Night Swimming

I heard it playing on the car radio today - the song by R.E.M. - and the memories came flooding back. 35 years ago, in the summer of 1972, night swimming did not mean Thursday Night Stroke Improvement Classes with Coach Aaron, did not mean multiple laps in the Y pool, brick drills and melt downs. There were no hand paddles or swim fins, and there was no worry about which swim suit would produce the least drag. In fact, there was no equipment, no pool - and no suits and therein lies the tale.

I was 24 years old that summer, and I had been out of college almost 2 years. I was living at home then, in the Assistant Deputy Warden's (my dad) house, located on the grounds of Sing-Sing Prison, just outside the walls and in the shadow of the SE corner tower. I had worked for the last two years, first waiting tables in a Howard Johnson's, then working on the grounds of Sing-Sing helping to build a power plant - a hard-hat job with a pick and shovel, and finally as a Correctional Guidance Counselor at Bedford Hills Prison - on the hill, the men's side, not on the valley side, which housed the women. My dad had gotten me the last two jobs, as I couldn't seem to find a job that paid decently on my own. I wasn't particularly good at any of them. I was bored, I was fat and I smoked. I hated my job and I pretty much hated myself. And then I had an epiphany.

I can't remember what prompted me - probably self-disgust - but I quit smoking, and joined Weight Watchers. Then I quit my job, packed my MGB convertible (not exactly Kerouac's bus) with essentials, and drove to Holland, MI, where I had graduated 2 years earlier from Hope College. I had friends there, living in a rented house on College Ave, and they had an extra room. In retrospect, we were an odd bunch: Eric, an artist nick-named "Wino" for his taste for Ripple and Boone's Farm; Sky, a high school buddy who had never been to college, and who had drifted to Holland after his tour in Vietnam, because he had heard me talk about it; and Fred, Jennifer's older brother - I dated her during my senior year, until one evening at her apartment her roommates all disappeared and she told me she wanted to take a walk, during which I got the "You're a really nice guy, but" talk.

Fred was a couple of years older than me, and while I had been dating Jennifer, he was married to a nurse. I guess they got divorced, because he was sharing the front bedroom with a girl named Cathy by the time I drifted into town. He was planning to attend scuba diving school in Florida in September, to learn how to do underwater salvage work. Which brings me to swimming in the day time.

Fred needed to become a better and stronger swimmer by September, so every day, he would drive into the woods about five miles outside of town, to a small pond, owned by a local manufacturing plant. The pond was shaped like a barbell, quite narrow across the middle, but widening out into two circles at either end. If you swam around the perimeter, you covered about a half mile. Every afternoon Fred would swim a lap or two around the pond. One day, he asked me to go with him. Having nothing much else to do, I went.

Although by this time I had quit smoking and had been losing weight steadily for a month, I was in terrible shape. On my first attempt, I made it across the "handle" of the barbell to the other side - about 50 yards - rested and then swam back. And went home and took a nap. But I kept at it, and after a couple of weeks, I could breast stroke once around the perimeter, while Fred was arm-over-arming it around twice. By the end of the summer, I could do two laps easily, although I never relinquished my beloved breast stroke.

There were girls there that summer, too. In addition to Cathy, there was Mary, a beautiful girl who was working as a teller in the local bank that summer; her sister Kathy, a music major who was as plain as Mary was stunning, and who later came out; Jo, 19, a blue-eyed gorgeous "townie" whose father was the principal of a local junior high school and whose older sister was a theater major at Hope that we knew; and Margaret, who was on the five and a half year plan at Hope - I can't remember why because she was smart and a good student -, and who was living in Holland and taking courses that summer. Margaret's father was the president of a Re-Insurance company and they were well-to-do. She had grown up on estate in the rolling hills of the New Jersey country side, where she owned several horses, rode daily, took lessons and became a licensed riding instructor - English-style - some time before the summer of '72. Her red Irish setter, Shannon, was one of the most beautiful - and stupid - dogs I have ever known. That summer,we all hung out together.

The summer nights were hot in Holland, and none of us had air-conditioning. One evening, after an hour or so of beers and joints on someone's porch, we decided to go swimming. We drove into the country side, to a small lake one of the local girls knew about - not the one Fred and I swam in, but nearby. We parked the cars off the road, behind some trees, and walked down the dark path to the lake to go swimming - night swimming. Because of my day time swimming, I was comfortable, and relaxed, but not for long. Before I knew it, every one was taking off their clothes, and I was, too. I had never been skinny dipping before, at least not since I was a kid at boys camp, and certainly never with women, and beautiful women at that. I remember what I felt: I am fat and ugly and awkward, and I am glad that I take my glasses off with my clothes. Maybe if I can't see them, they won't see me. I want to see them - I do- but if I do, what will happen? I think I know, and I am mortified at the thought.


I run to the water and dive in - it's warm - and I meet Sky, who is thin and fast, and we swim to the middle, where we tread water for a while and talk. I am too afraid and self-conscious to mingle nearer to shore with the others. After a while, most of the group gets out of the water, dresses, and heads up the path to the cars. When they are mostly gone, I head in and do the same, putting on my glasses, losing my cloak of invisibility, so I can again see and be seen.

I walk back to the car and get into the back seat, waiting for the others who are still outside, talking. Margaret gets in the back seat beside me. I tell her it's ok, she doesn't have to sit in the back, but she says she wants to. It takes a moment, but it finally sinks in - she wants to sit in the back seat because she wants to sit with me! She has seen me in all my imperfection and still, she wants to sit with me. I am astounded, but manage to talk with her without babbling too badly. I still have no recollection of what we talked about, but I knew for certain that she was "interested" in me and I mean interested in "that way". I couldn't believe it, couldn't understand it and certainly didn't deserve it, but she was.

The group went night swimming several more times that summer, and I got more comfortable with it. After a while, Margaret and I became a couple and after that we never went swimming with the group again. On Sunday mornings she would get up early, put on her riding clothes, get her horses and drive into the Allegan Woods, where she would join other members of her club and "ride to the hounds." I would stay in bed until she came home and went riding again. She was good to me, but I was a shit. I lusted after beauty and fell in love with Jo, who was her roommate that summer, and I stopped seeing Margaret.

A few years later I ran into her at the wedding of a mutual friend. She was over me and we talked easily, and she invited a group of us to her father's house, which was nearby. We spent a comfortable afternoon, and I saw where she grew up and first rode. I never told her about Jo and me, but I suppose she knew. I heard later that she had gotten married and then divorced. I googled her a while ago - she is a very successful veterinarian now - no surprise there - living in western Michigan and still single.

It's been several years since I thought about her - until the words took me back 35 years to night swimming,and the first time I learned that someone could see me as I was, and still like me - a powerful and liberating discovery.

An excerpt:

Nightswimming deserves a quiet night.
Im not sure all these people understand.
Its not like years ago,
The fear of getting caught,
Of recklessness and water.
They cannot see me naked.
These things, they go away,
Replaced by everyday.

Nightswimming, remembering that night.
Septembers coming soon.
Im pining for the moon.