Tarantula!

“I think something bit me….” PP muses as she examines the small red bumps on her leg. Holding it up out of the hot tub, she glances over a DL.
“I woke up once and my eye was completely swollen shut. And then there were all of these layers of red scaling folds running down my cheek and……well, I was completely freaked out.”
“What was it?”
“A spider bite.”
“Really? A spider did all of that?”
DL nods, “It was awful.”

“Sounds super scary,” PP agrees. She can’t imagine. If she woke up with her face like that, she’d scream really loud.

That would help.

“You wanna go in Utopia,” DL heaves herself out of the hot tub, heads to the sauna.

“Hey, Sandy,” PP greets.
“Hello, Ladies.”
“DL was just telling me about a horrendous spider bite she got that…. Well, she can tell you.”
DL does. Sandy, of course, is all ears and questions. “Did they find out what kind of spider it was? You were asleep in bed when it happened? Why didn’t your cat catch it?”
“No, Yes, She was asleep, too.”
Sandy nods, “I had an ex-fiancé who got me a tarantula for a pet.”

“A tarantula!” PP exclaims, the image of her mother beating back one of the big black hairy monsters with a broom.
“Yup.”
“Why a tarantula?” PP asks.




Shaking her head, laughing, Sandy grins, “You see, there was this neighbor down the street who had the cutest rag doll Persian cat and they just ignored it like all get out and so every evening the cat would come to our door, knock knock, and we’d feed it and pet it, but then one day I realized that I was sniffling and my eyes were all red and watery. I was allergic to the cat.”

PP nods, wondering what the rag doll cat allergy had to do with tarantulas, but knew that patience was key here. If she just let Sandy talk, she’d get around to the arachnids.

“So my ex fiancé and his buddy,” she laughs. “Buddy....Cuz what do you call two forty something guys who go out and do such a thing as bring home a tarantula for a pet.”
“A pet tarantula?” PP asks, “Did you have.... what’s it called? A terrarium?”
“A terrarium? No,” she laughs again. “No, I told him to take the goddamn thing and put it back on Mt. Diablo where it belongs.”
“Did he?”
“Oh, yeah.”

“Is that where he got it in the first place?” PP asks, glancing over at DL who’s listening with rapt spider attention.
“No, he just found it in his back yard and caught it and presented it to me for my birthday.”
“Seems like a strange pet. I mean you can’t walk it or …..”
“Actually, you can. I don’t know about walking them, but they’re actually very sweet. Very good-natured.”

Again, PP conjures up the image of the big evil spider crawling menacingly out of the ‘forest’ in Hacienda Heights, her mother with the broom, ready to chase it or destroy it. At the time, it had been so scary, and of course, PP had been so relieved when her mom had done away with the savage monster.

But now a whole new world of good natured tarantulas was opened up to her.
Would the tarantulas of Hacienda Heights have made good pets?

PP shivers even in the heat of Utopia. Somehow she just can’t picture it. Having a tarantula for a pet. Way too big. Way too black. Way too scary.

No way.

And the same seemed to be true for Sandy, too, since she had her ex-fiancé get rid of her tarantula.

Surely DL’s spider bite hadn’t been a tarantula? She would’ve woken up if such a creature had been crawling under her sheets and….







EEEECCCCKKKK!!!!

PP glances around U. The two women are staring at her. Had she just shrieked for real?
“....and birds are better pets than people know. They’re actually quite possessive….” Sandy continues, DL nods, PP grins.

How’d they get from tarantulas to birds?

See, that’s what she gets for allowing her imagination to run away. She loses the thread of the story.

Though in this case, the loss of thread might be just what she needs for an apt conclusion.

After all, how did she get from showing her bites to DL to a story about Tarantulas?

She never knows. It just happens.

Reality

‘That is such a cute suit!’ Sandy exclaims from her end locker vantage point as PP wriggles into the new cute suit.
“Thanks.”
“So Retro. Love it!” Sandy continues, turning away from PP and rummaging through her locker. “Too cute to be wasted on this pool.”

Laughing, PP shakes her head, wondering what this means. Like she should be lounging about in the Bahamas, drinking Mai Tais and turning heads?

“Well, it’s this pool or Hilltopia,” PP says instead of sharing her sexy tropical vision with Sandy. Not that Sandy wouldn’t have liked it. But PP had to get into the pool now or she wasn’t gonna get a swim in. And she needed a swim even though, like on all Wed eves, she was beyond tired.

Why did it feel extra specially so this eve?
Radiation poisoning?
Shit.

Everyone was going on and on about the nuclear plant melt down in Japan after the horrific earthquake and tsunami. Like the poison particles were gonna float through the air 5000 miles and cause millions of cases of thyroid cancer to the unsuspecting populace of California.




Was this really possible?

Sandy nods when PP mentions this worry later. “Yeah, well, I dunno. I suppose it could be. But I’ll tell you what I’m worried about that no one is talking about. The water. That’s what I’m concerned about. The disaster over there was caused in part by water and so it makes sense that the nuclear waste would get absorbed in the water and then be carried across the ocean to us.”

PP sighs. Damn. Another thing to worry about. She just wished that she could stay in the pool and swim and swim and never get out so that she wouldn’t have to hear about such things.

But of course, this isn’t possible.
She’d get too cold.
Or too hungry.
Or too tired.

