In Praise of Public Amenities

“Is it kya-old?” asks the fat girl with dark hair. She has a tummy like a veteran beer drinker.

“No,” says her friend, already in the pool.

After a bit of dilly-dallying, the big girl with the stomach lurches towards the edge of the rectangular expanse, her toes curling over the rim. She stares at its rippled surface.

“1-2-3!” the girl in the pool counts. Splash.

“Look at my hair!” the fat girl screeches as she emerges through the meniscus of wet.

I am watching this. So too is the twentysomething lifesaver with a tribal tattoo on his right arm. Difference between him and me is that he has to, I simply want to. Sit and stare. People watch.

Like many of the people who routinely congregate at Zoo Lake Swimming Bath – the car guard in pink fake Italian T-shirt, that guy with a gammy leg, the dude on the grassy knoll who always wears a white Speedo – I don’t know the lifesaver’s name. He’s just the lifesaver, that’s all. Which is enough for me. I come here to get lost. He reminds me of Anthony Kiedis from the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, the lifesaver. It’s the combination of ripped body and messy tattoos.

“Are you here everyday?” I ask him.

“Everyday!” he sighs. “Well, not everyday. I do relief between here and Sydenham. Chows my petrol.”

For a moment I wonder if he thinks me noticing him like this means I’m cruising him. It’s why some people, usually larnies with Vitality points and gym memberships, avoid the pool. The only person to ever have cruised me here is the guy in the pink shirt, and he’s always pretty upfront about his intentions: a few coins for keeping an eye on my car.

“Hey! What are you doing?” shouts a schoolgirl in blue and white uniform standing near the entrance to the pool, beneath the clock that mostly never works. The question is lobbed over the head of the lifesaver, past me. I watch its ambitious arc, which like a cricket ball is aiming, reaching, hoping for the boundary. It is here that three adolescent boys stand staring at an oversize chessboard.

“They’re playing checkers,” shouts the non-combatant in the trio. A spectator to the game, he wears swimming trunks three sizes too big for him. They remind me of the school blazer my mom bought me at the start of high school, the one meant to travel the distance between 13 and 18, which it eventually did.

With a mixture of curiosity and self-conscious awareness, the schoolgirl in blue walks briskly along the edge of the pool to join the three boys at the chessboard. She arrives as a black boy, towel wrapped around his waist, picks up a white pawn and jumps a series of opposing pawns in a cunning checker move.

I imagine what it must be like being the Egyptian Goose looking down from its perch on the tall light. Boys playing chess and a guy in fins swimming lengths. Boring. Perhaps.

I lie back on my towel, stare blankly up at an ocean of lightly speckled blue. A plane drifts in from the corner of the frame, glides effortlessly across it, purposefully headed somewhere. It’s Tuesday, maybe Wednesday, just after lunchtime. I should be writing about more earnest things. Instead I’m here, at my favourite pool.

I smile.