Housecoat Diaries

I have a new book coming out in a couple of weeks. Housecoat Diaries: You Can’t Love Philosophy Unless You Don’t is the second volume of my collected works, and will be released on Sat., Dec. 10 at 7 p.m. at the Times Change(d) High & Lonesome Club.
   
Looking back on the nearly 150 of these columns that I’ve written since I began doing them in 1999, I’m deeply pleased and honoured to have been able to share these ideas of mine with so many people. I’m so grateful to John Kendle and Ed Janzen for encouraging me, and for being such easygoing editors. You readers may not know it, but virtually nothing I’ve submitted  has been altered in any way prior to publication. That’s unheard of in the publishing world.
   
In honour of my new book, and to give you a sense of where this all began, here’s one of the very first columns I ever wrote. I entitled it "You Wash, You Dry, You Wonder Why":
   
Another one of the many nuisances that comes of getting out of bed in the morning is having to wash your entire body. If it was just the head that needed a quick dunk in the sink, that would be OK, I guess. But then there’s that damnable duck butter that needs addressing, which takes a whole lot of water and some sort of hideaway where you can ram a bar of soap up your ass without the neighbours looking on. What do you do?
   
When I was a kid, I took baths. Then, when I was a teenager, I switched to showers. Now I’m back in the tub again. And you know what? The bathtub is better. Baths are soothing. And besides, a shower just can’t get rid of all the filth.
   
Now, for all you literary types, here is a poem I wrote about cleanliness, entitled censorship:

i have a library in my bathroom
200 books
the bathtub
and me

i have Nabakov in my bathroom
and Henry Miller
i have Celine
Ernie Hemingway
and the Koran
i have Bukowski
and He Swung And He Missed
(a lusty story of sailors
and their women)

i like to lie in the tub
until the water cools off
then i run the tap some more
just to heat things up a little
then i stand
dripping and naked
and pull
another volume from the shelf

today it is Al Purdy
sex and death
i find a poem entitled
Power Failure in Disneyland
and down into the green water i go
only hairy knees
and the tip of my cock
remaining
head and book submerged
my eyes open
as the ink begins to run

   
I do not know exactly what my poem means. I think it may have something to do with the relationship between water and words, both of which are very slippery. But maybe not. Maybe it’s just my way of turning you on to some good reading while simultaneously getting the scandalous opportunity to mention my penis in the newspaper. Who knows?
   
And as long as you’re feeling warm and relaxed, does it really matter?
   
   
John Scoles is president and janitor of the Times Change(d) High & Lonesome Club.