Plus even as she swims, her mind keeps on worrying. Hell, what were all these Californians panicking about? Sure, the radiation might, just might, waft over the sea and contaminate them.

But in the meantime, what about all of the horror that the people of Japan are going through right at this moment? No water. No food. No electricity. Hundreds of people dead and missing. It was too horrific to contemplate for long.




And so she wished that she could go on swimming, up and down, up and down. Lap after lap.

Yet swimming was the answer only for 45 minutes or so. After that, well, Reality has to takeover, as much as she tried to fight It.

Dropping her cute new suit, now a wet ball after her swim into a plastic bag, PP sighs again as she tried to get her stuff together to head home.

But then, hilarity sets in with the Utopian Women.
Suzie says something about ‘sensible’? "What do we know about that?”
And Sandy laughs and nods, as PP grins, “Nothing. We know nothing about being sensible. It takes way too much effort. I try to avoid it whenever possible.”

Suzie slaps her skinny pink corduroyed thigh, Sandy smiles, DL gives PP a look, like Can we get the hell outta here?

This is what PP pays attention too, of course. DL’s the Queen of Silent Communication.

Something PP wishes more people had just a little bit more of, esp. lately with so much Disaster in the air.

In Memoriam: Wispy, the Sweetest Cat in the World

“Where’s Wispy?”
I’m visiting Ian’s Fruitvale Château, where Wispy, the Queen of the Spots, has resided for several years.
“She’s in her latest Spot,” Ian grins, leading me into the living room to point at the napping lump of gray fur, her Spot this day being on the kitty rug in front of her bay windows, looking out over E 16th street. Of course, Wispy isn’t gazing at the view. At least not right now, but is deep in Kitty Dreamland.
"That’s a New Spot, isn’t it?” I ask, bending down to ‘pat’ her on her smooth round head. IPR [Instant Purr Response] starts up immediately. She is the Sweetest Cat.
“Yes. It is a relatively New Spot. Last week she was on the corner of the bed, the week before she was in front of the heater.....”
“Well, of course, that’s the warmest spot in the house. She’s no idiot.”
He laughs, “That’s true. It’s just so cute. Every so often she moves to a new spot and then that’s the spot for a few days or a few weeks and then she abandons that spot and moves on to the next.”
“She’s an Apartment Spot Traveler!” I joke, sitting down on the floor to continue the purring rubs, which have now turned into sweet, “Mrrreeoww. Mrrreeoow’s.”
Ian nods, smiling down adoringly at his Sweet Kitty.
“She really is the Sweetest Cat,” I proclaim, as Wispy rubs her head against my hand, demanding more ‘pats.’
"Yes, she is,” Ian agrees, before heading back into the kitchen to check the broccoli.



“Hey, Wisperator!’ I call out, walking through the apartment looking for her.
“That’s a cute name,” Ian follows me, “Wisperator Wisperator... Oh, Wispy!”
“You don’t think it’s too much like the Terminator?” I ask, finding The Wisperator in her latest spot, on the arm of the green couch, in her yoga stretch position. One paw lying cutely crossed over the other. This is one of her favorite poses. She’s so relaxed, yet such a poser too.
“No,” Ian grins, leaning over to pat her paws. (She’s one of those rare cats who not only allows this, but also seems to enjoy it) “I think it’s a cute name.”
“Super cute,” I laugh as we both gaze down at her.




“You know what the cutest thing about Wispy is?” I ask, as we hang out after dinner, Wispy sitting on Ian’s lap.
“No,” he smiles, patting the Purring One.
“She always has her Wispy Smile on.”
“Yeah,” Ian laughs, “that’s true.”
“I think that’s one of the reasons she’s the Sweetest Cat in the world. Her Kitty Smile is always beaming.”
“Yes,” he agrees, examining her smile, “it certainly is one of the reasons.”
“Of course, the real reason is just cuz she is the Sweetest Cat in the World,” I proclaim.
He grins, “Yup, you’ve got that right.”

And she was. The Wisperator. The Wispy. The Queen of the Spots. The Sexy Yoga Poser. The Constant Smiler.

Wispy was the Sweetest Cat in the World.

And we’ll all miss her terribly.
But her ‘smile’ lives on in our hearts, as corny as it sounds.
Somehow, I think she wouldn’t mind ‘corny’.

For after all, she was the Sweetest Cat in the World!

The Unexpected

“The pool, it was good tonight, yes?” Beautiful Serene Vietnamese Woman asks PP as she and DL tumble tiredly into Utopia.

“Yeah, the temperature was nice,” PP responds, settling into her corner while DL plops down on the bench below. “But I had the Splashy Guys Experience.”

BSVW nods, “Yes.”

“You timed it just right, leaving when you did. You know the one with all the Stringy Grey Hair who pounds the water to create waves galore?” PP asks.

“AAARRRRGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!” she cries, sitting up and tossing her long dark hair out of her face. “THAT GUY!!!!”

DL giggles along with PP even though she doesn’t know who SGH Splasher is. Later DL tells PP how BSVW’s response was so unexpected. She’s always so calm and quiet and well, serene. So this emotional outburst of Swimmer’s Ire was even funnier.

“My husband,” she continues, wrapping her dark hair into a neat bun on top of her head, “he tells me That Guy, he plays the drums” (She motions like there’s a bongo in front of her to beat on) in the man’s sauna.”





