My doctor told me that swimming would help my back after I ruined it doing yoga. Of course, I didn't tell him it was from yoga, I said a street gang beat me up. But then I realized that I was wearing my yoga pants, so he curtly told me to stop being a fag and go swimming.
I tried going to my school pool, but since my school is on top of a mountain in Canada, the pool is heated by solar panels. It's a great idea if you pretend the equator is a thousand miles north of where it is now, but pretending only goes so far. So for the most part, the pool is used as a giant beer cooler or a museum exhibit for shitty Eskimo kayaks.
Of course I saw the game last night, but dude, you're stomach is dripping all over my SpongeBob bathing suit. So I took the bus downtown and bought a monthly pass to the public pool. The last time I went to a public pool was during the Backstreet Boys Blitzkrieg of '99. Aside from the soundtrack, my pool memories seemed fond and pleasant, like morning dew on a Hershey's chocolate bar.
Then I walked into the change room. I realized that this was what my younger self had suppressed all those years ago. I also realized that I never had that much change room experience. The only sport I played was soccer in a community league, which meant three kids kicking a deflated ball around a passed out heroine addict. In high school I was banned from gym class for being too smelly. I was smelly before we even started. Everybody thought I bathed in poop, but it was just that my Grandma hugged me before I left for school and she was foreign and ate weird food.
Yes, like a camera shutter I saw dozens of male reproductive organs in about 1/1000th of a second. My brain went berserk. The average male brain is designed to handle only a limited amount of dong exposure. Usually a man sees only his own dong during designated parts of the day. This is typically when he goes to the bathroom or needs to do a self-dong portrait for an advanced art class.
So my instincts kicked in, and I glued my eyes to the tile floor. I used vectors and physics and extrapolated the steps necessary to get myself to a locker with minimal phallic interference. As soon as I got to a locker, some fat bastard walked up right beside the one I chose and started taking out his stuff. Then he asked me if I saw the game last night. Of course I saw the game last night, but dude, you're stomach is dripping all over my SpongeBob bathing suit. Fuck off, please. But instead of being rude, I did what any polite person would do, and pretended to be mentally challenged. I thought this would shut him up, but he just made fun of me. We were both going to hell.
The actual pool: the safest place in the facility, ironically. I finally put on my bathing suit, which almost killed me because of that stupid white mesh liner stitched to the inside. Trying to put your legs through that is like trying to kick through Spider-Man's web. After almost stumbling to my death, I ripped the mesh liner out with my teeth and finally got those stylish swim trunks on. I then headed to the shower, which was even more assaulting on my already damaged nervous system. Maybe it's a generational thing, but some guys were scrubbing their balls as if they were panning for gold. I wasn't going to wait for any gold nuggets to drop so I blinded my eyes with the scalding shower and then hit the pool.
I swam for a couple hours. I would've gone for 10 minutes, but I didn't want to go back into that change room. I also wish I hadn't brought my goggles, because now I will never get married. If that's what my wife looks like when she hits retirement, she is technically not a woman anymore. Sure, if I tried I'd probably get hitched to a genetically enhanced woman who would still be hot in her late 80's… but 90's? I don't know if even a super woman would be able to turn me on at that age. No sir, no wedlock for me. Those old guys with the young gals aren't creeps, they've just gone to the public swimming pool enough times to know what the future holds.
After a month of that shit, I decided enough was enough. I had seen so many horrors at such a young age, I wondered if I should just leave for Africa and live with gorillas. Unfortunately I stayed, but I plan to never go swimming in a public pool again. That is, unless it's for a birthday party, because pool parties are friggin' rad.