Swimming has a decorum all of its own.
We undress metres away from strangers and their swinging, exposed
flesh – yet are led into believing there
is nothing thrilling about it. Perhaps it is the smell of chlorine and its
determined physical presence, crawling up the nose and into the mouth so it
becomes something to speak through. Perhaps it’s the cell-like structure of
each cubicle, mocking with squealing plastic locks and wooden slats. Everything
is always damp. Even the sound of the pool has a dampness to it – both that of running
water, never the running water, only the jerky shots of splashing bodies.
The pool waits around a corner lined with showers and foot
sprays. There is a kind of sequential pantomime to entering the swimming baths
– hence the ‘costume’. Mine is black and intentionally shrouding, pushing down the swollen stomach, sitting
high above the half-shrunken breasts; yet it is ironic in that its black, its almost
mocking embellishment at the back of my neck seems to emphasize my nakedness
underneath.
There is a small rebellion as I slip past the showers. I
offer the select the dirt of my body. the showers are an open-room structure
with strips of metal tubing rusting
against the old cracked tiles. It is almost like an intended exhibition in self-control,
half successful, in that the bodies braced under the running water appear pathetic
and grotesque; Those showering beforehand
flinching at always the wrong temperature, those showering after - red-eyed with chlorine, hair slicked against bulbous
heads and bubbling mouths. They half-attempt to revel in that we evidently are
not aquatic but attempt to be anyway.
Children screw their eye up and scream as various hair treatments slither into their
eye. The sound cuts through me.
I pass through hurriedly to the edge of the pool, goosebumps
breaking out along my sinewy arms like a
kind of braille. I may well read ‘I am cold and exposed and everyone is staring
at me’. Yet this is something ‘meant’ to be liberating. In the artificiality of filtered sunlight intensified
by greenhouse like windows I watch bodies clinging awkwardly to the metal bar
running along the edge of the water.
Approaching the shallow-end
of the pool, I notice the signs,
attempting at first, to causally emphasize in comic sans ‘No jumping’. The
apparent outlawing of a whole human action, expressed so casually. Laughable
almost, as my knees twinge with temptation to plunge into the shallow end, to
feel my feet thud and buckle under pressure
as they hit the floor, for the flesh to wobble in the sudden passage through
water. But I don’t. I watch in vague interest as I see a child, of perhaps ten or
eleven, carry their mother in a cradling
position shilling ‘look how light you are mummy!’
How light.
I feel the artificial light of the room, and eyes and CCTV, slowly scudding against me. Even I
convince myself the water will often some kind of disguise. I descend the ‘sensible’
steps into the shallow end, attempting to ignore the slight thrill of being
able to sweep over them four at a time in the natural buoyancy of fat and
limbs. There is the typical dissection
the water provides – the clench at the knees, the sudden grip of the stomach,
and its final split over the shoulders. I become a watering head, eyes stinging with chlorine,
and a flickering body beneath.
Let me become a flicker.
But not at the swimming baths, no. We do not ‘bath’ or
‘bathe’ either. Limbs thrash, there is something slightly dangerous, masked
over with a momentary hilarity; what is meant to be energy, full grown adults
marvel secretly of how in the deep end they
can throw themselves into a pit which would typically kill them. The
adolescent’s stinging, creaking limbs are caught in a kind of dance,
thrillingly aware that drowning is always a possibility. The proximity of difficulty, of death, seems
to set a kind of order. occasional
glances are aimed towards the single individual, lacquered in red and yellow
and slapped on top of a podium.
If someone could capture the moment, that would be like I
view God. Positioned with a kind of conditioned
arrogance, expected to be compassionate, yet in reality on a structure
assembled by other human hands. We even call him a ‘life guard’. And yet how absurd life
looks like this.
Everybody in a state of the best of their worst behaviour. Half-naked,
lumbering. People seethe in jealousy or bend their bodies into shapes to
disguise the lust. Children kick out with an a aggression which they would be
scolded for otherwise.
It cannot be helped
almost feeling like this is a site of shame. The chance for cool, crisp water
evaded by my body and sweat and dirt and
pump after pump of choking chlorine. I watch the eczema wrap around the neck of
the man to my left, apparently losing trust in his own legs as he flails close
to the side, swallowed by the angst of his own skin. His partner appears to yell at him ‘You’re doing
really well.’
Welcome to what is healthy.
