Swim Practice

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          I start swimming competitively when I am a stringy haired string bean five year old. Swim practice goes before water aerobics and I see cleavage for the first time in the women who wait their turn. When I take a breath I look for the biggest bosom and stare, thinking, “there’s the crack."

 

          My first test is the 6-and-under 25 freestyle, a dash from one end of the pool to the other. We are outside in a wooded park on a chilly June morning and the steam that rises off the surface makes the pool look like an ancient bath. The water feels like ice. I win.

 

          Practice is a prison and pool water has a taste. It can be metallic or gamey depending on the day. Sometimes I force myself to gulp it down so that I throw up and get to sit out. Looking at the older women’s breasts turns into looking at my teammates’ bodies in the fifteen years of practice that follow.

 

          I learn to love swimming for the glory and protection it gives me. As long as my body is a vessel for points I can go through a goth phase unbothered. I bring swimmers to homecoming and prom. Practice becomes a private room with a white noise machine and in the white tipped churning all thoughts may come and go: his dick is surprisingly small - weird that I masturbated to my girl friend - will I be late to Bye Bye Birdie rehearsal?

 

          In the thick of end-of-year championships I decide to quit.

 

          Senior Week is a time in June where hundreds of newly graduated teenagers flood Ocean City, Maryland to have a lil’ Bacchanal. It is a cesspool of parties, blackouts, date rape, bar fights and sunburn. It is a blast, and a terror. I meet Chef Cliff at Senior Week. He is taller than me, née hott. He explains the brilliance of sautéing garlic in mustard while he dresses a grilled cheese sandwich. I invite him to have me. There is no epiphany. I tell him that I was a virgin ;) and he asks my age. When he hears “eighteen ;)” he solemnly asks me to buy him cigarettes. I refuse and shame him for ruining his body.

 

          I do not have a hangover. My fresh young liver saw to that. But exhaustion increases the volume on some small grief. At the beach in the morning I hide behind a cap and goggles, laughing with my friends at my one piece Speedo which feels like body armor compared to the bikinis around me. I bob through ocean swells, dive down to the muddy sand and watch my hands pull with increasing vigor. I am forceful and the ocean laughs. The saltwater makes me retch. I return parched and find a warm Smirnoff Ice buried in the sand next to our towels. We all cheer—we cannot believe our fortune!

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