Survival

 

“I heard you say a couple of times that you’d survived….” a round, pasty middle-aged woman pauses on her way out of the locker room, her beady blue eyes questioning.

I’m at the mirror post swim and shower, trying to yank the tangles out of my hair. I glance over at her, my brush caught mid tangle, “Yeah… it was a battle out there in the pool today.”

She stares at me. Stupidly. She has no clue what I’m talking about. What was her swim like? I guess it wasn’t a battle. Or, she was one of the Clueless Ones. You know, those folks who jump into a lane without any idea how to swim, let alone circle swim.

This is what had happened to me today. I’m swimming along, in a nice rhythm, crowds all around me but so far, I’ve got my own lane. Then, turning at the wall, I stop to survey the family of 3 standing on deck staring down at me.

Damn! Do they all want to get into my lane?

“What’s going on?” I ask them.

Dad answers, “I think I can swim medium if I push it.” Oh, they’re reading the useless speed signs in front of each lane. No one pays attention to these. But I suppose if this is your first time here at Kennedy High Pool, you’d start with the sign in front of the lane.

I stare at him, then take in the wife and the teenager. “Are you all getting in this lane?”

“Yes,” he says, his goatee and gold earring belying his swimming ability. I am not sure why. He just doesn’t look like a swimmer. And, as it turns out, I was right.

“Well, then we need to circle swim,” I say, not asking if they know what this means. Everyone stays to the right side of the black line on the bottom of the pool, circling around it, letting faster swimmers pass at the wall.

“That sounds good,” he says, jumping in and starting a lazy sidestroke.

Shit, I think.

Then the wife gets in and starts a head out of the water breaststroke. She’s alone, in a warm lake. In the San Gabriel Mountains. The scenery is green and distracting. Jays flying overhead, the sun gentle on the water.

She is NOT in a crowded pool in Richmond!

I put on my fins and zoom past her, trying to splash her tranquility, but she is completely clueless, lost in a dream.

Now, when You Survived Woman queries me, I think of all the things I have survived: Adolescence, Cancer, Layoffs, Heartbreaks. Is today’s pool mayhem on par with these?

It feels like it. Or felt like it.

Laughing, I turn back to my brush, attempt to parse the wet strands from its teeth. “It was just a joke,” I say to her. “My swim was a bit crazy.”

“Well, all of the pools are closed around here. So, it is more crowded,” she offers, but her heart isn’t in it. I can tell that her swim was just hunky dory.

“Yeah, that’s a good point,” I agree, wishing she’d move on and stop staring at me like I had some secret story to divulge.

But I don’t. I was just voicing my frustration to my friends in the shower. They both knew what I was talking about, one laughing and nodding in agreement, the other rolling her eyes and sighing loudly.

Survival of the fittest? Darwin’s theory is common knowledge now. Am I going to survive the summer at the Richmond pools? Am I That Fit?

Only time will tell, in the meantime, Gloria Gaynor inspires me with her wailing refrain:

“I will SURVIVE!”

Gloria Gaynor, I Will Survive

Trumpers?

 

“Are they Trumpers over there? They don’t want to admit when they make a mistake?” Jess lathers up more suds as the shower pounds down on her back. The issue?

            A discrepancy in the summer pool schedule for the Richmond Swim Center. Evidently, the website says one time and the printed-out schedule says another. An hour’s difference. Which, of course, is huge when the hours are already so limited.

            “The website says that the pool will be open till 12 on Tuesdays and Thursdays,” Alice continues, dragging her big comb through her wet hair, “but the printed-out schedule says they’re only going to be open till 11.”

            “Can’t they fix that?” Jess asks?

            “You would think so,” Alice says. “But evidently the new management has their head up their asses!”

            We all crack up. And, I think, doesn’t management always have their head up their asses? I remember working at Woo Woo U under the management of Q, whose ineptitude and insanity was legendary. My colleague, J, would see her coming down the hall, juggling piles of files in her arms, car keys dangling from one hand, a cup of coffee in the other. J would whisper to me, “Look out! Her hair is on fire!”

            And it was. All red, oranges, bronzes standing atop her head, looking like the flames of hell.

            Her ineptitude running the Writing Center was beyond my credulity. A meeting with staff would devolve into actual shouting matches between instructors and Q. “I refuse to show up for a workshop at 10:00 am on a Saturday in fuckin Campbell when I have no guarantee that there will be any students there!” one of my colleagues had screeched. Q had dug her heels in. “You must show up, Dana. It’s your job!”

