Never Smile

 

“Carol!”  I’m rushing down the hallway to the pool, already clad in my cap, googles, earplugs and, of course, swimsuit. I have 55 minutes to swim. It takes me 53 minutes to do 2500 yards. I have no time to stop and chit chat.

            What the hell does Frank want?

            I stop and turn around. He’s ambling back down the hall since we’ve already passed each other. I think I said ‘hello’ to him. He is a friend of LS so I try to be nice. But today, I just want to get in the pool.

            He’s already swam. His weird long anchor patterned swim trunks hang limply over his white mole ridden legs. A striped towel is draped over his neck, and his beady eyes stare into me.

            “You never smile. Is it something I said?”

            I stare at him for a moment, dumbstruck. What the hell is he talking about? Is it just another old white guy telling me to smile? Or did he really say something to offend me?

            This is unlikely since I never have had a conversation with him. Well, this isn’t absolutely true. The other day we were both in the shallow pool here at Kennedy High and I’d been doing my 50-yard sprints on the minute, resting at the wall for 10 seconds between each set and he’d been staring at me. “How you doing?” he’d asked.

            “Tired,” I said. Duh!

            “I bet,” he nodded, before I took off again.

            Nothing in this conversation that would have been offensive, right?

            So, he must just be another man telling a woman to smile because, you know, women are always supposed to be smiling at men to make them feel good.

            Fuck that.

            “That’s a really sexist thing to say,” I told him now.

            Shocked for a moment, he stands rooted to the cement floor, staring at me. Starts to mutter some sort of explanation, “No... No, I…”
            “Women are just supposed to go around smiling at men no matter how they’re feeling? Is that what you’re asking? Have you ever asked a man to smile?”

            “Well, no…but…I…I...

            I turned around and stomped off to the pool, leaving him there sputtering some lame explanations that I didn’t want to hear.

            In the pool, I just couldn’t get the exchange out of my head. I kept going over and over how men are always expecting women to be ‘cute’ and submissive and happy. Men? They’re not expected to do this, right? I couldn’t stop thinking about the exchange and was berating myself for this. “He’s ruining my swim!” I thought to myself as I turned at the wall and stroked down the lane.

           It’s interesting timing since Ian and I had just watched a movie the night before called Ladies First, where a male chauvinist asshole CEO bonks his head and when he wakes up the whole world is upside-down gender-wise. Women are running the world and men are the second-class citizens. The CEO gets a real awakening, living as a subservient, lesser than human in this world.

            I wish that this would happen to Frank. He could shuffle out of the facility (as all old men do. Shuffle shuffle shuffle) and trip and fall and bang his head on the concrete in the parking lot and wake up and find out that all the women are in charge. And, that we were going around telling him to smile, interrupting him when he spoke, admonishing him for his stretched-out suit.

            When you think about it, women really are getting the short end of the stick in this world.

            But hell if I’m gonna smile about it.

            From now on, when I see Frank, I’m just going scowl scowl scowl or better yet, ignore him completely. And if he ever asks me again why I never smile and if it’s something he said, I’ll say, “No, but now it is!”

No Clue

 

“Hi, Bobby!”

I call out to the pool manager, fake cheery. He’s just gotten out of his dirty Subaru station wagon, holding a handful of yellow envelops, trying to hide under his grimy baseball cap.

            “Hello?” He’s confused. I can see it in his beady eyes. They’re blank, trying to retrieve information, but it’s just not there.

            I glance over at LS, who’s pulled out her phone, but manages to roll her eyes at the situation. We’re standing in the shade in front of the Kennedy pool facility, chatting about this and than when he drives up.

            “Carol,” I hint, to Bobby now, thinking he’ll remember me.

            He stares at me. Uncomprehending.

            “Carol Jameson.” He still stands in front of me, dumbfounded. Emphasis on the dumb.

            “Uh…. we talked on the phone?”

            ZING! WRONG! We’ve never talked on the phone. Only exchanged lengthy emails about the pool for several weeks. Its overcrowding. Its temperature. Its limited hours.

            “Nope,” I taunt. Do I give him another hint? Okay, I’ll play nice.

            “Email. We exchanged many emails about the pool,” I grin.

            “Oh…yeah…yeah….” he nods, shakes his head, but I can tell there’s still absolutely no recognition. What the hell? I do realize that he must email a lot of patrons complaining about the pool, but c’mon, can’t he hold the more strident ones in his brain?

            Evidently not.

            He starts in on a long harangue about the parking lot without any prompting. I don’t care about the parking lot, only the pool, but I let him ramble on.

            “They’re gonna give us a new parking lot this summer. But it’s going to take some time. They’re gonna give us some new trees, tear those out.” He nods toward the splendid cauliflower trees that shade several spaces. 

            “That’s too bad,” I comment, thinking isn’t that just the way of development? Destroying perfectly good trees that give us shade, oxygen and beauty.

            “Yeah, I agree,” he nods. Then continues his rambling after I ask about the parking lot behind the pool, which is always locked up, and could provide parking when the lot is closed this summer.  Wasted space. He has some long indecipherable explanation as to why there’s no access. Something about the gate?

