Swimming with the Boys

By Timothy State

I really didn't like swimming that much. I got cold quickly. I didn't like having wet hair. I swallowed too much water. I thought the black lines on the bottom of the pool were holes-a bottomless abyss for children. I spent most of the time swimming, sitting. Sitting on the side of the pool. I would dry off, eventually warm up, and not swallow half the pool while waiting for the horn indicating open swim was over to blow. At the horn blast, I'd walk quickly, not run, to the one thing I absolutely loved about going swimming: the locker room.

"Get dressed," my father would say, holding out my underwear. Every week, I'd be caught lingering in the locker room, leering about. It drove my father crazy. A five-year-old peeping Tim. But I couldn't tear my eyes from the teenage boys who insisted upon rough-housing with nothing on, naked as jaybirds.

"Quit looking around," my father would say, teeth clenched so as not to yell, revealing his son scoping out the locker room. "We're going to be the last ones out of here."

If there was a problem, I didn't understand.

One summer my mother enrolled me in swim lessons taught by Gregg. Three-G Gregg, the picture of perfection. There wasn't a flaw with his body. He had the dark suntanned skin of Sandy Ricks, the perfect smile of Greg Brady, and the flowing locks of Keith Partridge. You couldn't build a more perfect man. Not even if you had six million dollars.

I learned very quickly that it is hard to keep your eye on your main man and swim, without sinking. As we practiced our kicking technique, Gregg would grab my legs and force them not to bend at the knees. "No spaghetti legs!" he'd say, as his hands sent shivers through my body.

"Tim is just like me," my mother explained to Gregg, fluffing her hair as she spoke, "he doesn't want to get his face wet."

After one near-drowning incident in which I quickly sank to the bottom, my arms extended toward the beaming light of his brilliant smile. Gregg scooped me up and pulled me to his chest. I clung to his sinewy torso for dear life, coughing and sputtering in his face, convinced that this was heaven and I was already dead.

When my class was done, Gregg's day was also done and he'd change with us. Half the showers at the deteriorating community pool didn't work, so we shared. I always managed to hop in with Gregg and I'd take extra care while washing the pool water from my body.

"What took you so long to get dressed?" my mother would ask. "You're always dilly-dallying in that locker room."

If there was a problem, I didn't understand.

"Mom," I'd say, as if stating the obvious, "they don't have enough showers."



Timothy State grew up in the Pacific Northwest, attending college in the Midwest at Lake Forest College and completing a ten-year tour in the capital of the South, Atlanta. He no longer knows how to pronounce anything. Most recently, his stories, "The Palm Reader" and "No Chance" will be published in Fall 2006 in the New Orleans anthology Love Bourbon Street. In 2004, Timothy was recognized as one of Georgia's "Newest and Most Promising Writers" by the O, Georgia! Writers Foundation. His blog, "Balancing Boyfriends" ( www.balancingboyfriends.com) has been highlighted by The Bottom Line Magazine as a "Best Gay Blog," and by HomoMojo.com's "Best of Gay Blogging." His video work has been featured in Image Film and Video's "Shorts Slam!", and his "Postcards from Graceland"--perspectives from a road trip to the 20th Anniversary Commemoration of Elvis Presley's passing--has been adapted for the stage by an Atlanta theatre company.