bodies of water

(Don't even say it. I'm still pining for my dumbphone.)

My instructor is an effusive and sinewy 66 years old. It takes her one minute fifteen seconds to swim a hundred-meter freestyle, something I can barely finish without stopping to heave desperately for air at the wall between lengths. Once while doing so I ventured to congratulate myself for outpacing the man in the lane next to me. He emerged seal-like from the pool and walked on his hands to a waiting wheelchair; I recited James 4:12, as if in that moment God could make me less of an asshole.

The climbing-gym lockers are like the backstage dressing room for a Patagonia catalog shoot, a staging ground for athletic feats by bodies so uniformly perfect they seem to vary only by what's depicted in their personally meaningful tattoos. But in the fluorescent basement of the YMCA I change alongside geriatrics whose swaying stomachs preclude them from view of their ankles, which, they inform me cheerily, are just killing them in this cold. They have borne children and cigarettes; they grunt and sway. As I maneuver between the benches and purses and the toddlers underfoot I am never sure whether the feeling in my own maturing gut is one of reassurance or impending doom.

On the pool deck, my lingering tan lines and strange proportions betray me before I'm even in the water. We swim 300 meters; I am rewarded at the conclusion of the drill with a searing headache. "You aren't breathing correctly," suggests Coach Sinew reproachfully. "Or perhaps it is from a chemical," says the Russian, Yuri, dryly. "Perhaps you have been near some chlorine?"