~1~
WE WERE ALWAYS CHANGING. We were never naked.
I shouldered into the locker room minutes after the final bell. My lungs stung from the bleach in the air, my eyes from the glare off the white, sterile tile. Half the team was already undressing, but I would be first in the pool. The water was calling.
Locker room etiquette was all about getting suited up without giving too much away, a competition in cleverness with varying techniques. First up, the line of bathroom-stall changers waited. They had all the privacy, sure, but also the greatest risk of dropping clothes in the toilet. Deeper in, the craftier engineer types were busy turning their towels into makeshift curtains. Again, a decent amount of concealment, but setup and takedown meant they were often late to warm-up. The ones I called potato sackers were in the middle of the action, pantless and giggling per usual. These swimmers retracted their arms and wiggle-dressed inside of their shirts, flashing beaver along with their above-average self-confidence.
I had long since gamed the system; I was already in my suit. By the time I reached my locker I was half out of my jeans, tugging them off with my boots. My hoodie went next. The locker slammed shut, and I was headed onto the pool deck before the rest of the team arrived, the water calling.
Catherine stooped outside the door, her schoolbooks in three tote bags hanging off her buff shoulders. She was correcting the locker room sign from girls’ to women’s with an oversized Sharpie, and I almost didn’t ask because Catherine was an avocado. You couldn’t tell from her shell if she was green on the inside or that rotten horror show of a color.
“Adding graffiti artist to your college application?”
She didn’t look up. “The men’s reads men’s, and the women’s reads girls’? That’s some patriarchal fuckery.” Ah, an overripe day.
“Nah, Dweiller drew a dick on the boys’ sign, and Scanlon had to replace it. That’s why they don’t match.”
“The principal could have ordered two signs. He doesn’t think this is important. He is wrong.”
“How you have the energy for civil disobedience is beyond me.” I braided my hair back and squinted at her work. “You could have written vaginas and really messed him up.”
She exhaled heatedly. “Go break the seal before Joss beats you to it.”
Walking around the pool, I resisted dipping my goggles, priming my lenses to the cold. They’d fog as soon as I dove in, and yet I needed to preserve that stillness. Twenty-five meters and not even a breathing wave to the surface. That kind of perfection ate at me.
I climbed the diving block, my least favorite part of this whole place. Diving blocks were all jerks, but the one in my lane was a particular asshole with mildly loose bolts. The two-foot-high platform angled toward the water steeply, and I felt like I was falling even when I turned my feet sideways and gripped with my toes.
I stuffed my braid inside my cap as the boys’ team filed out of their locker room. While the girls’-room occupants always trickled to the pool, delayed by their changing styles, the boys dumped out as one. Did they dress like that too? In a pod of penises?
Joss shouted my name so loudly it wasn’t my name, echoing off the cedar rafters and glass walls that dripped gorily with condensation. I ignored him and returned to the pool.
The water was still as a mirror. I broke it with my body.
Hands, head, chest.
~
Gravity kept a strict line between air and water, and I sailed across it.
Within minutes, other bodies crashed in, the team shredding the surface. I was half done with my warm-up by the time I felt the other six swimmers in my lane start their sluggish five hundred meters. The seven of us fitted into an uneasy mechanism, keeping distance but never too much. I lost count of my laps, driving my arms, legs straight and slicing. I had to hold back in practice otherwise I’d lap my lane mates until they hated me. Time-wise, I should have been practicing in the penis-pod lanes, but Coach had heart failure the one time I’d asked to be moved.
Still, swimming was swimming. I wasn’t a boxed-up torso in the water; I was streamline. No one tapped my foot to lap me, and yet I finished last. My teammates were in a neat line, one hand on the wall, while they licked goggles, adjusted suits, and fought caps.
Coach Kerrig kicked off practice her favorite way—by singling me out. “You lost count again, McIntyre? I didn’t. Thirty-eight laps. How many were you supposed to swim?”
“Twenty laps,” Gia said with the breathy enthusiasm that made me ache to drag her under by the ankle. “Standard warm-up.”
My mind sloshed as I treaded water and shook out my ears. Joss was on the far side. He winked, and then winked again, probably because he thought I’d missed the first one. I smiled to avoid a third. Last year Kerrig had figured out that we were grabbing each other under the surface, and we’d been separated by sex ever since. That mostly took care of it.
Kerrig bellowed the first exercise. “One hundred free, get out, twenty sit-ups, one hundred free, get out, twenty push-ups. Rinse, repeat.”
We briefly became a choir, harmonizing a groan. No one liked deck work.
Coach kicked off the rinse and repeat with a tight whistle blow, and I scrambled to find my stroke rhythm without pushing off the wall. The fastest swimmer in each lane had to go first, and I was the fastest. That was half of the reason Kerrig hated me.
After four laps, I got out and started my twenty sit-ups. Catherine’s feet clamped down on mine every time they started to rise, and I tried to hold hers down at the same time. It sort of worked. The deck was crowded, the team on top of one another, streaming as we crunched and counted and grunted.
Somewhere around my twelfth sit-up, Joss’s long, hairy leg snaked around my chest, pinning me. My abs seized. Catherine shot up, savoring an opportunity to punish men for their “physical hubris.” She latched her considerable weight to my ankles, creating a perfect person-v.-person balance with my body as the scale. I obediently roared into action, rising inch by inch, straining everywhere but managing a full sit-up despite the weight of another human holding me down.
The cheers were short-lived. Joss slid into the water fast, and the rest of the team splashed out too. I fell backward on the sandpapery tile.
Coach Kerrig stood over me, her nose holes black pits. “Take it seriously.”
She took those words seriously enough for the both of us. I slid back in like a seal. The water calmed and hated me in equal parts. Some days I felt docile, gliding. Today I punched the surface with each stroke, shouting curses no one could hear. I swam to make my body do
something on command; I didn’t swim to beat the person beside me. That was the other reason Kerrig hated me.
When it was time for our twenty push-ups, Joss was waiting to race, brown skin streaming. I wiped the floor with him again. He loved it; he was going to be all over me when we got out of here. “My girlfriend is a sexy beast!” he crowed before diving into the shallow end, invoking Kerrig’s knee-jerk tirade about broken necks.
Gia was doing push-ups from her knees next to me, grunting through her words. “I think I’m turned on by how much he wants you. Is that weird?”
“Yes.”
“Can I have your boyfriend?”
“Yes.”
More laps. Exhaustion turned my mind to lava, thoughts rolling downhill, destroying small realities. Gia was a better fit for Joss. It would be easy to set up, and it’d mean a calmer winter break. No obligatory texts or social appearances. No back-seat grope fests. Breaking up with Joss would be a hassle, but honestly, what else was today good for?
It was the second-to-last day before winter break of sophomore year. No tests or monstrous zits. Another day branded forgettable. I swam over Gia on accident, and she really was a wily cuss, picking a fight that echoed off the cedar rafters. Coach hollered too, and I sank, sank, sank from every single sound.
Have you ever rested on the bottom of a twenty-foot pool and looked up? It’s not easy; you have to let all the air out of your lungs. But there’s a moment past breathlessness that’s peaceful, no matter what day it is or isn’t.
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