naked foot off the edge. She’d imagined that ‘heated’ meant the water sort of had the chill taken off it, but it was as warm as a bath: body temperature maybe. She couldn’t be sure. Her own body thermostat had been well and truly fucked for years.
Gail and Ant didn’t need to go to the changing rooms; they both had their swimgear on underneath their street clothes – another detail overseen by the social worker, this man who brought them together and, just by existing, kept them officially apart.
There were only about ten or eleven people in the pool, half of them adults swimming or hanging off the sides near the deep end. One length of the pool had been roped off by a floating divider of coloured plastic, to give serious swimmers one narrow lane to do their laps in. A well-muscled Japanese man prepared to enter this strip; a well-fleshed Australian woman was doing the backstroke. Everyone else was in the unrestricted part of the pool. Teenagers, children and their parents played at the shallow end, taking no notice of Gail and Anthony climbing in. Anthony was six and the water was up to his chest; Gail was twenty-three and the water was up to her navel. She squatted to come down to his level, and because it was warmer underwater.
‘Can you swim?’ she asked, noticing how awkwardly Ant was looking down at the water around his chest and his faraway feet on the bottom of the pool.
‘Yeah, I swim all the time,’ he said. ‘I swim real good,’ and immediately he gave a succession of startling demonstrations which consisted of throwing himself forward in the water, sinking, thrashing his arms and legs as rapidly as he could, and surfacing in a blind sputter. He couldn’t even tell which direction he was facing when he surfaced, and he would swivel his head, blinking and burping, trying to orient himself to where he had started.
‘I can swim too,’ said Gail. ‘But not very well.’
She’d learned to swim in a backyard swimming pool, one of those round, blue, free-standing things from the Clark Rubber store in Ferntree Gully, and she had been Anthony’s age. The boy whose family owned the pool had shown her how to float and how to move forward. He also tried to show her how to synchronise the arm and leg movements and turn her head from side to side to get the breaths in, but she hadn’t mastered that part. Then he had shown her his penis, and she had shown him her chubby little vulva: the pre-agreed reason for the game.
She wasn’t chubby now. She was thin and grown-up. It had cost her $2.80 to get into the pool, twice as much as Ant. That was where growing up got you: ADULTS, $2.80.
A grotesquely overweight man climbed in at the children’s end and waded out towards the deep, rolls of fat on his back humping in and out of the water as he began to swim.
‘How come that man’s swimming when he’s so fat?’ Anthony whispered to her, his awe overwhelming his reserve. Anxious to have the answer, Gail had to think hard. Other people’s motivations, or even her own, were not her strong point.
‘His doctor probably told him to,’ she said at last.
She didn’t perceive the man as being particularly grotesque. He was a member of the straight world, and members of the straight world were normal, they had their place. The fat man belonged here with the mothers and their paddling children, the idle athletes and goggled teenagers; he could claim the right to displace as much water as he wished, whereas Gail, pale from night-living and wasted by narcotics, was an alien object which might at any moment be fished out of the pool by an angry official. She looked down at herself in the water, at the spindly white legs coming out of the oversized red shorts, and then looked at Ant. His shorts were oversized too, yet they were very cute on him: he looked as if he was about to grow into them, whereas she seemed to be shrinking out of hers.
Anthony continued to demonstrate his mastery of swimming for her,
Gail and Ant didn’t need to go to the changing rooms; they both had their swimgear on underneath their street clothes – another detail overseen by the social worker, this man who brought them together and, just by existing, kept them officially apart.
There were only about ten or eleven people in the pool, half of them adults swimming or hanging off the sides near the deep end. One length of the pool had been roped off by a floating divider of coloured plastic, to give serious swimmers one narrow lane to do their laps in. A well-muscled Japanese man prepared to enter this strip; a well-fleshed Australian woman was doing the backstroke. Everyone else was in the unrestricted part of the pool. Teenagers, children and their parents played at the shallow end, taking no notice of Gail and Anthony climbing in. Anthony was six and the water was up to his chest; Gail was twenty-three and the water was up to her navel. She squatted to come down to his level, and because it was warmer underwater.
‘Can you swim?’ she asked, noticing how awkwardly Ant was looking down at the water around his chest and his faraway feet on the bottom of the pool.
‘Yeah, I swim all the time,’ he said. ‘I swim real good,’ and immediately he gave a succession of startling demonstrations which consisted of throwing himself forward in the water, sinking, thrashing his arms and legs as rapidly as he could, and surfacing in a blind sputter. He couldn’t even tell which direction he was facing when he surfaced, and he would swivel his head, blinking and burping, trying to orient himself to where he had started.
‘I can swim too,’ said Gail. ‘But not very well.’
She’d learned to swim in a backyard swimming pool, one of those round, blue, free-standing things from the Clark Rubber store in Ferntree Gully, and she had been Anthony’s age. The boy whose family owned the pool had shown her how to float and how to move forward. He also tried to show her how to synchronise the arm and leg movements and turn her head from side to side to get the breaths in, but she hadn’t mastered that part. Then he had shown her his penis, and she had shown him her chubby little vulva: the pre-agreed reason for the game.
She wasn’t chubby now. She was thin and grown-up. It had cost her $2.80 to get into the pool, twice as much as Ant. That was where growing up got you: ADULTS, $2.80.
A grotesquely overweight man climbed in at the children’s end and waded out towards the deep, rolls of fat on his back humping in and out of the water as he began to swim.
‘How come that man’s swimming when he’s so fat?’ Anthony whispered to her, his awe overwhelming his reserve. Anxious to have the answer, Gail had to think hard. Other people’s motivations, or even her own, were not her strong point.
‘His doctor probably told him to,’ she said at last.
She didn’t perceive the man as being particularly grotesque. He was a member of the straight world, and members of the straight world were normal, they had their place. The fat man belonged here with the mothers and their paddling children, the idle athletes and goggled teenagers; he could claim the right to displace as much water as he wished, whereas Gail, pale from night-living and wasted by narcotics, was an alien object which might at any moment be fished out of the pool by an angry official. She looked down at herself in the water, at the spindly white legs coming out of the oversized red shorts, and then looked at Ant. His shorts were oversized too, yet they were very cute on him: he looked as if he was about to grow into them, whereas she seemed to be shrinking out of hers.
Anthony continued to demonstrate his mastery of swimming for her,
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