A Startling Turn

Barton Springs Early Morning Swim Report 12/12/2023

Yesterday I got up at 4:45, put on my bathing suit, a few layers of woolens and my swim shoes, then thought to check the weather. 31 degrees, with a freeze warning. So I went back to bed, not because it was too cold to swim but because my route to the pool requires driving over at least one bridge and I am a bit lily-livered about icy roads in Texas. This morning it was above freezing, barely.

I startled a raccoon by the pool entrance, though not much. It jumped, then went about its business in the foliage. This worried me: an ability to startle is the only real defense I have against raccoons. Once I was down by the deck somebody’s gym bag impersonated a bigger raccoon, and then I realized those distant lumps in the dark look like they’re moving because of the backdrop of the waveleting water in the pool.

A particularly dark morning, I thought on my first lap. Clear mornings are the darkest.

A lot of people in the pre-dawn pool swim without looking. Snorkelers are the worst, but there are also backstrokers, and people freestyling zigzaggily. There must be a kind of joyous freedom in swimming in the dark without looking, a way to be utterly in your body, the water, the moment. Those creeps. Such joy is alien to me. In the pool I am prepared for all interruptions at all times. That doesn’t mean I don’t jump. I have noted in this space what an astonishingly slow swimmer I am; continents drift at a higher speed. If I see somebody coming at me I try to quietly remove myself from their trajectory, but I can’t always do it, especially if they’re moving fast. If I come close to colliding with somebody who clearly cannot see me, I reflexively say, “Watch out” or “careful.” Often they can’t hear me. I cannot promise I say these things in a dulcet tone. I probably sound like a chiding jerk.

This picture from last month; they have replaced it with a less terrifying message.

This morning on my last length I first encountered an angling side stroker, who I told to watch out, and then shortly afterwards, a backstroking man, also swimming on an angle across the pool. I said, “Be careful.”

He said, “You be careful.”

I said, incensed, “I am! I can see you, but you’re going backwards and can’t see me.”

He said, in a mild voice, “Fuck off, fatty.”

Amazing how little this bothered me. I am in fact stout, and I found it amusing that he would think this line would wound me. If he’d called me a truly nasty name, or said it with any anger, I might have been rattled, but at the moment what I thought was, Dude, I’m old enough to be your mother. You should be ashamed of yourself. Both things he said to me sounded issued without any thought or emotion whatsoever. He has probably said worse in traffic; I certainly have.

Also I do my best not to be bothered by automatic assholes. Though I wished that I had the defenses of a squid.

I didn’t encounter him again in the pool, though when I got out at dawn I thought I saw a betrunked gentleman on the far side who might have been him. There was a goose waiting for me by my clothing, also unbothered by my appearance.

One reason I’m at ease in the dark while I swim is that it’s one time I can be fairly sure that my fellow Texans aren’t armed. I realized that this morning.

At any rate, if you see that guy—I’m afraid I can’t give a description beyond white guy, dark hair, blue trunks, younger than middle-aged—please let him know that I won’t. Fuck off, I mean.