Giggling, PP nods, “That doesn’t surprise me. I believe it.”

“Too much energy, That Guy,” she pronounces, lying back down,sighing loudly.

And PP has to agree that this may be the crux of his splashing problem. He has to beat the water as hard as he can and make as many waves as possible because he needs a release for all of that excess energy.




Something PP doesn’t get. She never has excess energy. Esp. on Wednesday evenings after her long work day. She’s always amazed when she gets to this point in the day here in Utopia, ready to collect a story or two for her blog.

DL rises, heading for the cooler climes outside of Utopia.
“You getting too hot?” PP asks her.
She nods, can’t speak she’s so hot. Another thing PP doesn’t get since she’s always cold. Except in Utopia. One of the many reasons it is Utopia.

Beautiful Serene Vietnamese Woman being another. Esp. when she surprises PP with her hilariously apt reaction to a common Oakland Y pool phenomenon: drum playing, water beating, too energetic swimmer guys.

We Are So Sad!

“We are so sad!” Indian Water Walker proclaims to all the women dressing, grumbling in the aisle.

The sauna is Out of Order.

It is a day of great sadness and complaining and coldness.

Before swimming, PP had heard the Water Aerobics Women, who’d just been in the pool, complaining about how cold they were & offering a variety of solutions:





“I’m just gonna go home and put my pajamas on!” “I know someone. She just puts on her pajamas right here after her workout.” “My son, I got him some of those pajamas and he liked them so much he was wearin' them all the time. I tell you I am sick of those pajamas.” “I’m gonna go home and make me something hot to drink.” “I’m gonna make me some hot cereal.” “Mmmm…hot Oatmeal.”

“I’m gonna go home and make me a cocktail!”




PP laughs along with them as she pushes her stray hairs up into her cap in front of the mirror where they’re all working their post workout beautifying. Usually, PP would be putting her cap on in the sauna, but the Out of Order sign, which she ignored at first, (How could it be? She’d just been in the sauna yesterday and it was fine!) was right. When she’d opened the door a cold silent emptiness greeted her.

Damn.

We are all so sad!

After her swim, IWW harrumphs around in the shower. Shaking her head. “We need the sauna!” PP offers, knowing intuitively that this is what all the harrumphing is about.
“I KNOW! WE DO! It is not right!”
“Yeah, the pool is cold,” PP agrees, joining in the complaining, an activity near and dear to her heart, esp. when it involves temperature.

“YES it is! And when the water is cold they need to fix the sauna!”
“What are our fees for anyway?” another woman joins in.
“That is absolutely right!” IWW agrees, then heads back into the shower, still shouting something about the broken sauna, but by this time, PP is wet and cold and without the sauna, cranky, and so she just ignores the rest of the Shower Rant and heads back to her locker.

IWW arrives shortly after her. Bird Tattoo Woman is cranky, too, as she peels off her black spandex to show off her cockatoo. “I worked out upstairs. And one of the machines is broken. And I wanted a sauna and now you tell me it is broken.”




She pouts.

IWW nods, “We are all so sad!” she proclaims again.

And we are.

I Don’t Have Favorites!

“Ahhhhrrrgggh!” she play acts, pretending that she’s mad, upset, put out over PP showing up at the same locker again. Throwing up her hands in mock exasperation. Knocking her forehead in pretend frustration. Grinning from ear to ear.

“Here we are again!” PP calls out as she languids down the aisle to her locker, grinning at Pretend Girl. “Must be Tuesday!”

PG laughs, nods and smiles as PP comes up to the locker next to hers and starts to unwind the combination. “Did you have fun in the pool tonight?” PP asks her as she pulls her pile of clothes out of the too small locker, trying not to drop her fuzzy purple skirt on the wet cement floor.

“Yeah,” PG shrugs. “I gotta go find my mom and see if she has my other clog.”

“Oh, okay,” PP nods as PG shyly reaches inside her own locker and pulls out a flip flop. Is a flip flop a clog? Does she have one flip flop foot and one clog foot?
Who knows?

But one thing PP does know is that PG loves swimming. When PG is in the pool it's pure giggling fun with her mom and dad (PP guesses). She dives under the lanes in front of the lap swimmers (PP doesn’t care with her—she’s just having so much fun); slams through the water in a spastic imitation of the crawl; hangs on her parents, laughing joyfully.

Yet like the other child PP saw over the summer, there’s something ‘up’ with her. More autism? Perhaps. PG’s eyes are too big and round and stare kinda sideways out of her fleshy brown face. Her speech is carefully weighed before she speaks. Her manner is just a little off.

How old is she?

PP can’t tell. Certainly not 16 (like the rules for the locker-room state & everyone ignores) But then, maybe this is it. Maybe she is 16 and she acts and looks like a
10 or 11 year old?

Whatever the ‘different ability’ is that she has, PP still knows one thing: she has a sly sense of humor.

Like the play-acting greeting just now. So fun and unexpected, completely delighting PP on this tired post swim Tuesday eve at Hilltopia.

“Did you find your clog?” PP asks PG when she returns. PG stares at PP, mystified. Then shrugs. “Yeah.”

But no clog in hand. So…? Maybe she hadn’t said clog at all in the first place?

