Craving Chlorinated Water

Before I left San Francisco, I thought I'd probably have to live without swimming for a couple of weeks while I was traveling. But I’ve been in New York for less than 24 hours and already I’m jonesing for a pool. A Google search for “public swimming pools new york city” turns up two within a reasonable distance of where I’m staying in Chelsea.

There’s the Chelsea Piers Sports Center, which about.com describes as “a six-lane pool with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the Hudson River.” Cool. No, fabulous. And I can walk there. I keep reading.

Day passes, the website says, are $50. Must be a typo. I call. “Is it really $50 a day just to use the pool?” “Yes, but you get access to the entire facility for the whole day.” “There isn’t a cheaper option if all I want to do is swim for half an hour?” “I’m afraid not.”

Okay, scratch Chelsea Piers. Maybe I’ll stop by later and ask if I can just check out the view. For free.

Then there’s the Asser Levy Rec Center at E. 23^rd and Avenue C. The outdoor pool, open during the summer, is free. And it’s a four-block walk and one bus ride – the 23 St Crosstown – from where I’m staying. I don’t think I’ve ever taken a bus in Manhattan. But how hard could it be. It’s probably just like taking a bus in San Francisco, right? Do you think they’ll let me use my MUNI Fast Pass? Are New York and San Francisco sister cities? Maybe I can rent a bike. Is there someplace to rent bikes in Chelsea?

Well, all this goes on tomorrow’s agenda. It’s too late to go swimming today. It’s almost 9:00 am and I’ve been up for three and a half hours. Swimming is what you do at dawn. The rest of the day is for walking and taking the subway. Now if only D. and Sarah would wake up…

Registration, or What to Wear

It’s official now. I’ve registered for the Gay Games. I’m entered in the 50 fly and the 200 fly events. The 200 fly is the real deal, the reason I’m going, the ultimate challenge. The 50 is just to see if, after I’ve jumped off the starting block, and dolphin-kicked underwater as far as as possible without passing out, I can manage to complete a few strokes quickly enough to rack up a time worth mentioning.

Registering was deceptively simple. All I had to do was fill in a few bits of information – name, address, phone number, and my favorite: transgender? (M-->F; F-->M; no) - and fork over 165 euros. I don’t even want to know how much that is in US dollars. I’ll find out when the credit card bill arrives. Actually, it was more than 165 euros; I paid an extra 125 euros so my partner, D., could march by my side in the opening and closing ceremonies.

Oddly enough, the thought of participating in the opening and closing ceremonies hadn’t occurred to me. At first I thought it was because I was so focused on my original motivation, the swimming (and the chance to sneak an up-close look at hot young guys from all over the world, with their shirts off), that I simply hadn’t gotten around to fantasizing about the parades.

Then I realized it was because, even though I had decided to compete in the Gay Games, I still didn’t believe I deserved to march in the opening ceremonies. That experience was reserved for real athletes. I never had been and never would be a real athlete. I was in a different category. No matter what feats of jockitude I accomplished, even if I succeeded in completing, in an international sporting competition, what is arguably the most challenging event in competitive swimming, that still wouldn’t make me an athlete. I couldn’t be an athlete: I was a sissy. Yeah, well fuck you, Brad Donaldson, captain of the football team, who made my life hell in 9^th grade. What kinda shape are you in at 60?

Still, once the question was posed during the online registration process – do you want your partner to march with you? – how could the answer be no?

But that raised a more difficult question: What does one wear while marching in the opening ceremonies of the Gay Games? Something fabulous, yes, but what screams fabulous for a 59-year-old faggot who hasn’t worn a dress in over a decade?

“You have to wear a dress,” my daughter Sarah insisted. She had already declared that, if I was going to swim in the Gay Games, it was only fair that she be brought along to watch, and I had relented. Confident that she had scored a summer trip to Germany, she had now turned to offering fashion advice.

“I don’t think so,” I said, although I do love a nice lace gown. I still have one, my favorite, hanging in my closet from my hippie queer genderfuck days. It’s an ankle-length, peach-colored number, lots of crinoline; I stole it from an antique store in Boston in 1969, as I recall; no easy feat; please don’t tell anyone; I do regret it; I know it was wrong. I used to accessorize the gown with calf-high black combat boots. I also sported a full beard. That was back when my beard was some color other than gray, thus projecting virility, to the limited extent possible while adorned in lace, rather than maturity.

“Maybe rhinestone earrings,” I said. Long, dangly ones. I have several pair, although I suspect that, all of them having been purchased for other occasions, none of them makes precisely the right statement for the opening ceremonies of the Gay Games. I also have a cute pair of pink-flamingo earrings. They could work. There is a Pink Flamingo event: think synchronized swimming on queer steroids. Pink-flamingo earrings could be a statement of solidarity. But no, on second thought, since I’m not planning to participate in the Pink Flamingo event, not this time around at least, wearing the pink-flamingo earrings might be viewed as presumptuous, an attempt at co-optation. I don’t want to step on any toes.

I’ll just have to shop.

I always tend to get hung up on the earrings, although I do realize there’s the rest of the outfit to consider. Summery and loose, off-white linen, an air of casual elegance? Or a tight-fitting hot pink cotton t-shirt, that shows off my pecs (or would, if I had pecs), and ends a couple of inches above my waist, exposing my abs (if I had abs)? Stone-washed Levis or khakis? Long pants or shorts? Cut-off and fringy or hemmed? Should I go retro and do bell-bottoms?