            Dana stood up from the table, fury steaming out of her ears and march out of the room.

            I couldn’t believe it! But then again, I could. Management is always so out of touch with the reality of what their staff, students, or patrons actually are doing or need.

            So, today, when the discrepancy about the pool schedule came up in the showers, I just shook my head, thinking, Trumpers? Maybe. I knew that Q NEVER admitted when she made a mistake or EVER changed her mind even when confronted with irrefutable evidence to the contrary of her position or directive.

            And Trump? Anyone with a brain knows that he is a lying, cheating, conniving crook. Would he admit that he made a mistake with dismantling the Dept of Education? That this is necessary to further the educational needs of students? Or that his choice of a Health Secretary in Kennedy is egregiously wrong. How can someone be in charge of the health of citizens without any medical background? Who believes that vaccines are the devil?

            Nope, Trump would never walk back any of these decisions. And these are just the tip of the iceberg as the saying goes. I could write a book about his ‘mistakes’ and still not be able to cover them all.

            So, today, when the pool schedule discrepancy arises, I am not surprised.

            This schedule’s shorter hours have been the hot topic all week. Everyone is writing letters of complaint to the management. They’re up in arms about who the management even is. It’s a revolution if such a thing could happen at the pool.

            And, yes, I too, have written a letter of protest, citing a recent non-interaction with the new pool manager when I ran into him after swimming at the Plunge this week. “Hi,” I’d smiled. He wouldn’t even make eye contact with me, let alone acknowledge me in any human way, mumbling a surly ‘hello’ before heading into the building.

            Is this guy a Trumper? Who knows. I suppose anything is possible even though this is the Bay Area and Trumpers are rare. Will the discrepancy in the pool schedule be fixed? We’ll have to wait and see.

            “It doesn’t seem like such a big deal to fix the discrepancy,” I comment to Jess after the shower as we’re throwing on our clothes.

            Shaking her head, she sighs, rolls her eyes. “No, it doesn’t. Or reverse it. Keep the schedule as it is. Not closing an hour earlier.”

            “That would be nice,” I agree. But think to myself. Would Q have reversed her decision to make her instructors drive all the way to Campbell, an hour plus drive from Unpleasant Hill campus, for a workshop that may not have any students?

            No.

            It never happened.

            And, I don’t like to be such a pessimist, but the reality is, no one in power wants to admit they made a mistake. Not Q. Not the Pool manager. And esp., not Donald Trump.

            Jess finishes dressing, calling out, “Goodbye Ladies!”

            I follow her, shrugging on my sweater and heaving my swim bag over my shoulder.

            Outside the facility, the day is windy and cold. Typical June. I spy LS at her bike and head over to chat.

            “Did you know that there’s a discrepancy between the schedule in the website and….”

            A gull screeches overhead. My wet hair blows in my face. The words tumble out.

            It’s another day at the pool.

The Red Bra

 

“I have a funny story about a time they had to use the PA system at the pool,” Alice announces as she bends her head under the stream of hot water, piles of suds covering her face.

          “I didn’t even know they had a PA system,” I comment, leaning back to just let the water soak my aching neck. The pool had been crowded again. Sharing a lane is okay, but not my first preference. At least I shared with Jess, a known entity, and I wasn’t in the Man Splash Sandwich like the day before yesterday. I had been sharing a lane with a slow equipment man that took over the entire lane, flinging wide arms and oblivious to all. Everytime he took a stroke and I had to pass him, I was afraid he was going to slice me with his hard plastic hand paddles. Then next to me had been three men, circle swimming. So much tidal wave action. I was rocking back and forth, gulping water instead of air.

          “I think usually,” Jess offers, “they use…. what’s that called when they yell through that cone?”

          “Megaphone?” I suggest.

          “Yes, that’s it, megaphone.”

          “Well, this was over the PA system for all to hear,” Alice starts chuckling as she drags a big toothed comb through her wet hair. “I had put all of my clothes in one of the green hanging bags, and little did I know, there was a Red Bra already in the bag!”

          She laughs and shakes her head at the memory. “I didn’t see it when I threw my stuff on top of it. It was this beautiful, lacy RED bra, that belonged to Suzanne, you remember her, Jess?”

          “Suzanne? Oh, yeah, yeah, of course. Red head, a little on the plump side.”

          “That’s her! So, when I inadvertently absconded with her Red Bra, she was beside herself. Went and told the lifeguards. And then, all of a sudden, blaring over the PA system was: “HAS ANYONE SEEN A RED BRA? A RED BRA IS MISSING. PLEASE RETURN IT IF YOU HAVE SEEN IT!”  