            “The gate opens up inside instead of outside and so if it was available for our staff, they’d have to unlock the gate, open it the wrong way, then….”

            He stops for a moment, confused. “Well, anyway, it’d cause an accident.”

            I can’t fathom how a large chain link gate opening the wrong way would cause an accident, but I just let it go. It’s too far away from the topic of the pool. Which is all I care about. And he doesn’t seem to care about at all.

            “The pool was so nice today,” I offer, tired of his rambling. I can see that he’s trying. Trying to be someone who is in charge but has no clue what priorities he needs to explain.

            G, LS’s husband and one of the lifeguards, comes out of the facility, holding the door open for a moment.  Bobby takes the open-door escape and leaves us. Does he say goodbye? Smile with some semblance of social confidence?

            Nope. He ducks into the facility. G continues to hold the door open for him, then lets it close sharply behind him.

            “He didn’t even acknowledge me, let alone thank me for holding the door open for him,” G says, shaking his head.

            LS rolls her eyes even more if that were possible.

            “He gave us a long unasked-for update on the parking lot,” I mention.

            “Let’s get out of here,” G says, climbing onto his bike. LS follows him.

            “You guys have a good afternoon,” I call after them, heading to my car.

            “You too,” LS answers, mounting her bike and pedaling away.

            I unlock the car and heave my swim bag into the back. Then start humming the Rachmaninoff Prelude in D I’ve been practicing. Humming, according to LS’s acupuncturist, helps with anxiety.

Irina Lankova plays Rachmaninov Prelude Op.23 No.4

            I think this is true. But also, I like the melody and the depth of its emotion. A far cry from a talk with Bobby. Who probably has no idea who Rachmaninoff is.

            But he’ll give him a call. If only he could find his number!

Mind Waiting?

 

“Hi. Can I share the lane with you?”

He pauses, slowly removes the snorkel from his fleshy tan jowls. “Uh…. I was just gonna do some backstroke. And I have a tendency to go kinda all over the place. Why, the last time I shared a lane with someone and I was doing backstroke, I accidently hit her in the face. I couldn’t sleep that whole night. Would you mind waiting while I swim 4 laps?”

            I stare down at him in disbelief. First, what happened to the woman that he hit? Was she hurt? Did he apologize? Or did he just continue on his merry way, but did lose some sleep over his braining of her.

            Second. Dude! The proper response to someone asking to share your lane is: “Of course, which side do you want?”

            I get not wanting to share a lane. I’m guilty of this feeling too. I’ll even go to passive aggressive lengths (pun intended) to keep someone from asking me or getting in the lane with me. Backstroke is an effective means of accomplishing this. Weaving down the lane, taking up as much space as possible. Usually this makes the lingering deck waiting possibility choose another lane.

            So, to give this guy credit, at least he knew he was a danger.

            But, c’mon. If you can’t stay to one side of the lane doing backstroke, then don’t do backstroke!

            Or, try harder!

            I’m at the Oceanside senior center pool, El Corazon, visiting my mom and sister. In fact, my mom wanted to come and ‘watch’ me swim, which I thought would be really boring, but a cute idea. The two of them were there on the deck with me joining me in disbelief at this guy’s response.

            The pool was busy. Sunday afternoon families, bikini girls, snorkel dudes like this guy. In the lane next to him was Hat Man, floating obliviously in the center of the lane. To the other side was String Bikini Woman, grabbing at the wall on the far side, then heaving herself up onto the deck, holding her nose with thumb and index finger, and tumbling into the water, flailing about, then emerging, gasping for air.

            Neither one of these swimmers seemed like promising prospects for lane sharing, but hell if I was gonna press Snorkel Man.

            It just wasn’t worth it.

            In past years, I might have. Told him that I wasn’t going to wait. That this was not only an unfriendly response, but absurd as far as public pool lane sharing etiquette went. Then I would have gotten in the lane, put on my fins, and zoomed past him.

            Asshole.

            But today, I opted for Bikini Woman. Signaled to her that I was getting in the lane. She responded right away with a friendly wave before diving under water again, holding her nose.

            My mom and sister went to sit in the shade, watching the show. Mom marveling over a toddler that kept climbing up on deck and diving back in. A real little fish.

            “That was me, right?” I asked her when she told me about him.

            “Oh, yes, you were so at home in the water. Me? I never was.”

            I do love the water. It’s where I feel the happiest. If all the variables are in alignment: my mask doesn’t leak, my energy is good, the time allotted is enough, and my own lane. OR, if no own lane, then someone who is nice to share with.

            Bikini Woman turned out to be just fine. I’d turn around at the far wall, while she stayed to her side of the lane, flailing about underwater, the pink strings of her bikini dancing at her thighs.

            After the pool, driving home, my mom and sister commented on Snorkel Dude. “We think he must have been an attorney or surgeon,” my mom said.

            “Yeah, well, whatever he was, he was an asshole!”

            We all laughed. “What’s for lunch?” my sister asked.

            “Pizza?” my mom asked. “Can we have pizza?”

            “Sure, why not,” my sister responded. “Let’s call for delivery when we get home.”

            Tired and hungry, I settled into the warmth of the car’s back seat. Pizza did sound good. But frankly, anything would taste good after that adventure in the pool!