The First Rule of Swim Clulb

... is you don't talk about Swim Club... the second rule of Swim Club? well to be honest there is actually no Swim Club, it's just a name made up to describe the place i swim at and my fellow swimmers and of course the gaggle of elderly "walkers" who populate the pool... and by walkers i don't mean in the zombie like sense, though there is a case to be made for some of them, but the elderly folks who spend their time walking back and forth in the first lane which is often more of a social thing as they tend to stand and talk to each other more than actually walk but since that's the lane of last resort for the swimming set it works out pretty well... as is my usual i have taken a keen interest in making up back stories for my fellow patrons of the pool and yes i even have friendly, meaningless conversations with some off them... and why not? as Mr. Vonnegut said, the point of life is to fart around... and Kurt was right, i may be a misanthrope but i've always been a social misanthrope, a cultural anthropologist of a sort studying the inanity of modern society all so i can sit at a computer in the morning and spin yarns into the ether... it makes me feel productive or some such shite before i get on with the rest of the day in this trainwreck of an era known as late capitalism... 

For one who has lacked discipline for most of his life i am incredibly disciplined when it comes to swimming... what started and still is ostensibly for my aching back has now become something of my hour of Zen... i truly love the rhythmic movement of my arms and legs, the breathing, the feel of gliding through the water... i enjoy the feeling when i'm finished and the tired beauty of the muscles, my ritual of jumping in the hot tub for five minutes before hitting the shower... in fact i believe i've graduated to being (almost) a real swimmer... see i consider myself a half-ass swimmer, an ex-basketball player with creaky knees and a shit back who can no longer run so instead swims... the real swimmers, as i call them, swam in high school or college, can do the flip turns, wear the kind of swimsuits that a real swimmer wears... i show up in my old board shorts and goggles and just go at it, no bathing cap or fins (though i do like swimming with fins i've just never got around to getting a pair) and i'm afraid to learn the flip turn cuz the pool is a shallow lap pool and i'm convinced i'll smack my head off the bottom and knock myself out... i'm somewhat amazed when i have people ask me about my swims, when they mention how i seem to just cruise along, how i can swim for forty minutes or an hour at a decent clip.. there is a that brief flicker of accomplishment, the feeling that maybe i don't look like a jackass splashing my way down the lane... 

There is a culture at the pool, a set of unwritten rules that most of us follow, yes there is always the odd individual or the newbie who jumps in and pisses the regulars off... i on one occasion started yelling at a guy because i was swimming in a lane by myself and he just jumped in, now i'll gladly share a lane with anyone but at least let me know that you'd like to share and don't just jump in and start paddling down the middle of the lane... when i almost cracked heads with the guy i stood up and started yellling... "what the fuck are you doing? you need to say something if you wanna share and pick a side (of the lane) man, i mean what the fuck? i'm not trying to fucking knock myself out because of your ignorance..." yes one could say i was pissed and said guy looked shocked but it was bullshit, not only was it rude but it was fucking dangerous, for the novice they most likely don't understand that state of no mind that envelops when me when i'm cruising through the water, if i'm sharing a lane it's the same, i know i have my side and the "real swimmers" understand to stay on our side, yes sharing may not be as tranquil as when i have a lane to myself but when it's busy there is no use being an asshole... i share... though there are some who most decidedly don't or become annoyed if you ask... and those people can get fucked... 

The Swim Club does have it's fair share of annoying shitheads, there are a few walkers who regularly get on my fucking nerves... there is one woman who feels the need to tell you to move over or to share a lane with someone else so that she can have a lane to herself (or invite more of her walking friends) to slowly walk or sometimes float but mainly to stand around and talk... when she pulled this on me the first time i was sorta surprised and so being the nice guy i am i said sure, though the look on my face was one of bemusement, when i realized what she was doing i was a bit pissed and when she came in a week or so later and asked the same thing i smiled and politely declined and kept right on swimming, she wasn't very happy about it but little did i care, she has since taken to giving me the stink eye but has not asked me to switch lanes in the middle of my swim anymore... 

