Man at His Bath

Six years ago, the big museum sold eight famous paintings to purchase, for unspecified millions, Gustave Caillebotte’s Man at His Bath. Now it’s hip to have a print of it, and whenever I see one hung for decoration, I’m almost certain that this is what Caillebotte had in mind when he broke out the oils in 1884: some twenty-first-century bitch in Boston catching a glimpse of a framed reproduction, recollecting a study about how washing oneself may induce a sense of culpability. What I remember is he insisted I clean before leaving. That, and he was trying to be dreamlike. He took my jaw in his hand and said in the next life, we’ll really be together , and the clamp in his voice made me almost certain he knew something I did not. Now I eat right, train hard, get my shots. This life — I’m angling to remain in this life as long as I can, being almost certain, as I am, what’s after —