The pool is my friend
Arrival 6:10am. Two large pools on the roof of a recently-built facility located right behind a library, glamorously adjacent to an upscale seafood restaurant where someone once tried to start shit with Jamie Foxx.
I park in the multilevel structure – three murals on the exterior from Kenny Scharf, RETNA, and Shepard Fairey. This morning my space was next to the hot pink SUR car. If you don’t know what that means then you are the person I used to be and now I’m going to ruin your day: it stands for Sexy Unique Restaurant and it’s owned by Lisa Vanderpump. Anyway, the car is stupid, but the parking is free.
So is the pool if you’re old, and I am. I used to go to the 10am water fitness class, which is all cardio and competing noises. Loud music, a rotating cast of instructors who cheer you on, which, apparently some people enjoy, twenty to forty people in the pool with you depending on the season, sometimes bumping into you, splashing water in your face. Again, some people like these things.
At the 10am water fitness class I Diane Keaton’d myself with sunblock, a big bucket hat and a long-sleeved LL Bean quick-drying shirt while I bobbed up and down to “Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now).”
One day before class I arrived earlier than usual and saw some older ladies, peacefully paddling in the nearly empty pool. I asked the person at the window, “What are they doing?” and I learned that you could reserve a spot in the “recreation” pool (as opposed to the serious-minded “competition” pool) beginning at 6am and do your own thing. The class: $2 and the longevity benefits of community. Doing your own thing: $0 and a community of me.
Another great thing about 6am: marine layer and cloud cover.
Wearing a hat and shirt in a pool is a fine defense against Southern California’s tedious, infinite sun-blast, but in a pool these items are cumbersome, both physically and psychically. The hat protects a balding skull from burning, but the shirt, in particular, is semiotically irksome. I’m a fat man. Next time you’re with your personal favorite local fat man ask him what shirt-on-in-pool means. He will tell you. “I’m ashamed of this. Feel sad about me."
A side note for all fats of all genders: the word “avoirdupois” is French and fun to say. It sounds beautiful because it is. The non-fat-bodied people in the competition pool may not agree, but if they’re delicate they can always look away.
I’m not romantically attached to John Cheever’s short story “The Swimmer” because I can barely swim, I’m not in Connecticut, I’m not currently losing my mind, and “Mad Men” beat me to it by making yet another hot sad metaphor swim alone, but I think about the story’s physical details a lot when I walk down the steps into the water, the first person to disturb the surface on some mornings. Then I swim. Shittily.
I can breaststroke to the edge of the pool like an almost drowning person. The lifeguards watch me do this and seem to trust that I’ll make it. At home I watch YouTube videos about basic frog moves. Less important at this point, really, because I’m focused on rebuilding my atrophied thighs and legs with physical therapy-style exercise – double hip replacement to correct shockingly severe bone-on-bone arthritis, all better now with adorable scars and concurrent medical debt – and I do this standing up in the shallower depth, feet on the floor of the pool, tits out for the allure. A friend who can swim very well has promised to give me some lessons. He’s fat, too, and I think we’re going to look very cool, double-fats splashing about.
The handful of older ladies who show up that early are very nice to me. One of them used to say “Good morning, Gorgeous!” to me when I’d arrive. And then one day she just stopped coming. A mystery. I doubt she found a better pool because this one is new and meticulously well-kept. I may have missed the day she brawled with someone and was banned for life, the day the beef exploded and rival squads of mature women took it to the pavement. No one speaks of it. She couldn’t have possibly found a different Gorgeous. I won’t accept that possibility.
At 6:50am I get out and dry my feet on an old Cyndi Lauper tour towel. I smell like chlorine.