It's not all selfish assholes though and there are a good many people who are nice and pleasant, the Stock Broker is one of my swimming buddies, we have a bit of an unwritten rule that we'll share a lane with each other when it's crowded, he's one of those guys who swam in college, drives a black BMW and probably thinks like him i'm some successful type who can swim in the morning or afternoons though i am decidedly not... but he's cool... there is Turkish, a woman who is sweet and always shares a lane if asked, i believe she is of Turkish decent and has talked about her many trips to the country... there is Mamcita, a young Hispanic woman who always wears a two piece and can be quite distracting... she's quite attractive and it's funny to watch when she comes in with her kickboard and the men all do their best to take clandestine glimpses of her... there is the lesbian woman who i've become friends with, she sports a subtle triangle tattoo on her back but we share lanes and always joke about who is setting the pace when we swim together, she always saying she's trying to keep up with me and me saying i'm always trying to keep up with her, another very cool person to swim with... there is Open Water, dubbed so because the woman is an open water swimmer, her last of which she told me was an 18 mile swim in the rivers (see map of Yinzerville) that took almost 11 hours, i stared wide-eyed as she told me and laughed that i didn't feel so bad anymore when she was lapping me every two minutes, i told her it was a bit soul-crushing to share a lane and she said i get that a lot, which we both had a good laugh at... there's the Handyman, a retired guy who used to swim and does a workout that blows my mind, he's 67 and swims like a madman and then does sit ups in the water with his feet up over the edge of the pool before taking off on another few hundred yard set... i told him that when i grow up i want to be just like him... 

There is the Penguin, a little old man who looks like the Penguin character from the old Batman tv show from the late 60s early 70s, he shuffles to the hot tub and then wades slowly into the pool and usually is complaining about something under his breath, he looks miserable but is great to watch as he pulls his little suitcase behind him... and there is Paul, my favorite, an older guy who was an autoworker, one of those old card carrying liberals who always has to deal with the other old white guys assuming he's a member of the grand old party... Paul most definitely is not, he's got stories both heartbreaking and brilliant, he has talked about how he's lost both a son and a grandson to the opiate epidemic and tells tales about his days as an off-hours pool shark, how he won a Cadillac one night shooting pool in a bar near Flint, Michigan where he worked, how when he got the job he drove all night and showed up sometime close to midnight on a Saturday and the guard laughed and said, you early, and directed him to a motel while telling him to come back Monday morning when the bosses where in... we talk politics on the sly and both laugh and worry about the dumb shit we hear coming out of people's mouths, how if you're a white guy of a certain age other white guys automatically think you support a certain Orange Shitgibbon, how to deal with a latent racism that underscores white males when they think that only white males are around, a situation that is both disgusting and frightening, Paul is easily one of the most intelligent guys around this joint and it's always great to talk with him... 

And then there is my favorite case study... Bateman. As in Patrick Bateman as played by Christian Bale in the movie adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis novel American Psycho... and while i'm not a fan of what i've dubbed "the poor little rich kid" genre of which Ellis wrote extensively, the movie is a good laugh especially for the whole Huey Lewis scene where Bateman gives his overview of Huey Lewis and the News before taking an axe to an unsuspecting co-worker played by Jared Leto... Bateman was christened Bateman due to the fact he looks and acts uncannily like the character from the movie... he is meticulous in his appearance, his form in the pool, while somewhat odd, is both mechanical and perfect, he most definitely has a bathroom filled with products designed to keep his skin healthy and exfoliated, my bet is he spends hours admiring himself in the mirror while talking to himself, a conversation that vacillates between raging narcissist and loathing self hatred... he is most odd and there are days when i don't see him where i chuckle to myself, in a rather sick and demented way, that he had to dispose of a body this morning... he shows up with his bag of supplies and his Gatorade Zero, hates to share a lane, never appears to swim all that fast and seems to take breaks every lap or two where he proceeds to stare down the lane at all the demons in his head... or something like that... 