          “Well,” Alice continues, shaking the water out of her comb, “I had no idea that I was the culprit until I got back into the locker room and was getting dressed and what do I find at the bottom of my green bag?”

          “A RED BRA!” Jess and I yell.

          “Exactly! I was mortified,” Alice admitted. “But looking back on it now, it was hilarious to hear the male lifeguard announce over the PA system about a missing Red Bra!Y ou could tell he was embarrassed....he could barely get the words out!

          We all laughed, and I remember how just last night, Ian and I had watched an episode of Seinfeld where George interviews for a job as a Bra Salesman. He pompously tells his perspective boss about his knowledge of this most intimate of women’s garments: “The bra has two cups in the front, in sizes A through D--A being the smallest breast capacity and D being the largest--and two hooks in the back and is available in a variety of pleasing fabrics, colors and designs.”

          Bras. I haven’t worn one in years. I’m lucky that way, being of the B cup variety. Or maybe even A at this point. Yet, I’m in the minority. Bras are a big deal for the women here at the Kennedy High Pool. I watch in fascination as women take a seat on the wide bench, then slowly go through the machinations to get the bra on. Hooking it in front. Shifting the hooked side to the back. Heaving their huge melon breasts into the cups.

          It’s a process!

          But so far, I haven’t witnessed the putting on of a sexy red bra. For, what could be sexier than red?

          “Has anyone seen my bra?” Alice jokes now, out of the shower, at the bra stage of getting dresses.

          We all laugh. “Is it red?” I ask.

          She grins, “Of course!”

          Jess waves goodbye as she bounds out of the locker room. I toss my stuff into my swim bag and follow her out, thinking that maybe it’s time I bought myself a sexy red bra!

Everybody Plays the Fool

 

“Eveeryboody plaays the foooool…” Singing Woman belts out into the locker room,  rocking to the beat, her half-dressed body swaying back and forth, ass leading the way.

            Two other women, besides me, are still in the locker room here at the Kennedy High Pool. They’re both sitting on the benches chatting away while slowly putting their belongings in various bags and purses. They’re African American too, like Singing woman, and a knowing smile comes over their faces as Singing Woman continues to croon.

            One of them nods, then a loud sigh of agreement, “Ummmmmmm.” Her friend nods too, and then they both start in on the song too. The locker room fills with their sweet harmonies: “Everybooody plaaayss the fool!” they chorus.

            No one glances at me. I want to join in, but wonder if I’d be intruding. I know the song. Not all the words of course, but the opening refrain and melody. I used to spend Saturday mornings watching Soul Train as a teenager in Irvine. I loved the dancing. The music. The exuberance. It was so far from the classical music I studied. Chopin. Debussy. Rachmaninoff.

            Yet, whenever I watched Soul Train, I was swept away. I would dance along to the music. The Temptations. Sly and the Family Stone. Tina Turner.

            All black artists.

            I didn’t know any black people growing up in Irvine. All of my friends were white, middle class, suburban kids of the 70’s. I didn’t know anything different. Was my enchantment with Soul Train a longing for a culture I didn’t know? How could that be?

            Today, I live in the Bay Area, specifically, Richmond, where diversity is taken for granted. My neighborhood has people of all races: Latino, Black, Asian, and of course, White.

            I like the variety of people. I’m learning Spanish so that I can talk to my neighbors. Sometimes I get an opportunity to do this, but it’s elementary, like a five-year-old.  “Hola, Como esta? ¿Muy bien, y tú? ¿Como esta su perro? Él es viejo. ¡Yo también!”

            But that’s about it.

            Yet, with these women today, I feel like I’m part of their group because of the pool. We are all here swimming together, showering together, dressing together.

            So, why don’t I join in with their song?

            I’m not sure. Maybe it was cuz I felt shy. Or didn’t want to intrude on their shared cultural experience. Yet, I imagine, they would have been fine with my joining in.

            I guess I’ll never know.

            Unless Singing Woman takes up another Soul Train Greatest Hit. Then, I’ll join in. Maybe next time, she’ll sing another R&B classic, like Gladys Knight and the Pips, “Midnight Train to Georgia,” or “Dancing Machine” by the Jackson 5.

            Yet, I hope Everybody Plays a Fool comes up again. Lord knows, I’ve played the fool enough times to sing about it. But that’s a story for another day.