“Are you hungry after swimming?” PP asks, changing the subject.
“Yeah.”
“What’re you gonna eat when you get home?”
“Some cereal.”
“That sounds fun. What kind?”
She stares shyly at PP. Why is she being bombarded with all of these questions her look seems to say, though of course this doesn’t deter PP. She’s all about asking questions. It’s the answering them that she abhors.






“Some kind of ….” PG pauses, considering the cereal question, “….with honey?” she ventures.
“Oh, like Honey Nut Cherrios?” PP asks, not that she’s ever eaten such delectable fare, but she’s seen the ad on TV with the woman in the hard hat building a skyscraper and effusing over a bowl of it.
PG shrugs, then smiles, “Yeah.”

There’s a silence. Why is PP so wanting to engage her tonight? Is it because she’s been saddled with dense abstract meaningless academic writing all day and the idea of discussing Cherrios is appealing?

“You have school tomorrow?” PP continues inanely.
“Yeah.”
“What’s your favorite subject?”

PG stares at the ground for a moment, then up at PP, her gaze fierce, “I don’t have favorites!”

Wow! PP’s totally thrown by the intensity of this response. She has favorites of everything. Favorite color: blue; favorite cat: Sylvia; favorite TV show: All My Children. But decides against insisting this propensity for favoritism on PG. Instead goes for the diplomatic answer, not her favorite, but sometimes necessary.

“That’s good not to have favorites,” PP agrees.
“Yeah.”

PG doesn’t offer more and PP doesn’t press. It could very well be a sensitive topic for her. Maybe she wasn’t anyone’s favorite at home or school or with friends. Maybe since she’s “different” the reality of ‘favoritism’ was one she was keenly aware of.
Maybe it’s not such a good question to ask strange girls in the locker-room, PP thinks as she starts to pack up her bag to head out.

“Hey!” PP turns, smiling (or trying to), “we talk every Tuesday, but I don’t know your name. What is it?”
“Marlene.”
“Marlene?” PP grins, like Marlene Dietrich? Of course, she’s not going to have this film archive reference, though Bay Area Children can surprise you.





“No. With a e!”
“Oh, sorry. How do you spell it? M-E-L-E-N-A? Melena?”
She nods, pleased now. “That’s a very pretty name,” PP tells her as she closes her locker and heaves her swim bag up.

Melena smiles happily and shyly.
“See you next Tuesday,” PP says.
“Yeah.” Melena agrees as she turns away to focus her attention on getting home to her Cheerios. Which PP is sure, are NOT her favorite!

The Wrong Carrot

The jacuzzi’s full of the post aerobic class women. Well, three of them by the time PP finishes her swim in the cute little West End Tennis Club pool.

When they’d arrived (PP and her Sis), the Aerobic Ladies were taking up the entire pool except for one lane where a diligent older gent was beating the water from end to end—you know that kind of lap swimming that seems to go backwards with a lot of splashing?

“Oh, I forgot about the aerobics,” Sis murmurs, not mentioning Backwards Gent.
“That’s okay,” PP nods, surveying the scene of bobbing sunhats of lavender, black and lime. “There’s still room.”

“No, you take the lane and I’ll wait,” Sis urges, but then just at this moment, as if she’d overheard? the Aerobics Instructor hollers at the women taking up a lap lane to move on over.

“Thank you!” Sis effuses to her, glancing over at PP who grins with pool takeover satisfaction. After all, the aerobics don’t need a lap lane and her sister does!
And so, now after their swim, lounging about in the Jacuzzi, PP sighs as she climbs in. It’d been a hell of a week. Her grandmother’s funeral, while quiet and nice, had been completely draining and so this day with her sister, beginning with a swim was such a treat.

And the Jacuzzi Women were just icing on the cake as the saying goes. Or in this case, bubbles on the water. Big Bubbles. Big Tan Bubbles. Big Tan Bubbles with lots of time on their hands. They volunteer. Travel the world. Eat exotic foods.

Or not so exotic.

The bread rhapsodizing that ensued evidenced just how unexotic their tastes really were. Which not to be snotty or anything, but fit Torrance to a T.

“When I was in Asia, I missed bread so much!”
“Me too!” PP joins in. “Where in Asia were you?”
“Japan.”
“Ah, I was in China and you just couldn’t find bread, at least not the kind of bread we have here: sour dough, wheat, …”
“I like Rye Bread!” Scrawny Tanned Woman interrupts. “In Germany, my husband, he always insisted on the Rye Bread.”
“It soaks up the butter best,” Sis offers.





They look at her for a second, then all nod in agreement. The comment took a moment to process, but Sis had said it all with her Butter Soak Up Proclamation. No further analysis was needed.

However, butter soaking properties or not, PP hates Rye Bread, yet decides against vocalizing this. She was outnumbered.

“I had to try to stop eating so much bread,” Asia Breadless Woman announces. (But maybe she didn’t really say this; PP could be making this part up to get to the heart of the story faster.) “I’ve lost 45 pounds!” she continues.
“Wow! That’s great!” Sis congratulates.

“Yeah, my aerobics teacher she has this website and she wants to put me on the Before and After, but I eat too much bread to be on the website. She keeps saying that if I just lost 15 more pounds I could be on her website. I hate to break it to her, but she’s holding out the wrong carrot. I have no desire to be on her website!”




She giggles conspiratorially. For of course, we all agree. Who’d want to be on one of those before and after sites? Of course many must since there’re such a plethora of them. And then there’s Oprah. She’s big on the Before and After. In fact, maybe she invented it. But that’s another blog.




