Pool Day
A Pool Day is different from a Pool Morning. Pool Morning is when I go to the West Hollywood Aquatic Center at 6am for the purpose of exercise. It's a habit but not a pleasure.
On Saturday, when it was quite hot, after I had spent the morning running errands, becoming thoroughly overheated, friend and neighbor Gary, whose apartment building has a pool, said, "Pool Day. 2pm. Come over."
I'm bad at impromptu invitations, and worse at truly taking Saturday off. It's always a goal, but not always accomplished, and rarely "allowed" in my brain. A day off might just mean I stay home and vacuum baseboards or other vital domestic bullshit. It could mean I wind up at a movie somewhere, an activity that almost always results in something being written or talked about on a microphone and, therefore, lives in the weird, cloudy, territory of Still Kind of Definitely Work. Pool Day means, unequivocally, No Work.
Gary's apartment building is 85 years old, and therefore the pool is at least close to that age. Before people cared about safety, they put diving boards and sometimes slides on the edges of residential pools that weren't deep enough to avoid a bonked konkus, so there used to be a diving board at this pool. Now there's a metal framework for a diving board and a weird useless pipe that sticks out for no reason. There's a metal fence around the pool now, too, because maybe it's a touch shallow for diving, but without a barrier any blotto fool could fall in and reenact a Sunset Boulevard drowning. The actual Sunset Boulevard, for the record, is one block up the street.
This is a proper courtyard pool surrounded by apartments on all four sides, which means there is perpetual shade, and you don't burn up. It's got old-school chlorine and is unheated. The steps leading into it are just somewhat taller than a 2026 engineer would approve of, so they're weird for climbing into the pool, but great for sitting on when you're there. You need to hold onto the rail to get in, or you'll trip over yourself and faceplant into water.
There were a handful of friends hanging out. I brought grocery-store-deli fried chicken. Upon arrival, I handed pieces of chicken to friends already in the pool, which I suppose is a bad idea for the pool, but a great idea for people who want to eat a piece of fried chicken in a pool. If a water filtration system can't endure an errant meat shred, then what good is it? Other people brought other snacks. Those fancy Spanish potato chips with paprika on them. Tostitos Scoops and salsa. Fruit salad that nobody ate.
I brought mini cans of Coca-Cola, which allow me to sip and not overload my Type-2 body. One friend brought full-sized cans of Coke and, surprise, they were pre-mixed with Jack Daniels. Now, why didn't those exist 20 years ago when they would have been an occasional little treat for my mother at her nursing home? When I'd take her out to the movies, her favorite place to eat beforehand was the TGI Fridays next to the multiplex because she could get a Jack & Coke with her lunch, sometimes two if she really felt like tying one on. I imagine how much more pleasurable her final years in that nursing home would have been if she'd been allowed to be a little more delicately drunk more often.
The friends chattered about I don't know what. Gay gossip regarding people I don't know. They took turns performing cannonballs, which are fun only for the person doing them. The calm water becomes turbulent. It goes up my nose. I was informed that I, too, would cannonball, but no, I would not. I would sit on those weird steps with water up to my neck and up my nose.
What is a White Claw? What is a Surge? I don't keep track of beverage innovations, especially now that all the alcoholics who raised me are dead. In my mind they occupy the same cultural space as Mountain Dew, but I have no good reason to think about them in any way at all. There were a lot of both in the cooler until there weren't. I watched my friends put them away and get gently mom-buzzed, and it was amusing because it did not become frenzied.
The music was the perfect volume. This might be my main thing at any gathering, after "Is there actual food?" When people are insane and get wild with the loud music, I don't care for it. Gays are especially guilty of this. Turning one's home into a discotheque is usually unwarranted. As guests drink more, their conversations become louder, and the music follows suit, resulting in an endless competition to be heard. Pool Day's early 80's R&B/post-disco soundtrack was neither inaudible nor overwhelming.
Pizza arrived. Cheap pizza. Pool pizza. This is not the same pizza as when you want real pizza at a real pizzeria. It's one step above school cafeteria pizza, which is also good pizza. I sat at the edge and handed slices – and those little garlic knots – to friends in the water. Again, there's a filter, it was fine.
We were meant to go to another friend's birthday party later that night. We had every intention. The situation, though, is that Diana Vreeland, who was "mad about water," was also correct about its soporific effect. When we got back home, I'd been in a lukewarm bath for over four hours. A perfect Pool Day. I went straight to the shower, knowing if I sat down on the couch, I'd fall asleep immediately.
Thirty minutes later, I'm lying in bed. Brian, one of the friends who'd Pool Day'd with us, texts: "How's [the birthday party he knew full well I wasn't energetic enough to attend]?"
My response: "Totally going off. I am using cocaine*."
[*I've been terrified of cocaine since I learned of its existence and know that if I ever did it even one time I would have a heart attack and die and my friends would troll me into eternity by having "He loved cocaine" engraved on my headstone.]
Him: "Wow."
I took a Tylenol.
