Swimming places

I now have three venues as I train for my mammoth swim across All-Saints Bay in twelve months time.

I think it will be down to two, however. In one of the pools, the water had an absolutely disgusting taste the last time I swum. One of my swimming colleagues had been asked by the man who takes care of the pool, and who wanted to go home early, to put some cleaning ‘products’ in once we concluded our session. Some of this powder fell on his foot and burnt a hole in it. So I am reluctant to go back.

Another venue I have written about before, though now I have a new trainer. He seems a perfectly nice guy though I’m not sure I trust men who shave their legs. It’s something men of the younger generations seem to do a lot of and like Twitter, its appeal is incomprehensible to older folks like me.

The pool is part of the club for the workers of the state oil company, and next to the pool are tables where people play cards or drink beer. Occasionally there is conflict between the rights of the swimmers (not club members but paying a monthly fee) and club members. The club members have a right to one of the lanes but seem to have trouble staying in it.

The other day, there was a raucous on some tables off to the side. Round the tables plentifully filled with empty beer bottles were about six women and two men, arguing furiously with one of the club’s employees. It was the kind of arguing that could lead to violence, which of course attracted the attention of us swimmers waiting for our training session. A very chatty woman came up and explained the background of the situation.

“My daughter’s swimming class had just started and these women were on the other side of the pool. One of them took off her top and started waving it around in the air. The others followed suit and I was outraged and went and complained to the management. I mean, there are other pools around here I could use and if this happens again, I’m taking my daughter away.”

She was one of those people who seek out people to hear her lengthy speeches and I was one of them.

“I mean, it’s fine if you’re with your husband or boyfriend and want to fool around like that.” I assumed she wanted to show me that she was not a prude, a label best avoided where sensuality and sexuality are celebrated. Another woman came up and continued the conversation, saying how kids nowadays have total exposure to sex from an early age.

“At the school where my daughter studies, they were given a sex talk where amongst other things premature ejaculation was discussed.”

“How old is your daughter?” I asked, the only words I spoke throughout the conversation.

“She’s eight,” the woman responded, “and unlikely to know about premature ejaculation or in fact any type of ejaculation.”

Brazilian’s openness about sex is quite amazing. I’d never uttered a word to these women and there we were talking about erectile malfunction.

Later I heard another version from the principal trainer, not the guy who shaves his body.
I have never warmed to this guy, mostly due to his incessant self-promotion. The other day he tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Take a look at these medals I won at the competition last week.” I didn’t really know what to say as offering congratulations, when solicited in this way, makes me uncomfortable.

Anyway, he thought the whole event had been just great.

“There I was, swimming my laps, when I look over and there are a couple of naked women, not bad either.”

He was telling this to his training group. Women here assume men are dogs and the women in the group shook there heads and had the expression of ‘boys will be boys’ on their faces.

“When they got out, which I found a shame, one of the guys stayed in the pool and wouldn’t move from a spot where he was disrupting my class. So I moved the class to the other side of the pool and got on with it.”

Brazilian tolerance is one of the country’s great strengths and weaknesses. It makes people much less judgmental and takes into account humans many flaws. None of this ‘perfectability of man’ nonsense.

But it also means that assholes get away with a lot more without public censure. In this case, one guy decided to inconvenience about twenty others who nonetheless declined to confront him.

This is one of the most exciting things that occurred there, since swimming back and forth in a pool is not particularly exciting. Actually, it’s right up there with reading the manual for a vacuum cleaner or watching the shopping channel.

I now swim for an hour and a half, completing anywhere between 3500 to 4000 meters. The crossing is 11,000 meters, so there is some way to go. Unless you are doing it with other people, reaching this target everyday can seem daunting and weakening to the spirit.

You play all kinds of mind games to reach the distance goal. This is helped by the trainer. For instance, he will say ‘do two hundred, then one hundred and fifty, then one hundred, then fifty. And repeat this sequence two times.’

If you analyze this, that’s a thousand meters right there but it seems easier if you divide it up like this. One also becomes an expert in percentages and fractions. Because of the pool length, multiples of 25 are now etched in my brain. So after one length of a sequence like the one described above, I know I’ve completed one tenth of the assignment. Three hundred meters is six lengths and psychologically much easier than 400 meters which is eight lengths.

But it’s the feeling at the end that makes it all worth it. Someone once explained to me about how endorphins work but I can’t remember now, except that it makes you feel good, like taking drugs (what they don’t tell you in the anti-drug propaganda).