In the meantime, enjoy The Main Ingredient:

Everybody Plays the Fool

Tap Dancing

 

“She’s taking tap dancing lessons with a retired former Rockette! Can you believe that?”
I can’t. I’m on the other side of the locker room in my usual panic to get out before the lifeguards start yelling at us that the pool is closed. But this snippet of conversation floats over to me, and, undeniably, needs to be documented. The speaker goes on. She’s holding court. The other women, maybe 5 or 6 of them, are all sitting on benches in various stages of trying to get dressed. Some tugging at their leggings. Others bending over,  stretching damp socks on wet feet. Some still in the beginning stages, just sitting there on the bench, staring into space.

            “She has so much energy! And not only does she take tap dancing, but she also works a full-time job!” The speaker exclaims. “I feel like a slug next to her!”

            I laugh to myself. A slug! Exactly how I feel many days. Today, I was a little less slug-like, but only in the water. Once I’m on land, forget it. I’m slugging along.

            “25 minutes is better than nothing!” L exclaims into the air as she emerges from the shower.

            I holler back, “Totally! It’s great!”

            “I just feel so much better than I did before the pool.”

            And, here is this theme again. Water and euphoria. Does a tap dancing Rockett student feel euphoria I wonder. It’s hard to imagine.

            I remember when I tried to take tap dancing in college from the fabulous Audrey Flint. She had a small group of us, some who had a little experience dancing, and some, like me with none. Every time she said, “And to the right,” I’d go left. And every time she said, “And left….” I’d go right.

            I was directionally challenged. Like my father. A very smart man. But the right/ left mix- up is a family trait. I’ve learned to adapt to this challenge. Mr. Ian came up with the idea that the left can be identified as the ‘bass’ and the right as the ‘treble’, thinking that since I’m a pianist, I’d get this.

            Sometimes I do. But more often than not, I still have to think about it. I’ll be driving us to the pool and Ian will say, “Turn bass.” I immediately think of a Brahms piece I’m working on, one of the intermezzos in Op 118 and how it actually has the lowest A on the keyboard in the piece!

            Not really helpful to be thinking about Brahms while driving down Barrett Avenue in Richmond.

            Needless to say, I was a complete disaster as a tap dancer. I remember doggedly trying to keep up with the routine, but only for a short amount of time. Audrey was a complete professional, cheerful and patient. But I just didn’t have what it took to tap dance.

            “Carol, slow down!” L hollers at me.

            I laugh. “I am! So slow!”

            “No, I think you pick up speed as you go along,” Alice observes.

            “Maybe,” I agree, throwing on my big swim parka to prepare for the breezy rain showers.

            “Where did you get that sweater? It’s so cute!”

            The women continue their chatter. No one seems that worried about getting out by the 15-minute cut-off time.

            They just keep on tap dancing. One question at a time. One laugh at a time. One step at a time….

I Don’t Understand

 

“I tell my neighbors when they go on Next Door that it’s a bot that’s generating the complaints. It’s not a Real Person. It’s AI!”

            In the shower after a crowded, rushed swim at Kennedy High Pool, I stand under the stream of hot water, trying to get warm and trying to understand the conversation I’ve walked in on. Alice is talking. Usually, she is. Linda is listening. Kinda. Mostly she’s trying to get out of her elaborate swim costume of a polka dot suit, leggings, black strapped cap and walking shoes. It’s an arduous process.

            “…. they don’t understand,” Alice continues. “I try to explain to them that the complaints aren’t real, that it’s AI, but I don’t think they get it. But what do I know. I’m retired!” She laughs heartily, rinsing the shampoo out of her hair.

            “What are the bots complaining about?” I ask, trying to get in on the conversation.

            “It’s about language,” Alice answers. “The syntax of a sentence….”

            The bot is complaining about grammar? I wonder. This makes no sense. Did I mishear? Did Alice mishear? I don’t understand. So, I try another tack.

            “You know a lot of languages, don’t you, Alice?”

            “Oh, yes,” she nods. “I took French in school and then I learned Spanish and Italian but I tell you Mandarin was the hardest!”

            “Oh, yeah,” I laugh, remembering my feeble attempts at learning Mandarin before I went to China and then while I was there. All I learned to say in Mandarin was the name of the university where I was teaching and “Do you have any broccoli?” for when I went out to eat.

            Now I tell the two women how I’m so bad at trying to learn Spanish even though I’ve been studying it for four years.

            “You could get a friend to practice with who knows the language,” Linda advises.

