The Teeth of the Tiger II

Vampires, Pyramids and the Dead in the Old Dominion

Crew of the USS Tom Clancy,

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Five days a week I find myself—a forty year old man—clad in pink shorts I got in Miami a few Christmases ago, trembling at the edge of the pool before the twenty five yards of pain I am about to endure.

Pain, perhaps, is not the right word. Discomfort? What do you call something that’s not easy to do, that every molecule of your body objects to, but that makes you feel...relief...when it’s done.

That’s swimming. I go hard from the start. You can’t dive in the lanes they reserve for amateurs at the Aquatic and Fitness Center, so I plunge in Billy Bathgate style, feet first and flailing, no grace, until I’m nearly at the bottom, then I bend my body and push against the wall with my feet, imagining myself a submarine coming out of some concrete cave underwater pen, hands v’d into a harpoon.

I slow against the water and begin my frog kick. I used to blow air out as I went. Bubbles go up. Up is the air. The world. I don’t blow bubbles any more. Got to keep it in the tank. I breathe deeply for a minute before I jump in. Then I swim underwater as far as I can until I panic and have to surface; generally the panic arises right around the 23 yard mark, so its a smooth ascent, a gulped grateful breath.

The return trip I reward myself with a back stroke; either the traditional back stroke I learned when I was six years old swimming in the American rec swim league at Bayrakli Park in Izmir, Turkey, or a skeeterbug variety I improvise, arms windmilling simultaneously in a wide arc, legs frog kicking.

I stare at the girders above. They guide me. The danger of the backstroke is that you can hit your head if you’re not careful. Hard. There are signal flags and everything, but you have to pay attention to them for them to work.

Sometimes my attention wanders.

There’s nothing to distract me in the pool; no phone, no music, no conversation, no details to register. Everything is the same. I cannot see, because I have to take off my glasses and my eyesight is very bad. I can recognize a face at five feet, otherwise people appear as impressionist paintings, daubs of shadow at the eye sockets.

I swim for my allotted time; not much, I don’t want to burn out, I just want to keep limber, keep loose, keep calm; I go until my arms burn or my legs burn and then I go a little longer, and then I get out and limp to the sauna; ten minutes of sweating, ten more minutes of boredom, which some call stillness, no distraction. Sometimes I think about taking reading in here, but it feels wrong to co-mingle the two. This is about getting things out of my body. There’s other times for putting things in my mind. Then its the sauna for ten minutes. Then the hot tub. Ten minutes. Maybe fifteen. Do some stretching. Shower. Change Go home. Go back to School. Go to the grocery store. Go see friends.

The pool. I see myself as I was once. I am small. I see the Pullman Hotel. Istanbul, Turkey. Outside, the minarets are lit as if by a strobe. A thunderstorm. Lightening. They have a pool on the roof. I want to swim. My mom takes me. I swim it out, in the lightening storm, oblivious or enthralled by the ridiculousness of it all. I am six years old.

I see my mother. The pool. I see myself. I see the Scera, in Orem, Utah. I see my brothers and sister. I see my oldest brother, when I was small, having me hold onto his back while he dove, deep deep down until my ears popped. I couldn’t swim at that point, still learning, but I could hold on. I remember holding my breath. My brother baptized me in the Aegean Sea when I was eight, wearing white, a Mormon ceremony; I keep the picture by the desk where I write, from the moment after, having just been dunked—full immersion—in the water; the branch President from the time, an Air Force intelligence sergeant, looks on.