I'll be honest when i say i worry about Bateman, mainly because we got off to a bit of a rocky start... i was sharing a lane one day with a guy and as we both were finishing up we were talking for a minute at the end of the lane... Bateman was still adjusting to the new pool as his old one wasn't nearly as busy, when he rudely leaned across the lane and started barking orders at us as to which lane we would now be in and how the guy in his lane would come to mine and the guy in my lane would go to his and how he liked things to be a certain way and that we needed to stop talking (which is funny since Bateman spends more time standing at the end of his lane than actually swimming)... the guy i was sharing a lane gave me a look that stated, "what's with this fucking guy?" to which i gave him the same in return, since we were both done we informed Bateman he could have the lane to which he promptly told the guy in his lane to move... i do have to admit i slipped in a "i'll be done when i'm fucking done Patrick" to which Bateman gave me a surprised look.. i'm quite a bit larger than Bateman and thought about playing Out Asshole the Asshole and stopped myself from asking him about Huey Lewis and the News...

Then there is the Grove Crew... what is the Grove Crew? The Grove is a bar/restaurant/club not far from where i live that apparently has DJs every Saturday night... i've now had a few women tell me i should come down some Saturday night, in fact the one jokingly said she was going to stalk me until i showed up some night... let me clarify that the thought of this place frightens me... this is not the clubs of old where i spent my wasted youth tripping until the wee hours before going to an all night diner and having some grub before walking in the door as the sun came up... this is one of those places that play basically the same pop hits from the 70s and 80s, some disco tossed in for good measure, where many 50 and older white people drink too much and dance poorly, it would be akin to Sartre's No Exit if that was set in a suburban dance club that from the outside resembles something like a Siberian gulag... it sounds like pure hell... granted i'm polite as i smile and say "i'll have to check it out sometime" but there is really no fucking way i'm checking this place out... unless of course i eat some boomers and wander in for a laugh but usually i don't like to get off the couch when the fungus is involved... unless of course it's to ride the train to see bands at a certain venue... 

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These days the crowd at the pool has greatly thinned out... the heater has been broken for the past couple of weeks and the water temperature has steadily plummeted to temps that make one seriously question their judgement as they plunge in... and believe me there is no easing into this shit or i'd say fuck this and head to the hot tub... i'm still trying to work out if the best method is a freezing cold shower before plunging in or just jumping in and taking off... i've tried both and they both fucking suck... even once i'm going the water is still cold enough that i never feel even slightly warm and my toes are practically numb by the time i'm finished, the body does adjust a little and i still feel great when i'm done but my swims are now more like two workouts in one, the swimming part and the battling the freezing water part... the club has put up signs apologizing for the inconvienence and claims they are just waiting on a part... that sign also states the water is "approximately" 75 degrees (Fahrenheit) but that's being far to generous, i'd say it's closer to 70? which doesn't seem that bad for a nice fall or spring day but when one plunges their whole body in and then proceeds to subject themselves non-stop to that for 30 or 40 minutes it becomes a bit masochistic (most days i swim between 40 to 60 minutes).. needless to say getting a lane to myself has been rather easy and even the psycho Bateman seems to have halted his appearances, not to mention how all the walkers and elderly ladies who use the pool more as a social thing have completely abandoned the idea of getting in... so while i may not like the water temp i guess there are some advantages to the whole situation... and while it feels strangely good on the creaky old back i'm really hoping they get the damn thing fixed soon... but just like Tyler Durden weeded out the recruits with a test of will i believe i have passed said test... or as i said to one of the the few remaining fellow swimmers the one day, we have to be either crazy or stupid to still be doing this shit... the first rule of Swim Club is...