PP admires Asian Breadless Woman for her anti before/after fame conviction. Hell, she’s not gonna give up bread for such an embarrassing enticement!

And PP wonders, is there a right carrot? Would ABW agree to the Before/After Photo Shoot with some other 'carrot'?

Well, you all know the answer to this.

Bread.
Rye Bread.
Wheat Bread.
French Bread.
Lots of Bread.

Of course, then there's the Oprah After/Before Syndrome, but hell, isn't bread worth it?

Happy New Year All You Bumps on a Log!

“So, how’s everyone’s New Year’s so far?” Friendly Young Fella asks the group soaking in the hot tub. PP and DHBF are in Encinitas for the holiday visiting her family. And of course, the Magdalena Ecke YMCA is a must pool stop.

The pool had been freezing (at least by comparison with Hilltopia); PP was certain that the ‘competition’ pool was kept competitively cold for all of those competitors, of which she was not. However, the swim now completed, the Jacuzzi hit the spot.

No one answered FYF’s question. Everyone was either spaced out (like the Crossed-Eyed Blond sitting in the corner, the jets gurgling up her neck) or just not sure how to respond. After all, it didn’t seem like anyone knew FYF except for his two buddies who just grinned and said nothing too.

So, PP answered, cuz, hell, she knew she could at least write about it in her blog. “It’s going great now!” she laughed. “How could it not be in here?”
He nodded, appreciating a response? “Good point,” he grinned, glancing around at the other hot tubers all sitting like bumps on a log. Where did that saying come from anyway? Did logs really have bumps? It did seem apt though. If logs did have bumps, they wouldn’t be saying much or moving much or growing much? Maybe they would grow?





Yeah, this group was like a bunch of LARGE Growing Bumps on a log. No one had anything to say about their holiday.

But yet, this didn’t faze FYF. He just shrugged, eyeing PP speculatively, and then turning to his buddies, who started discussing some gross guy movie with one of those gross guy stars like Jim Carey, or Ben Stern, or are these names even right? You get the idea. The conversation now centered around peeing in the pool and how if you peed in the pool a tattle-tale red circle would float around you.





PP had heard of this growing up around pools, but had never witnessed it. Must be a pool pee Urban Legend.

Or just a great dumb topic for a group of young guys to joke about before they went out partying for their New Year’s eve.

Something, PP vaguely remembered doing.
Before she became a Bump on a Log.

Shit....Christmas!

“SHIT!!!!” PP hears the curse, and then a giant THUD.
PP knows who the Curser is—Scraping Walker Woman. And the THUD must be her flailing and knocking something or falling and hurting something.

PP had made a resolution not long ago not to ask SSW if she needed ‘help.’ She can’t remember the details now of why she’d made this promise to herself. It musta had something to do with being made to feel stupid asking SSW if she needed help.
And so, today, her first impulse is to just ignore the curse and obvious (from the sound of it) injury. But yet….What if she really had hurt herself? And was lying over on the cold cement floor, 20 feet from PP, hidden by two rows of lockers, writhing in agony? Or passed out? Or bleeding to death? Or…..

Shit.

PP pulls on her black pants and marches over to SSW’s domain.
She’s there, as PP had pictured, crumpled in a heap on the floor, struggling with putting on her own pants.

“Are you okay?” PP has to ask now. She’s there.
SSW turns, totters on the floor, manages a grimace in PP’s direction. “Yes, yes, I’m fine!”
“Okay, just checking. I heard you….”
“Oh that!” SSW chuckles. “I was just thinking about this Christmas card that my sister-in-law sent me and it had all this religious junk on it….you know Mary and the Baby Jesus and……”

She harrumphs. “My brother is not particularly religious, so I don’t think it was his idea to send the card, and then I started thinking that I shouldn’t be having this reaction to the Baby Jesus and Mary. That I’m a Bad Person. But then I thought, 'No, I am not a Bad Person.' What do you think? Oh I’m so sorry if I’ve offended you. You might be religious and….”

PP laughs as she heads over to the counter to start brushing out the tangles. “No you haven’t offended me.”

“Oh, that’s good. That’s a relief. Because some people you know would be offended and I wouldn’t want to offend them and this damn mark on my face I fell on the carpet the other day. Can you believe that falling on the carpet would do this?”

PP had noticed the large dramatic purplish reddish blotch on SSW’s face when she’d been in the pool and SSW had been doing her herky jerky water walking. It looks bad, but PP doesn’t say this now. Not wanting to offend SSW. Though frankly she thinks that offending her would be pretty hard.

“And when I fell, oh I was so mad.” SSW rarely waits for PP (or anyone else for that matter) to answer. “But Sam was home and just put some Vaseline on it and that reminded me how my father he was a physician and one time I think it was around the holidays actually I scalded myself something awful I don’t know how, but my father who was a physician, he just put some Vaseline on it and I remember I was little maybe only 7 or 8, and that it was very soothing. So when my husband did the same thing with this,” She points at the wound, shaking her head, disgusted, “well it was very soothing.”



“Yes, those old fashioned remedies are often the best,” PP agrees, trying to think of a way to get her to stop her Vaseline Monologue so she could turn on the hairdryer without being rude.

