

I wasn’t sure whether she thought I was stupid, or whether she was really that naïve. “Working with computers” is the spy’s equivalent of the adulterer’s “staying late at work.”

Following this incident I began to make other curious observations in relation to Penelope’s family. For instance, every time I called her via her family’s landline, I heard a slight clicking sound before the call connected. Hers is the only phone I have ever noticed do such a thing.

I questioned Penelope about her father’s prior occupations. Turns out Mr. X used to work inside a government base. Mr. X’s office was not open to civilians, including his family. Because of this, Penelope knew very little information about what his job entailed.

(I, by contrast, knew much about what his job entailed. From the little information I’d been given I was easily able to conjure the rest: Mr. X places his eye to a retinal scan, pausing in the next room for a thermal x-ray, before taking an elevator to the subterranean levels of the building. [If an agent in training were to accompany him one day, she would watch in confusion as he swiped a pass card over a scanner while simultaneously depressing the “door close” button. “Where are we going?” she’d ask. “The basement,” he’d reply. “But there is no basement!” “Precisely.” And she attempts to quiet a tremor that begins to overtake he fingers as the elevator descends and a cold stare enters Mr. X’s eyes.])

Mr. X quit working at the base eight years ago for no apparent reason. As if we, the American public, are meant to believe that spies can become non-spies by “quitting.” No, the truth is they move higher up the ranks, so high that they are no longer even allowed to admit they work for the government.

When the body of information verifying his secret agent status had accrued, I confronted Mr. X during a game of cards, asking him point blank if he was a spy. He was slow in answering, and a mercurial haze settled in his eyes.

“You got me,” he said. “I kill people for a living.”

His mischievous grin was chilling. I couldn’t discern whether he was toying with me or plotting to break into my house that night and strangle me.

“I better watch out then,” I said, grinning in kind. This is called repartee. Among the arsenal of spy skills, repartee is just as valuable as a silenced pistol or tight leather pants. I laughed, effectively breaking the tension that had amassed in the room.

“I’m joking,” I said.

“I know,” he responded.

We continued playing cards, matching move for move, navigating through other conversation topics. I avoided Mr. X’s gaze for the rest of the night.

And I’m still alive. The amateur spy must understand the advisability of playing dumb when a situation demands it, rather than ending up dead in a bathtub, as Sidney Bristow’s boyfriend did on the very first episode of Alias. I may have uncovered a bona fide conspiracy, but this knowledge is worthless if I play the idiot and “out” an American agent.

What I would really like to say is, if I have uncovered conspiracies in the lives of friends and loved ones (and there are more examples to come), it is not illogical to extend speculation to others we know. Perhaps it reveals the true nature of our existence, when we begin to question whether our friends’ lives—and our own—aren’t really so mundane as we believe. And if we are not so mundane as we believe, then our lives can hold up to a bit more inspection, a heightened curiosity. We must be skeptical of our neighbor’s ordinary façade and of our friends’ seeming monotony. A bit of digging will reveal the truth.

Spies #1

There is a certain claim that is easily made but should never be believed. It is simply this: I am not a spy.

That being said, I am not a spy.

I am, to be honest, an average human being. I am a white, Protestant, straight male who lives in a suburb with a middle-class family. Like many twenty-somethings, coffee is my drug of choice. My favorite color is blue. I feel like a hipster when I wear a sweater.

If you’ve watched the TV show Chuck, you know that the very characteristics that make me seem ordinary also make me a prime candidate for accidentally falling into a heinous conspiracy—or at the very least, wanting to. Thus, my obsession with spies.

*The entries you are about to read take place over a lifetime of infatuation with spies. They are not made up. Many names have been changed for the safety (and sometimes dignity) of those involved.

Junior High saw the pinnacle of my attempt to achieve secret agent savvy. It was during these formational years that I became obsessed with the TV show, Alias. Jennifer Garner plays Sidney Bristow, a spy who discovers that she is working for the “bad guys” and decides to become a double agent. In between episodes, I was often inspired to practice sparring with a friend, a pastime which we stopped after I roundhouse kicked him in the face, causing blood to spurt from his mouth. I’ll admit: I had never felt so badass in my life. The feeling was unwarranted, however, as my successful kick owed more to junior high gawkiness than any skill.

Some commentary: Spies are not people who accidentally kick others’ faces. Spies are people who, when held from behind, run their feet up a wall, propel themselves backwards over their assailant’s head, and land perfectly after rotating fully and delivering a scissor kick to the neck.

It was during my Alias years that my then girlfriend phoned to reveal her identity as a secret agent. She gave such proofs as her mother’s German accent and referenced a tube of lipstick she allegedly owned that doubled as a gun. My skepticism crumbled in a matter of minutes, with less credit to her storytelling skill than my own desire to be romantically involved with a spy. When she revealed an hour later that day that it was all a farce, I was crestfallen.

(As for her German mother, she was in fact only German, not a spy.)

My life is a connect-the-dots of small-scale conspiracies. A few weeks ago, as I waited to pass through airport security, I questioned whether the African American woman in front of me was traveling under an assumed identity. She handed her passport to the security guard, and I noted pink skin peeking out at the base of her neck and behind her ears, as if she had not quite finished a hasty disguise. The thought that she might only have a skin problem didn’t occur to me until later.

I would be lying if I claimed that I don’t question even close friends’ hobbies and occupations regularly. Maybe you would question too, if you knew the people I know. Consider my next-door neighbor, who recently grew a bushy beard, shaved his head, and put on weight so that he could integrate into Somalian culture and catch pirates off the north-eastern coast.

It is easy to understand why a guy like me might find solace in the world of spies. Jason Bourne and Ethan Hunt are nothing if not extraordinary. Even when performing mundane tasks, such as crossing a street or climbing into a car, they do so with an economy of movement and a style that comes naturally. Their every action is streamlined to display an inherent importance, and they exercise control of the most impossible of situations.

I have often wished that I were a spy. Or at the very least, dating one. Then I would be involved in that world of intrigue and secrets; of cars, houses, and warehouses that explode in bursts of flame; of pricy liqueurs and pricier vehicles; of women who speak their minds and betray the presence of a gun through slits in black satin dresses.

It’s a dangerous world, to be certain. In fact, as I was reading this entry aloud to my mom, she looked at me sternly and delivered an exhortation with utter sobriety: “I would be careful what you say in that thing.”

“Why?”

“What if the real ones read it?”

What, indeed?

Tune in next Saturday for part two. If I die of a mysterious heart attack before then, you’ll know why.