            “Oh, when I was trying to learn Mandarin, this is when VCRs were first coming out, I got Chinese soap operas and learned that way.”

            “I try watching Spanish soap operas,” I sigh, “but I don’t understand anything.”

            They both laugh sympathetically? Or no, not really. They don’t understand.

            Later outside the facility after showering and dressing, I’m chatting with LS and she’s telling me about someone named Rama or Majsua or hell I don’t know. She’s impressed with this person because he gives all of his wealth to charity rather than like in our culture it’s all about how much wealth you can amass for yourself.

            “What’s his name?” I ask her.

            She repeats it. But is still can’t grasp any of it. A huge cement mixer starts to back up in the parking lot, the noise of the truck grinding out any possibility of understanding what she’s saying.

            I don’t understand anything, I think. I don’t understand what the bots are complaining about on Next Door, I don’t understand Spanish, I don’t understand the story about the ancestor of Mohammed. And, I especially don’t understand what’s going on in the US right now. I read every day in the NYT about how Trump wants to move all the Palestinians out of Gaza and create a resort; how he wants to rename the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America; how he wants to deport all of the ‘illegal aliens’ out of the US; how he wants to increase tariffs so that all the goods from China, Mexico and Canada will end up being more expensive.

            I just don’t understand.

            And on a grander scale, I don’t understand how Trump is even president. How anyone voted for him. A rapist and a criminal and authoritarian psychopath.

            I just don’t understand.

            Now I think understanding is perhaps beside the point. I just need to understand how to get through my day, work my jobs, get out of bed, not scream at any idiots in the pool.

            Understanding has always been something I craved.

            Now I’m not so sure….

           

The Search

“What are you looking for?”

“Oh, I lost my goggles…” Melvin dives again under the lane lines, skimming close to the bottom of the pool, before popping up again. He tosses a pair of pink rimmed goggles on the deck.

I’m standing on the deck, dripping and ready to exit the natatorium.  Super Swimmer man in the lime green cap and turquoise swim trunks stands next to me. I’ve swam with him in my lane a few times. He’s okay to swim with except that he’s BIG. Tall, maybe over 6 feet, and muscular. His great white core barreling through the water.

Now he just stands and watches Melvin.

Nodding toward the discarded goggles, I ask, “Are those what you were looking for?”

“Not really,” Melvin shrugs before diving back under the water, swimming close the bottom of the pool again, heading out to the middle. He’s the Super Swimmer of the pool. Sleek and muscular, fast, and furious. A lifeguard and a manly man. If he can’t find what he’s looking for, who can? I muse.

I gather up my stuff and start down the cold hallway to the locker room. Lime Cap man shakes his head, then says to me: “Do we ever really find what we are looking for?”

He chuckles. Pleased with his joke. I stare at him, then shake my head. “Depends,” I say, but before I can elaborate, he’s gone, striding down the hallway, leaving big man wet footprints in his wake.

Later, at home now, dry and hungry, I muse about Lime Cap Man’s question. Do we ever really find what we are looking for?

I suppose first, you have to know what you’re looking for. If it’s a lost pair of goggles, then that’s rather straightforward. You either find them or you don’t. But what if it’s something more abstract?

Like the meaning of life?

Hell, I’m never gonna find that! Has anyone? Of course, it’s a question that people have been asking for eons: philosophers, artists, writers. Socrates. Thoreau. Rodin. It’s a search that is eternal. And unanswerable. At least as far as I can figure.

So, I’ll stick to more mundane searches.

Right now, I’m searching for ways to stay warm besides running the heat 24 hours a day, which frankly, I can’t afford.

So, I hunker under the electric blanket with the heating pad behind me. Grab the cat and place her strategically on my ice-cold feet. Sometimes she cooperates. Other times, she’s looking for something else.

Who the hell knows what that could be!

So far, finding warmth has eluded me. It’s just not possible. I think I ‘run’ cold anyway. I talk to people who tell me they are always hot. What would that be like? They never seem happy about it.

            And, I guess, just to end with the cliché. It’s this ‘happiness’ that we are all searching for, right? I do believe that I can find this. Though it is fleeting.

            In the pool. At the piano. Snuggling with the cat. Hanging out with Ian.

            The search, though, continues. I’m always looking for something.

            Will I find it?

            I hope not. Cuz without a quest for that elusive ‘something’ would we have any purpose at all?

            Something to ponder.

            I do wonder, though, if Melvin ever found his goggles. I’ll have to ask him next time I see him. That is, if I can remember. I'm still searching for my brain. 

    Always!