Swimfan

It is cold outside, but very bright.  Typical Valentine’s Day. I can still feel the dry cold even inside the building.  Leaving here with you and having a nice evening together is all I want right now.

I can hear the echoes and splashing, but I know where the pool is from here.  I know I am late, but I also know you are busy.  I pass through the locker room, where I hear talking and showers and hair dryers.  The air here is very wet and very warm.

I pass the rows of lockers being used by men in various states of dress.  I follow the sound of water, but I would know the way blindfolded.  Once through the final door, I feel the air: humid as an equatorial forest.  The pool is full from end to end with swimmers.  Divers bounce or stand on boards and platforms.  A group of elderly women walk laps up and down a far lane.  The bright late afternoon sun outside is dulled by the fogged ceiling-to-floor windows.

It is easy to find you, even in all the people.  Your jet black suit and red swim cap and eye-covers are a contrast to the bright suits and trunks of the other casual swimmers.

You slide easily through the water in your lane, barely moving the water before you.  Your sleek body slick poetry in fluid motion.  It’s almost an insult to watch the liquid serenity of your lane intruded by the chaos of the lanes on either side of you.

As I stand there — as always — I watch you.  The way your mouth opens and sucks in air as your face dips back into the water to slide onward.  Your focus complete, as you glide from end to end.

Arms peel out of the water only to cut back in again, legs fluttering and smooth as glass.  I step further away, so you don’t see me.  But I can still see you.  God, I love seeing you.  It’s funny how something as simple as breathing or walking can drive a person’s lust for another.  But it does.  The light reflecting off of you and racing to my eyes coaxes such worship, such devotion.

I know you are on your final lap, because you always turn over onto your back for the last hundred meters.  For me, the rest of your swim is just foreplay to the sex of your backstroke.  Your chest heaves as your breasts rise and fall in the water around you.  I can see your nipples through your suit.  Or maybe I can only imagine them.  It doesn’t matter either way.  Your mouth again; your lips drawing in every breath and then pressing it out again as your arms fan upward and back into the water.

As your legs kick slowly to your body’s rhythm, I see your thighs.  Your arched back helps to sculpt the perfect form of you in liquid.  With God’s hands I could never sculpt better.

Your last 20 meters, and my heartbeat grows harder.  10 meters, and you are that much closer to me.  5.  I am here waiting for you beside the cage of fins and tubes and lane markers.  I wait almost everyday here for you to finish so we can leave together.  A life truly just short of perfect.

You climb out of the water, dripping as the liquid slides from your body.  You slip your eye-covers and cap from your head and run your fingers through your hair.  Again… back arching, inhale, glistening legs.  Every drop of my blood begs to be next to you.  I can feel it pulling me in your direction, a carnal gravity.

You bend over, away from me, to pick up your towel from the bench. Your curves are a glory of human geometry.  As you dry you see me, but I quickly look away.  I push the cage over to the wall and walk back toward the locker room.

As I look back at you I see that you did not really see me at all.  I drink, for one last perfect second, all of you that I can… praying to drown in you.  It is never enough to last until the next time I see you. 

The locker room door closes, and I move my way slowly from the wet warmth that is all I know of you, back to the dry, too-bright cold that is all I ever really know.