Swimming in a Pool

He had brought his bathing suit to the resort, and the water, he estimated, should be plenty warm enough. He could skip the pre-swim shower, but he did not want to do that. He knew the water would feel good, the cool, bracing water on his skin, and he wanted to be in the little private room with the water bouncing off the walls and running down to his feet.

So now it was time for the ritual. He undressed in the bedroom of his hotel room, taking note of whether each article of clothing was clean enough to wear again, and found to his surprise that undressing was exciting. He strutted his undeniably nude figure into the bathroom, feeling the rush that comes from being naked even when one is alone, and hopped into the shower.

Showering when not in a hurry was pleasurable, he found. This was a shower for fun, not a shower for work or out of necessity, as there was no duty involved here. He took his time and did a good job of it, of cleaning up. Meanwhile, as he soaped up, he admired his own handiwork, the body that he had built, with the help of the military fitness training. He knew somewhere in his mind that what he possessed was youth and that this thing that he had would up and leave him unexpectedly, like a fickle beauty queen, the most popular girl in school who is also a serial dater, never getting past the third date. But he had it now, his youth, and he was going to enjoy it.

He left the dark of the shower and, in the confines of that very small but happy Central American bathroom, dried off his head and arms and legs and torso, the bathroom window letting in breezes and palm tree shade.

The next job was a cinch, dressing. Dressing for fun was different from dressing for work—you put on only what you wanted to. He put on a clean t-shirt and his swim trunks. He also had shower shoes that he used back at the barracks, perfect for this occasion. He grabbed the wet towel and his key, and away he went.

He wanted to get in a quick swim, at the very least. When he got there, to the pool, he found three comrades, all three from his platoon, with beer and sunscreen and towels. Two were lounging around, and only one was in the pool, the odor of chlorine and sunscreen in the air. There was no one else there. Ross made small talk for all of three minutes, turning down a cold beer in the process, before he dove into the pool. All around him, the water was cool, somehow dissipating the heat that had been building up in his body since his arrival in Honduras.

Since he could not perform an efficient crawl, he avoided the crawl. He would hold his breath and swim underwater. Underwater it was quiet. Immersed in water, he glided through a soft blue forest, a forest that muffled the sounds and filtered the light from above, just like any other forest. He could hold his breath for a long time—he had no difficulty swimming the length of the pool underwater before surfacing for a breath. When he tired of swimming underwater, he stuck his chin in the air and swam on his back.

The other men, two in lounge chairs and one on the edge of the pool, his feet in the water, enjoyed their leisure. The two in lounge chairs were drinking beer, and the one with his feet in the pool was talking, his face bright, his hands on the hot cement that surrounded the pool. No one was even listening to him, though, not even he himself.

One of the men in the lounge chairs noticed that his skin was turning red. He said that the sun here was strong and that he was through for day, and the others agreed, as they were made pale by their work, from wearing uniforms day and night. So then the three packed up their pool gear and said goodbye to the swimmer as they departed.

The swimmer was now the lone. Now that he was without an audience, he was willing to try other swim strokes. He knew only four serviceable strokes, if the crawl was one of them, so he decided to swim the crawl.

He felt danger lurking in the water, however, his instincts for survival sending him a subconscious message. He was afraid that he would bump his head on a wall and be knocked out—with no one to save him. In an effort to reduce the possibility of drowning, he would reach out with his hands long before making the end of a lap.

Alone in the man-made nature of the beach resort, a concrete beach and a rectangular crystal clear blue lake surrounded by wrought-iron black rocks and uniform, angular hollow trees and real honest to goodness palm trees a mile high, he practiced his crawl until he was well past out of breath.

He was in the water a long time, it seemed. His eyes irritated by the chlorine, Ross soon finished swimming and left, so that he could wash the pool water off. Once back at his room, he left his swim trunks in a bathroom sink full of water, and hopped in the shower. It was time to eat, by his reckoning. His appetites had increased to the point that he had trouble discerning what he wanted first, so he couldn't shower fast enough. But by the time he had finished showering, the trunks had discolored in spots, bleaching white in certain areas. He shook his head and rinsed his trunks, which he considered still wearable in emergencies.