And footwear! Comfort first. I insist. I’m training to participate in a serious athletic event. I’m not about to go messing up my calf muscles two days before the race. Although that still leaves quite a few options. Tevas? (Do they come in pink, or lavender?) Something shiny and silver, with lots of straps, from Thrift Town? (It’s so hard to find anything in my size.) Converse All-Stars (they do come in pink, and lavender)? And if I wear something open-toed, do I get my nails done to match the earrings? Can the pedicurist successfully hide the toenail fungus?

Finally: the hat. I have to wear something, or I’ll burn to a crisp. There’s no natural protection left up there. Even SPF 70 won’t save me. I’m thinking bonnet. I know it will be mid-summer, but I’m partial to Easter bonnets, I always have been. Something that says fresh straw, with a tasteful cluster of preserved rosebuds: burgundy, and dusty pink, and mauve. Maybe I’ll get Ixia to do the arrangement. I wonder how it will travel.

And I thought training for the 200 fly would be the hard part. Silly faggot: the real challenge is going to be pulling my outfit together for the parade. Just thinking about it makes me want to pour myself a glass of Chablis and sit on the veranda all afternoon. And then take a nap. Well, I’ve got time. The opening ceremonies are still 11 months away.

What? What do you mean I can’t wear the same thing to the closing ceremonies? I don’t care if “it simply isn’t done.” How big a suitcase do you expect me to pack?

Planting a Stake

Two things of note today.

First, although it's a Saturday morning, and I don't usually swim on Saturdays, I decided to put in a little pool time because I'm leaving tomorrow morning to bring my daughter to college and I'll be gone for two weeks, with limited opportunity to swim. Accomplishments: I swam a 100-yard freestyle, and more importantly to the challenge at hand, a 50-yard fly.

Not great. But I've only been back in the pool 3 or 4 times since my surgery. Before the surgery, I couldn't swim for about a month because the pain was too intense; I couldn't find any way to make it fun. About a month after the surgery, I felt better, but I had to wait until the wound healed completely before I could swim. The doctor didn't want me to risk infection and I decided that since he was a brain surgeon I should probably listen to him.

So I've been hanging out in the "therapy" lane, swimming 25 yards at a time, focused on form, then resting, then another 25 yards. Today's accomplishments are significant because both 50 and 100 are bigger numbers than 25. Not as big as 200, but still...

Second noteworthy item of the morning. On a whim, I swung by WeightWatchers, which I joined about 4 years ago to lose weight after my mother died of complications from diabetes. It was a miserable death, complete with dementia, and I thought it might be nice to try something different. At any rate, I stepped on the scale this morning and the numbers that blinked back at me from the digital readout were 182.2. For perspective, when I weighed in at my first meeting, the blinking numbers screamed 212.0.

I did a quick calculation. "So, wow, I've lost 40 pounds since I started," I said hopefully to the woman behind the counter, waiting patiently for praise while she tucked my 12 dollars, a 5 and 7 singles, into the cash register.

"Almost," she said sympathetically, apparently not a fan of round numbers. "And thanks for the correct change. You're the second person today with correct change. You can come to my meeting any time."

I guess I should have left my wallet out of my pocket while I weighed in. It probably would have been good for at least two-tenths of a pound.

Chrissy Gets Inspired

I know you're not supposed to use a pen to write a blog, but I was sitting in a tent cabin on the shore of the American River (about half a mile a way from Sutter's mill, where gold was discovered in California) when I decided to start a blog, and I didn't have my computer with me. So it was either use a pen or type it on my daughter's computer, and that seemed, well -- just wrong. This is a transcription.

What's my blog about? I'm going to swim the 200-meter butterfly, or try at least, in the Gay Games in Cologne in July 2010. About a year ago, I set myself the goal of swimming the 200 fly in a swim meet before I turned 60. My original plan was to accomplish this in a local Masters meet, somewhere in the San Francisco Bay Area, where I live. But when I saw an article on the Web about Cologne, I decided that was the place to do it.

I will turn 60 in September 2010, in 405 days to be precise, and I figure if I'm going to swim the 200 fly in a meet before then, why not in an international meet where it would be really embarrassing to fail? (Although, nobody watches the 60-year-old swimmers, anyway - they all want to see the young guys, especially at the Gay Games - so even if I run out of steam after the first 100 and have to be fished out of the pool with a hook, although it will be personally mortifying, not many people will actually notice.)

Anyway, my blog's going to be about training for Cologne, with a little back story about how I got to this point in my journey.

I wonder how far back I should start. Should I go all the way back to junior high school, and tell you about the sissy boy who was bullied, and spat on, and tripped, and had his books dumped, and was chosen last on every team, and generally hated anything to do with sports or athletic activity? Or should I start more recently, two months and three days ago, when I had surgery on my lumbar spine, because the Pilates, and the swimming, and the bike riding, and the ergonomic chair, and the neuromuscular reprogramming (a form of deep-tissue massage), and the chiropractic, and the acupuncture, and the naprapathy, and the deep breathing, and finally, the Vicodin, weren't winning the battle against sciatic pain?

Hard to decide. You'll get to hear about all of it eventually. For now, though, I should probably settle for introducing myself, because I don't have much time today. I'm going whitewater rafting in a few minutes.

My name is Chrissy the Sissy. That's not my real name, of course. I also go by Camo, which is short for Camomile de Quellequechose. But for this blog, I'm going to use Chrissy the Sissy. I'll explain later. Right now, I have to get ready to go rafting.

I hope my back does okay. It should be fine. I stretched it out at dawn this morning on this big rock by the edge of the river. And the section of the river we're doing is only Class III.