Rub-a-Dub-Dub

I’m on the east coast of Bali, near Amed, at Katana Villa. I’m sitting in Matthias Hues’ rounded stone bath watching warm water cascade from the mouth of a dog-like statue. How did I get here? What am I doing in Matthias Hues’ bath? The answers are simple enough, and yet they don’t seem to address the real heart of the matter, this eerie sense of displacement that one encounters when he finds himself sitting in Matthias Hues’ bath.

I don’t know Matthias Hues, you see? I had never so much as heard of him until a week or so prior to this moment. Nor do I know his life partner, Leslie Carleton, also a Hollywood actress. I have seen a photo of her. A beautiful woman, tan, sleek, lying ever so photogenic on the beach. And now I’m sitting in her bath.

Matthias Hues is an actor as well, from Germany. He starred in the movie Star Trek VI. Or so I‘m told. I‘ve not seen the movie. Matthias is in Germany now, with Leslie, and I am in their bath.

Strange enough, folks, for a small town American boy to be living in Bali. But to be staying in a villa on the east coast of Bali sitting in Matthias Hues bathtub? That’s displacement beyond common definition.