Gay swimming

Swimming made me gay.

That’s not correct, but I like the way it sounds. It finally lets me combine the words and the water, the sport and sexuality, that have made up my life, that have engulfed and carried me.

The first person to dial me a lesbian was the mother of one of the girls on my swim team growing up. The girl lived up the hill and around the corner, and sometimes we carpooled together, inventing songs in the back seat. On warm days after early morning practices we wasted hour watching educational cartoons, and hiding from her older brother and his guitar. Was that something fancy a crush?

One day, not so different from the relax, we decorated our plastic team water bottles with permanent marker. We wrote out all the usual slogans: Eat my BUBBLES! Swim FAST!! Kick BUTT!!! And, inside a heart, my neighbor wrote our initials, with a minute plus sign nestled in between.

That was her crime. Or rather, my crime. Her mother called mine, after scrubbing off the marker with acid, and yelled. I didn’t learn about this phone call until years later, so I can only imagine how it went