So that’s why people become addicted to exercise. You seem to be almost floating, aware of your muscles in a good sense and also under the illusion (in my case) that you are more attractive. You could get to this state by snorting cocaine, I suppose, but swimming 4000 meters is a lot healthier and doesn’t make you such an asshole. People on coke think they’re endlessly interesting when they’re not and they don’t stop fucking sniffling and gnashing their teeth together.

My other swimming venue is a beach known as the K Street Beach. It is protected and so is always swimmable whereas open-sea beaches can have currents that will be the end of you.

It is in a neighborhood that has received numerous accolades in music and poetry by some of Brazil’s most revered public figures. Vinicius de Moraes wrote the words to Brazil’s most famous song, The Girl from Ipanema, and he also wrote a poem about the neighborhood, called Itapoa, in which my beach is located. He speaks of the cool breeze, the coconut trees and how he misses them so much when he is away.

Vinicius de Morais is an iconic figure in Brazilian cultural history. A diplomat fluent in three languages, he belonged to a semi-fascist political party, which always seems odd for an artist since fascists are not known for their tolerance of other’s opinions. But he seemed to be able to keep his arm down from the Hitler salute long enough to write some great poetry from which he derived his auspicious reputation.

Another revered artist, Dorival Caimy, many of whose descendents also chose music as a career option, was a native of Itapoa and sung its praises.

This was some time ago since Itapoã, as it has expanded, has slipped from paradisiacal to run down and rather seedy. Whereas it used to be a small fishing village with all the quaint imagery that conjures up, urban expansion has now connected it with the rest of the city and it has become massive. Where white sand dunes once existed, small red brick houses spread across hills like one of those science fiction octopus-type monster’s with many legs. If I were a politician, I would paint all the houses in the slums since it does wonders for the atmosphere. Exposed brick lacks any aesthetic value at all.

Itapoa is also full of dodgy looking foreigners, mostly Italians, who attract a horde of prostitutes and the swirl of bawdiness that follows such a crowd. I’d met this one Italian, a very nice guy who ran (eventually into the ground) one of these establishments called ‘barracas’ serving seafood and cold beer next to the shore.

His problem was a vicious addiction to cocaine. He’d once been entangled with the cops in some super dangerous neighborhood where he’d get his stash and been forced to swallow the stuff in a condom. It became lodged in his intestine and he had to contract some doctor willing to perform a risky clandestine operation, so you wonder about this doctor’s capacity or scruples.

Anyway, it worked and he had a big party with the stuff that had been festering in his stomach for three months. Another Italian was cut into pieces and thrown in a garbage vat by a drug dealer he ran afoul of. . Shit happens in Itapoa.

Why, you may wonder, would I want to choose such a scabrous sounding place to swim?
For one, I have a regular person to watch my car, likely to be the object of scavenger thieves otherwise. She recently had a baby from her husband who occasionally emerges looking flushed from drink or high from weed.

Last Monday I swam in the morning and the husband was nowhere to be found when I parked my car. After finishing and drying off, he emerged and clutching the cross around his neck asked if I had any money for his breakfast.

“I didn’t work yesterday, instead got heavily drunk and today I feel like shit,” he offered as a justification for needing breakfast money.” The day before had been a Sunday, not a smart day to take off since about 100 times more cars come than on week days. He seems to contribute little to the family enterprise. Male indolence in poorer communities is sometimes stunning. But I paid my poverty tax anyway, even though any crook who’d chosen to meddle with my car could have.

His partner, though, is very pleasant with a dreamy look in her eyes. She has undoubtedly seen much in her life, where poverty can square the aging rate of people. Her clothes are raggedy, her teeth have begun to fall out, yet she doesn’t seem bitter. Her life is not bad, she seems to have decided, on the edge of a tropical beach lined with coconut trees, where she has found a spot and a way to survive.

For another reason, the beach is beautiful. A protected cove, home to a fine looking fleet of fishing boats, the water is usually clear so you get the added bonus of seeing schools of colorful fish while you swim. There are coral reefs, none that are going to rival the Great Barrier Reef, but still pleasant to scan around.

Swimming in the ocean is an exhilarating if sometimes harrowing experience. A constant source of worry are these awful jelly fish whose tentacles can wrap around you and inflict considerable discomfort, well no actually, it is fucking painful. It is not pleasant to be quite a distance from shore and having to deal with the stings of these beasts. I’ve been meaning to look up whether they serve any ecological purpose at all. If not, I hope they become a cure in Chinese medicine or a delicacy in Japanese cuisine. This seems to ensure quick extinction or massive reduction in numbers.

So training has begun. You lucky people who have the good will to read my stuff, will likely hear more about it in the near future. I know; it will be a hard wait.