I hate summer... in the pool

Has no one ever invented a silent pool? Like carriage 12 on the AVE (High Speed Train). I'd go. Or one that plays Brahms instead of Pitbull. They probably exist in some city in Scandinavia, or in Liechtenstein. If it wasn't clear, it's the constant noise that keeps me from going to the pool. But this summer, one of my best friends invited me to join him at the Complutense University of Madrid, known for being the place gays choose to swim in the Villa. I thought the combination of weightlessness and seduction might be nice, evoking Chirbes's diaries, but it wasn't. Eighty percent of the swimmers were men and, if my radar wasn't wrong, homosexual. But diversity was conspicuous by its absence. Out of every fifty strong, shaved men in Speedos, one was fat, skinny, disproportionate, or wearing a swimsuit that left some work to the imagination. Far from not getting any girls, what worried me most was feeling watched for creating a certain contrast with my puny little arms, my Beatle-like hair, and my sideburns. I was wrong: no one was interested in me. There was just one moment when I thought I was getting a guy with long blond hair, but it turned out to be a topless girl.

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Then the fantasy of flirting in the pool was dashed. And then I remembered other literary diaries, those of Jean Genet, where the French author described what some homosexual men have been doing for ages in public restrooms. And a verse from one of Cuba's greatest poets, Xavier Villaurrutia, also came to mind: the secret that men who come and go know. And of the three times I went to the bathroom all afternoon, because my bladder is very efficient, I thought I'd said hello to the same person three times. But restrooms aren't a romantic place; they are the waters where one's little body floats and one is happy.

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“When I grow up and have a house, I'll build a pool in the middle of the countryside that only I can fit in.”

Perhaps the sea water is better because, looking back, I only have hostile memories of swimming pools: when I used to swim in my T-shirt as a child because I was self-conscious about my tiny arms; the time a tornado came and covered all the kids in leaves and mud and we almost drowned; my friend Kiko and his split head when he hit the curb, and me thinking that was like dying; the gruesome story the municipal lifeguard told us to warn us that the diving board was prohibited: "Right here, right here, a kid died!"; the wasps that stung me in the showers; the mouthfuls of chlorine I swallowed when the older kids tried to drown me; the afternoon a lady smeared Coca-Cola all over my body to make me tan and I had to walk home instead of driving because my father said I shouldn't even think about getting into the car all covered in it, or the day my friend Manuela threw up in the water while spinning around and the rest of us had to clear the water as if it was anthrax she was expelling.

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A few years ago, during the pandemic, I secretly bought a huge plastic pool for my family, who were delighted to receive it. At the end of that summer, the experience was so bad that my father slid the pool box deep into the storage room, even behind the boxes for the Nativity scene he had designed ten years earlier, which failed because the river he had designed—which was supposed to carry water thanks to a pump—didn't work. Even today, that image still brings me great tenderness and makes me want to hug my father and comfort him, to tell him: You did very well, Father, and I love you so much for that.

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My father found two reasons for banishing the pool: the black cloud of mosquitoes and wasps the water attracted, and the constant care the giant pot required. If he used too much powder, the chlorine burned our skin; if he didn't use enough, the water turned green. In short, my father became obsessed with the pH meter for the rest of the summer. "If we don't take that little machine away from your father that tells him whether the water is clean or not, he'll go crazy." My mother, like my sister and I, feared for his health. It wasn't easy. In the end, we managed to divert his attention to the small television he placed next to the pool: we asked him to please sort the DTT channels in alphabetical order, and it worked.

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“Far from not getting any girls, I was worried about feeling watched because of my puny little arms and my Beatle-like hair.”

Anyway, when I'm older and have a house, I'll build a pool in the middle of the countryside that'll fit just me. I'll put some speakers in the ficus trees surrounding the pond, and I'll blast Handel's Water Music nonstop while I float quietly, watching the sky change color. And I won't invite anyone over because it's also very nice to be alone, and because conversations in pools are usually close cousins to those in elevators or blaring cars . Better to float alone than in bad company.