Like plasma
Yesterday I went swimming for exercise. It’d been years. I thought to myself: No resistance. Nothing that I can strain my back doing, or hurt my leg.
The pool was empty. The room was warm but the water was cool. I eased into it, but then wondered what a real swimmer would do. I figured he would dunk himself. So that’s what I did. It was freezing.
I was in the water now. My arm hair was swinging, lifting off my body like seaweed gasping for air. I thought of swimmers I had seen on television, the grace of what they do. I put my face under, flattened my feet against the wall, pushed off. I sped along the bottom of the pool—lithe, aerodynamic.
Then I floated to the surface, where I started flailing and gasping and taking on other convulsionlike traits. Had anybody seen me, I’d probably be in an emergency room right now.
I’d completely forgotten how to swim.
So I winged it. For about twenty minutes I kicked and pushed my way down the lane. I was attempting the breast stroke, but I don’t think I achieved it. Eventually somebody else entered the room. Even without my glasses, and with chlorine stinging my eyes, I could see that had muscles the size of layer cakes.
I became a little shy.
I pretended I was “resting.”
The longer I stayed in the pool, the thicker the water felt. On my last lap, I was purposeful and slow. It was like swimming through plasma.
