The Swimmer

“This is what you wrote on my swimming instructor evaluation form,” Lana said. “’I’m alone and afraid, please help.’ I know I’m your only friend and you idealize me, but knowing something and seeing it on a swimming instructor evaluation form are two different things.”

“Sorry. It was the drugs letting me talk.”

“I hope by ‘drugs’ you mean steroids.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“You guess what, that you mean steroids or that I hope you mean steroids or that hope even exists?”


We parked a couple blocks from the YMCA in a lot hemmed in by white buildings and chain-link fence. All day parking was whatever you could afford – for a poor man, $5; for a rich man, a machine that shrinks camels and spits them through the eye of a needle. As we neared the pool I felt anxious. Maybe it was the acid. Or maybe it was the place itself. We passed faded wood signs, bright pink banners, battered sandwich boards, glowing neon lights. Girls in bikinis, guys in shorts and bikinis. Slick tans. Gray faces. No sign of life.

“There should be a separate hell for boring people.” Lana said. “It’d be a room with my swimming instructor bar exam in it. They’d have to work on it all day, even though they’d rather be eating or watching a movie or breathing because the air would be sawdust. Honestly though, the torture isn’t important; I just want to keep boring people out of regular-people hell.”

“You mean the realization that the world will end in 50 years, and unless you adopt a healthy lifestyle you’ll miss it?” I said.

The first glimpse of a pool is terrifying. The longer you’ve been away, the more it grows. The more it grows, the more you shrink. The lens of chlorine, tracing earth’s finitude, makes you feel puny, like a bug on the toe of a dinosaur. I couldn’t see the pool yet, but it saw me and was smiling. The air was heavy and weightless, bodacious and without any mass.

“I don’t hate Eskimos because I’m racist,” Lana said. “I hate them because I’m evil. There’s a difference. A lot of good people are racist, like Archie Bunker or Mel Gibson.”

Why go to the pool? Everything is supposed to be better there - sex, drugs, even books. Also, they say, it’s serene, an enema for the mind. Stare at the diving board, that glassy plane of nowhere, and your thoughts disperse. And while you’re there, the party line goes, get molested. You haven’t relaxed unless you can prove it physically with a piece of paper explaining a lawsuit.

Lana and I had been friends for eight years. She knew me better than anyone. She also knew swimming. She’d been doing it on and off since high school. Once she swam less than five minutes after eating. She said all the evil in her body turned to water, so she tried to shake it off. “On the DANCE FLOOR?” I texted back. She didn’t answer.

"One time while cyberswimming my deck exploded," Lana said. "My head crumpled like a napkin. It took me ten years to learn how to learn again."

People! People everywhere. A mass exodus of people, scrabbling for the pool like chumtoads. It looked like a hidden cutscene you can only access by unlocking everything in a video game about swimming. My hobbies when not swimming are looking at things that aren't girls' eyes and Extreme Anything (that isn't looking at girls' eyes).

“I wasn’t born with an ounce of swimming talent,” A swimming professional said. “I just swam my ass off every day. But that didn’t work either, so I took these steroids.” He held up some steroids. “They have side effects.”

“Unquestionably unconstitutional,” the cashier said. “You’re banned from my poolside snack bar forever.” He turned out the lights, walked around the counter, past the register, through the prep area, and into the kitchen. On the floor, next to the grill, was a hose, black, with an l_shaped chrome nozzle, attached to a metal block with a red switch. He bent down and hit the switch. The pump juddered to life with an electric roar.

… And maybe tonight. Maybe tonight you’ll be gone.

There was a hollow slurp as the last oil was sucked from the grease trap. He stared down at the nozzle, thinking about the swimmer and his story.