“….the other day I ran into a friend of mine who knew me before the surgery and he told me that I should have one of those little electric chairs and then I could just zoom around so much more better. And it made me so mad. That he would say that. The doctor who did the surgery, he said that I was healing just fine. That I should just keep doing what I’m doing. That it’d take time. But that Dan, this friend of mine or really he’s not someone that really knows me anymore. Obviously. He just made me so mad….”






PP finally just turns on the hairdryer. She had been actually encouraging the Anti- Jesus Story and as she was doing it, she knew that it was going to digress into something that she didn’t want to encourage and also that she wouldn’t be able to stop SSW cuz once she started in talking, she didn’t stop.

And even as PP begins drying her hair, she can still hear that SSW is talking. She just can’t make out the words anymore.

Does it matter? Does SSW find offense with PP’s Dryer Noise Deterrent?
She doesn’t seem to. The only thing that really seems to set her off is any mention of her differently-abled situation. Whether it was an offer of help or a suggestion of easier transport.

“Shit!”

PP can hear this through the dryer noise and this time she just smiles. Thinks of Mary and the Baby Jesus, and starts to hum Away in the Manger, the image of Mary holding the Lord Our Saviour and the Three Kings of Orient Are vivid in her mind's eye as SSW's muffled drone goes on and on and on.....

Found Suit, Lost Time

“We’ve ______ you!” Hemophiliac Swimmer, Floyd, beams over at PP, stopped at the wall to adjust her mask.
“What?” She could take her ear plugs out, but then they’ll leak and….
“We MISSED you!”
“Oh, yeah, thanks. I usually swim up at Hilltop, but today….”

It was really too much to go into the explanation of why she was there at the Oakland Y on a Saturday afternoon instead of the more convenient Hilltopia. She’d lost her swimsuit. Horror of horrors. Wrapped up in a towel on Wed. There had been a Disruption of Ritual (DOR) by DL—-she’d had to show PP a lock---it was ‘cornflower blue’. Very pretty, but in the distraction of the pretty blue lock, PP had left her suit wrapped in the towel. Had tossed it into the dirty towel bin and left.





Needless to say, when she arrived home 30 minutes later the nervous breakdown was inevitable and full-blown. To lose a swimsuit is the worst! Esp. at Christmas when a trip to Ross would be from hell.

So on this Sat., she’d come to find the suit. And she had. Or rather a very nice Y Woman had donned rubber gloves, dug through two trashcans of ‘lost’ crap, and voila! there it was at the bottom of the second can.

She didn’t need to tell Floyd all of this obviously. So she just nodded, made an inane comment about how he was still swimming.
“I’m retired. I can come every day.”
“Can’t wait!” she’d joked, then taken off down the lane.

He waited for her, stopped her before turning, admonishing, shaking his finger at her, “It’ll come soon enough. Don’t wish the time away.”
“Oh, sure,” she’d agreed, “of course.”

And as she swam back down the lane, she had to think that he was so right. The time just swam by so fast. Before she knew it, she’d be 80 years old, swimming in her own lane cause of some special swim malady.

As long as she kept swimming, that is!

Hard Headed, Soft Bottomed

“Oohh, that’s hot!” Dyed Blond Ringlet Woman dips her big toe into the hot tub. PP laughs, nods, agreeing. She’s still sitting on the edge of the tub, unusual for her. Rarely does she not just plunge into the soothing heated water to counter the pool’s cool temp.

Yet this evening, the pool had been perfect. Warm and empty. PP had had the end lane where the stupid families usually frolic. This lane is the warmest since it has tiny heaters lining the wall.

She swims as close as she can to these without running into the wall.

So, when DBRW cries out over the hot tub temp, PP agrees. It is hot and maybe it seems this way since the pool hadn’t been too cold.

Glancing at the temp, DBRW grins, then shakes her curls, “106! No wonder!”
“That is toasty,” PP slips in now, the heat delicious.
“It’s empty. That’s why the temperature is so hot. The more people that are in the tub, the more the temperature goes down.”
PP’s puzzled by this. Wouldn’t it be just the opposite? The more people in the tub, the more they heat it up?
“How’s that?” she asks, curious.
“Our body temperature, it’s 98 point something, and so when lots of people get in their body temperatures bring the total temperature down.”

She glances over at PP. “I don’t think you and me are gonna bring the temperature down just the two of us.” She chuckles as she inches into the water, her round brown belly half way covered by the swirling bubbles.
“I never thought of it that way,” PP nods. “I guess that does make sense.”
But does it? PP is skeptical yet decides not to voice this. It’s too good of a story the way it is.

DL arrives, perches on the edge of the tub, grinning at the already started Aquatopia Dialogue. When DBRW explains her water temp theory to DL, DL just nods. It makes sense to her. But she’s a poet. Everything makes some kind of sense in a metaphorical way, right?





“My daughter, she is good at math!" DBRW starts the topic out of nowhere. Apropos of much of the dialogue at the Oakland Y. "Don’t let no one tell you that girls ain’t good at math. They are. And I tell her, you use your algebra. You go to the store, you see a can of peas for 30% off, and you figure it out using your algebra.”
PP’s not sure that algebra is the exact math used; but then again, math isn’t her forte.

Because she’s a girl?

No, because it’s stupid.

“And when I tell my daughter this, she just stands there, hands on hip and refuses to listen to me. She thinks she knows it all. And the kids. They are smarter than they used to be. I look around and see that how are all these kids being born smarter and smarter?”

