A solid 75 percent of the time I am awake, I am in pain akin to that of childbirth. Sometimes you can read the excruciating discomfort on my face, but I’ve gotten really good at masking it so that it just looks like I’m stifling an unpleasant bit of gas. People are always asking me what Crohn’s feels like, and my answer is this: it’s like a compact car is trying to drive through my small intestines, all the time. Seriously, and it doesn’t matter if I eat or don’t eat or whatever. Oh, here’s something fun—I don’t care what diet you’re on or what herbal supplements you take. If they work for you, I’m happy. I don’t know if it’s something about me, or if people walk around just dispensing unfounded medical advice to everyone they’ve ever met with a health issue, but more often than I’m comfortable with, some asshole with a high school diploma wants to sit me down and talk at me about how they can cure my wretched-gut disease. There’s always some bag of dicks with a beer in his hand, a triple cheeseburger on his plate, and a cigarette in his mouth trying to talk to me about healthy eating. And with zero trace of irony! I appreciate the effort, I really do, but this shit is autoimmune and I have a gastroenterologist. If all I had to do was put down this taco and take those herbs your grandma swears by, I’d already be cured. Thanks, though.
This arthritis and I decided that feeling like garbage all the time is for the birds and that we were going to have to do something about it, and that something probably needed to be swimming. EXCEPT. Aside from the fact that I seriously do not possess the kind of body I am comfortable displaying in a bathing suit, and how I adore and admire those girls who do, scrolling through their gorgeous round tummies and dimpled bottoms proudly sticking out of their fatkinis on Tumblr. But I’m not there yet, and I really am not trying get my bikini area waxed. Or shave my armpits. Or risk being in a pool full of sexy, young hairless aliens looking like my real self. In my imagination the local YMCA is a shining beacon full of healthy, tan, chlorine-scented muscles gleaming beneath the fluorescent lights overhead, a happy place full of health-conscious singles mingling over protein shakes and energy bars, goggles and towels draped gently around their necks as they flirt and laugh about the number of calories they’ve burned on that complicated-looking stair machine. And those mental images are precisely why I decided to take senior aqua aerobics. I need to be around some pancake arms and spider veins and National Geographic titties, for real.
But first: a bathing suit. Typically, I’d wear a thong and a couple of small halved coconuts for this sort of endeavor, but I thought it would serve me best to be modest—for the first class, at least. After I’d barricaded myself in a corner at Lane Bryant, shivering and cowering like a child in a horror movie, handfuls of jewel-toned polyester clutched to my chest, a saleswoman approached me and hesitantly asked if I required some assistance.
“I’d like to see your most opaque turtleneckini,” I declared, “and your finest ankle-length swim bloomers.” Her eyes widened with concern as she tried to determine whether I was insane. Were you guys aware that those things don’t exist?! I was shocked, too! Anyway, a friend told me I should get a two-piece in case I needed to go to the bathroom and didn’t want to do so while completely naked (why didn’t I think of something as practical as that?), so I pointed to the wall of mix-and-matchables and snatched a black tank top with a built-in full coverage underwire bra and some sort of panty-skort-culotte type of contraption for my bottom half. Literally the closest I could come to being fully clothed yet appropriately dressed for water calisthenics.
I got up early on the following Monday and put on my bathing suit under my clothes, because while I don’t care about your grandma comparing my stretch marks to hers, I didn’t want to make my introductions while trying to secure my breasts in those stupid cups. Helen Keller was rolling her eyes, muttering, “Not even going to trim the sides, eh?” under her fishy breath while I was figuring out how to step into that silly bottom piece. I threw a shoe at her head, just barely missing her horns.
After I paid—it costs eight dollars to participate in the aerobics—I staked out the quietest row of the locker room where I could sit and listen in relative peace to Shirley and Elaine squawking about Medicare and using double coupons to shop at Kohl’s, until it was time to get into the heated baby pool.
I was immediately transported back to my days as the poor kid at summer camp whose mom sent along the previous night’s meat loaf and an off-brand thermos full of milk for lunch instead of peanut butter and jelly with a Hi-C like everyone else. Every day, I would plead with her: “No one else brings Tuna Helper or liver and onions. Please stop ruining my young life.” I was that kid with the stinky home lunch that had to be heated up, while everyone else brought delicious shelf-stable potato chips and pudding cups. No wonder I got pushed to the ground so often. Quit playing like you don’t know what I mean—everybody knows that one kid who brought the metal fork from home. AND THAT POOR, SAD BASTARD WAS ME. Anyway, all of these milkshakes had brightly colored beach towels with them, and I flushed with shame as I pulled my house towel out of my bag. Stop laughing. I have pretty decent towels, but they are plain white and boring beige and don’t wrap all the way around my body. These ladies brought towels in swirling purples and pinks and blues and greens made specifically for fun times at the local pool. They obviously have mothers who actually love them.
I took a cue from the other ladies and wore my cover-up out of the locker room (what is that thing called, a beach robe? pooljamas?), grabbed my goggles and tube and hand buoys, then tried not to slip and crack my skull open on the deck. One glance at my feet and I thought, “A pedicure should have happened yesterday,” then slipped into the pool before anyone noticed my bruised-looking toes. When I was a baby, poor people sent their kids to the YWCA for day care, and as a result I learned to swim before I could even speak full sentences. They for real just throw you in the swimming pool the minute you get there, pull you out twice a day to poop and eat a couple of graham crackers, then toss you right back in. You go home on the bus and sleep straight through dinner until breakfast the next morning. It’s a dream. Being in the water doesn’t scare me, but explaining my horrifying scarlet birthmark to strangers does, so I avoided the crowd in the center of the pool and hung back near the ladder.