Ode to the Summer Swimming Pool
Darklings,
I grew up a beach kid, living near the shores of the Pacific Ocean until I moved to New York in my twenties, but I have always had a love and appreciation for swimming pools in the summertime. When I was a kid, we’d go on family vacations to visit my aunt and uncle in Colorado. It was a two-day drive to get there from Los Angeles, and we would stop somewhere near Flagstaff, Arizona, always staying at the same, good ol’ Best Western motel because it had a swimming pool. I have vivid memories from that motel and the excitement of pulling into the parking lot with my mom and dad after a very long day’s drive, looking out the window and seeing the big, glistening, blue pool just waiting for me to jump in. I couldn’t get out of our Windstar Minivan fast enough.
Years later when I was a preteen, I watched the infamous movie Showgirls starring Kyle MacLachlan and Elizabeth Berkley. The movie was pretty bad and had become famous for that fact, but a sex scene with MacLachlan and Berkley would become a pivotal moment in my early understanding of sexuality. Watching that scene, it was the first time I remember feeling turned on, like what I was watching on screen was awakening some new part of my body I had not discovered before. The scene took place in—you guessed it—a pool.
There was the pool at the giant hotel lodge in June Lake when I was a kid and the pool at my old agent’s house in Beverly Hills that overlooked the 405. The public pool and the private pool. The pool shaped like an S and the one with a dead bird in it that made me cry. There was the pool at Prince’s house with a piano suspended above it. (Yes, that Prince. More on that in a future post.) There was the saltwater pool and the freezing ass, spring-is-ending pool. The blessed heated pool and the nasty, over-chlorinated pool. Indoor pools and outdoor pools. In my twenties, there were raves inside McCarren Park’s infamous empty pool. Today, there is Union Pool, the abandoned swimming-pool-supply-store-turned-venue in Brooklyn where I’ve seen countless bands play over the years. I’ve been to a wedding in an empty pool like this one and attended a pop-up dinner in another, like this one.
Pools are not just for swimming; they are a part of our culture, a symbol of our communities—both the ones we have and the ones we are seeking to find. Families descend on pools in the summertime to cool off and have some much-needed fun, while others go just to be seen, maybe meet someone cute along the way. Some people stay in the pool all day, talking and swimming until their toes and fingers turn into prunes, while others lie out on pool chairs reading books and baking in the sun, never going into the water once but liking its shimmering company. Swimming pools are truly for everyone.
Do you have a good story about a pool you’ve loved from your childhood or now? Tell me in the comments, and happy summer!
Just got back into lap swimming last January because a small (3 lane) salt water lap pool opened up just a few minutes from my house. I'm not exaggerating when I say it has totally changed my level of happiness and wellbeing. The fact that it's salt water keeps the chemicals to a minimum so my skin can tolerate it. I'm there 3 to 4 times a week. It's a kind of therapy and this new body of mine (sponsored by Menopause!) is actually starting to feel like it belongs to me again. Heaven. Have you seen the trailer for this documentary by Jón Karl Helgason about swimming pools and their importance in Icelandic culture? https://vimeo.com/707890302 It looks amazing but I haven't found a source to watch it yet.
Amber, I grew up in Los Angeles in the 50s along with your mom, though I wouldn't meet her for some years yet. I much prefer the Pacific Ocean, but my first kiss was in Andy Simpson's pool, across the street from where we lived when I was about 9 years old. When I lived in Lone Pine, a few years shy of meeting your mom in Mammoth, all us kids spent our summers at the Lone Pine plunge. It was either that or Diaz Lake, a muddy and reedy gathering of water, or Dirty Socks, a sulfur smelling spring someone put a large metal tank around. At least at the plunge, us kiddos could walk to it. Later, in June Lake sometime in the 70s, we were all drinking fairly heavily when I tried to do a back flip into Andy Oldfield's Boulder Lodge indoor pool. I was never good at gymnastics and I had a nasty rash for a solid week to prove the growing legend of my spectacular belly flop. I kept to leaping off the tall rocks around June Lake after that. Now I live in Ontario, Canada. There's an indoor pool relatively close, in Sturgeon Falls, but I tell myself I'm too fat, too old, and too busy to go there. Been doing that the past 20 years. Maybe it's time to buy another bathing suit?