“It’s the math?” PP ventures.
She laughs, “Exactly!” Not missing a beat. “And my daughter, because she is so smart and she knows it all, when I tell her the opposite she just shakes her head. Tells me, No, it ain’t so. She’s so Hard Headed that girl is.”
She laughs. They all do.





“And I know that she get it from me. Why when I was growing up, everyone would say, “'Nadine,' that’s me 'you are so hard headed!' But I’m not so hard headed anymore. No. But I am soft bottomed!” She laughs, they all do.

“And I don’t have to do a thing. It just gets softer and softer and softer!”

She grins, shakes her head, sighs deeply, thinking of the softness.

DL and PP crack up, their soft bottoms growing too.

Was Mark Twain A Racist?

“Not to change the subject, but….” Sandy interrupts PP’s gushing rhapsody of her perfect swim: warm water (82), own lane, (rarity) and no air conditioning until the end of her swim. (Sorry to break that parallel structure, but in reality there was no parallel structure, just free form gushing.)

Sandy had been her usual listening self, nodding and agreeing with appropriate "uh huh’s” but she’d had enough. She needed an answer.

“Let me ask you this, Was Mark Twain a Racist?”
PP can’t change gears fast enough, from swimming euphoria to race relations. So she’s glad DL is there, and after a LONG pause, asks, “What do you think, DL?”

DL has the perfect answer, of course. Something about Twain writing about a certain period of history and thus documenting a certain truth of the times; however, on the other hand, in our time, today some might very well perceive his writings as racist.

She said it more eloquently than this, but you get the gist.
Sandy nods.
“Why do you ask?” PP wants to know. After all it is 9:45 at night in Utopia and everyone’s tired and spaced out from their workouts.
“Well, you know Iris?”
“Yeah, sure,” PP nods.
"Well, she was reading White Oleander....."
”That’s a good book,” PP interrupts wondering how racism fits in to this read. She can’t remember any race relations in it, but her memory is abdominally abysmal.

“Yes, well, it’s okay, but the point is that when I asked her if she’d read Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer and she’d said no, and then when I said oh you must read them another woman butted in and said that oh yeah they made her read those books in school and they were racist and so I was just wondering what you thought. After all N_____ Jim was one of the sweetest, kindest most beloved characters of all time. (PP can’t write the N word out, but bear in mind that Sandy said it, no qualms at all even though African American Princess was sitting in the corner wide eyed listening to the entire discussion.)







PP on the one hand admires Sandy’s nonchalant usage in the context of the discussion, yet on the other side, well…in the context of our times and Utopia it seemed a bit brazen or inappropriate or in any case PP was a bit uncomfortable to say the least and so she blathers in something about Jim being the moral center of the novels (Like she remembers! See note above)

Sandy likes this assessment though and agrees. Then goes on to talk about Thanksgiving and going down to her uncle’s and how he sets a table like Martha Stewart with the turkey centerpieces and fancy flower arrangements and matching china etc. and how everyone asks if he’s gay, and she always laughs and says, “Nah, he’s been married for 26 years and is one of the straightest guys I know.”





AAP is nodding this whole time, taking it all in? She never commented upon Twain, so PP doesn’t know if she was offended or not. But after Sandy’s ‘Gay Story’ PP just comments on how those ‘stereotypes’ are everywhere.
"That they are," AAP pipes in.
And they all laugh, nodding and agreeing.
“What time is it?” Sandy asks.
“9:45,” PP says. “I better get going. I’m so slow.”
Chuckling, Sandy rises and gathers up her towel and water spray bottle and saunters out.

PP follows AAP out who turns and grins at her, “We really got goin in there, didn’t we?” she laughs.

And PP agrees, that yes, they did.

But did they answer Sandy's question, she wonders? Hell, wonder what would Martha say?



Shut up, sit down, and eat the goddamn turkey!

Utopia in 3 Parts

I.
Something to Hold On To


“Oh…what a day!” African Princess sighs, lounges longer on the side of Aquatopia. DL and PP smile and nod. Every day is a long day if you ask PP. “All day I was directing traffic. And all the people. Picking up trash. We’d clear one street, then the trash was covering it…” She sighs deeply. “It was such a mess.”
“You were in the City today for the Giants’ parade?” DL asks.
“That’s right.” She shakes her head. “It was a mess. We didn’t write no tickets today at all. It was a free for all. Everyone got away with murder. People were crazy. There were so many of them. It was insane.”
“I wonder why the Giants winning the World Series is such a big deal,” PP muses aloud the unspeakable.

But there’s careful thought going on in Aquatoipa: “People have nothing else to hold on to,” In the Corner of the Hot Tub Woman nods. Serious.
And all the women nod. Serious. Knowing that it’s true.

II.
Kissing Make You Sick




“You make the ginger, the lemon. You put in a cup of red wine. You drink it and you not sick. No more!” Diabetes Woman nods her dark head, waves her arm dramatically to any and all in the Utopia Sauna.
Does this really work? PP wonders. She’s not gonna try it since she can’t drink red wine.
“You’ll just pass out asleep then,” Sandy laughs.
“No. You try it. If you get the sickness. Then this will stop it. I always take it. When I take care of babies, they always kiss me. They try to kiss me on the mouth.” She demonstrates, puckering her lips, “ but then I turn away, give them my cheek. They kiss me there. Not on mouth. Babies want to kiss on lips. But then you catch their sickness.”

“Now I know why I don’t kiss babies!” PP exclaims. Everyone laughs except DW who just plows on. “It is how babies are. My own babies. They were this way too. Always kiss on the mouth. But no no no. I say, here.” She points to her cheek. “Then you make the red wine one cup with ginger and lemon and you not sick. No more.”

III
Our Person





PP comes back from her shower to hurry into her clothes before getting kicked out of the locker room. DL is in deep conference with Liver Transplant Woman, Sally. They’re head to head, whispering. DL is mostly nodding while Sally is almost crying. PP can tell she’s close. She does cry easily. But this can happen when you’ve had a liver transplant, you’re off your meds, and your grandfather is dying.

Hell, anyone would cry.

But yet, DL holds her own. Says something soft and soothing every few words, placing a gentle hand on Sally’s shoulder. PP marvels at DL’s therapist abilities so late in the day at the end of Utopia. How does she do it? PP wonders.

Later, trudging up the stairs, PP asks DL what it was all about. But DL can’t really articulate it. Too overwhelming. Something about Death of her Person.

Cause we all have Our Person/s. For PP it’s her Gram and her Niece. For DL it was her dad and her aunt. For Sally it is her grandfather.

It has been a long day, PP thinks, as they walk out into the dark breezy night. But thinking about her Persons, now, at this moment, she has something to hold on to.

The Richmond Plunge: 2 Perspectives

“You do Pilates?”
She eyes PP up and down, focusing in on her belly, then patting her own round soft melon of one, her wet turquoise flowers ballooning out.
“No,” PP laughs.
“Just swimming?”
“Yeah, just swimming,” PP answers.
“Bet she always been small,” Pilates Asking Woman’s Friend snorted.
Laughing, PP nods, “Yeah, that’s true. I’m small.”

And she is, esp. when confronted with the Richmond Plunge Swimming Crowd. No one did Pilates is one way of putting it, making PP and her partner today, CC (who’s really really small!) stand out even more.

The two Pilates Snorting Women give PP one more up and down before heading into the lovely lockerroom. Does PP need to describe how deluxe the Richmond Plunge is now? Maybe a little.




The women’s bathroom’s showers are white pristine tiles with little orange, red and green star fish mosaics in the floor. A sparkling mermaid graces the wall on the way out to the amazingly stupendous pool. A gigantic mural fills the far wall: a scene of a pond with white egrets, a little island and a woman wading into it. It’s all bright greens, and blues, and browns.





The pool itself (PP had to ask the lounging about lifeguards) is 60 meters long!!! And 20 across. The kids are relegated to half, leaving tons of room for lap swimmers.

It’s a swimmer’s dream pool. At least it is for PP. Swimming in her lane, a pasty middle aged guy shares her lane intermittently. Yet the lanes were so wide that PP barely noticed him. Well, she did notice him, but still, the width of the lap lanes easily held two side by side swimmers.





CC, on the other hand, as PP found out later, had a less welcoming experience than PP’s Pilates Curious Women.

Evidently, when CC had gotten in the lane, there’d been a boy swimming in her lane. CC asked if she could share. The kid just nodded and swam away. Then the father jumped in, nearly on top of CC, so she decided to move to the next lane.






Well.

The woman who was hogging the wide lane next to the boy and dad was having none of this ‘sharing a lane.”
“Excuse me,” CC had asked. “Can I share your lane?”
The woman had glared at her, harrumphed, and then pointed to the kid/dad lane, “Why can’t you swim over there?”
Disbelief enveloping her, CC explained, “There’s a kid and his dad swimming over there (duh!) So there’s no room for me.”
No Share Woman shook her head, and repeated her query, “I don’t see why you can’t swim over there.”
“Is that a NO?” CC asked. “I just want to swim my mile.”
NSW grudgingly moved over, allowing CC to share, but it musta been a tense swim. Which was so too bad since this was their first time swimming at the Plunge and CC had wanted to come here for months.

When CC had told PP this story later, PP couldn’t believe it. “They can’t say no!”
“Yeah,” CC nodded. “It’s a public pool. Not some country club. I remember when I swam at 21 Hour Fitness in the City, you’d have to call up ahead of time and reserve your lane; you could only reserve 30 minutes at a time. But the regulars knew how to manipulate the system, get in good with the staff, so they’d reserve their time back to back even though technically this was against the 'rules'.”

PP nodded, told CC of the Hayward Plunge’s Reservation system. Of the Claremont Pool’s One per lane waiting ritual. Of KW getting shut out of 3 lanes at some pool in Marin till a smarmy gold chain guy let her in his lane. Of course.

Where did NSW think she was? The Richmond Plunge was in Richmond for Chrissakes! Not some hoity toity tony city!





Maybe NSW wished she were in Marin, or Claremont, or Monte Carlo. Maybe she thought she was special cuz she had been there first and she was a regular and who was CC horning in on her territory?

Whatever.

PP declared that they needed to revisit the Richmond Plunge. Seek out this Odiously Selfish Lane Woman. Find some kids and get them to jump in her lane. Then get some parents to jump in the lane too.

But before this, make sure that CC had her own lane next to hers. So when OSLW had to escape the family pandemonium, CC could smile sweetly and say, “Why can’t you swim over there?”

That’d show her, eh?