Lane 4: A Chlorinated Melodrama

Summertime at the local health club pool – a real-life Peyton Place

With Lorinda Birdwhistle

When you see this, best to pack your swim bag and head for the hills.

Hi there – Lorinda here again. I’ve got a lot to get off my chest or I’m going to explode. Hope you’re up for more of my bullshit. My editor told me I needed to start writing in the third person. WTF.

As you may or may not know, I’ve taken to swimming, my favorite sport of all time. My new boyfriend, Jesse, arranged a membership for me at the health club around the corner from my house and I’ve not missed a day of swimming since. It’s like having a pool in my backyard, except I don’t have to clean it. Many days of the week, however, I noticed the employees at the health club don’t clean it either. Today’s haul from the bottom of the pool: 2 pennies, a set of false eyelashes, a pair of goggles, one fake gold hoop earring, and 6 leaves. And that’s just from my lane. I always reserve 4A.

Let me say this: thank you, Jesse. Swimming makes me feel like a million bucks and now I’ve got a fantastic tan, smooth shapely legs, and tits hard as rocks. Not sure that last bit was something Jesse was going for when he signed me up, but there you have it. My boobs are half their previous size. THANK GOD. Those pendulous suckers were driving me nuts. Let that be a big head’s up for those of you thinking to take up swimming.

The scene at the pool. Sadly, not as sexy as I was hoping for:

Frequent flyers: Randy, the human dandelion, and his wife Rita. Was hoping for Michael and Katie, aquatic vertebrates.

Then there’s the bit with my hair, which is now fucking fried. I was wearing a swim cap, but it didn’t keep the chlorinated water out and the latex shredded the hair around my face and on the back of my neck. As the spikey bits of silver hair grew back, I started looking like a lemur.

OK, let’s get straight to the melodrama advertised, starting with that stupid women’s water aerobics class at 11:00 a.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Let me repeat: this idiotic class starts at 11:00 a.m. and the class only has lanes 4 and 5 reserved. Lanes 1, 2, and 3 remain available for the real swimmers who do laps.

The drama typically starts when 6 to 8 older women show up an hour early. These old biddies swagger over to the pool directly from the parking lot AS IF. As if they own the pool, what with their $65 per month membership fee. They don’t go the usual route through the women’s locker room, as they wouldn’t be seen dead next to all those gorgeous 20-some-year olds in their Lululemons. That would spoil their delusions of grandeur. And hey - don’t ride my ass about “old biddies.” I am an old biddy, so I get to use the term freely.

When they arrive poolside, this gaggle of geese gather up all the best chaise lounges, umbrellas, and tables and proceed to pile them high with their gear, Krispy Kreme donuts, Hydro Flasks of iced tea and other shit, rendering the entire poolside unusable by a single other health club member. Not kidding on this. I even saw one of these ladies gingerly pick up someone’s swim tote (one of the lap people) and put it on a nearby cement bench by the hot tub - this so she could claim the last chair, which she muscled over to be next to her best friend’s chaise lounge. She clearly thought nothing of doing this. These entitled white cul de sac housewives live by a different set of rules than the rest of us.

The ladies with their pool penises. Those see a lot more action than their husbands.

The water aerobics early birds start their routine by staring down those of us doing laps. You can feel their evil eyes lasering through the straps on our Speedo swimsuits. If you commit the grave error of making eye contact with these ladies, they will start gesturing for you to come to the side of the pool to talk with them. If you ignore them, they deliver a scolding look accompanied by ye olde hands-on-the-hips gesture. They then wait impatiently (and threateningly) for you to arrive at the lane’s end so they can issue their complaints. Hopefully, you’ve mastered the art of the flip turn so you can ignore their bullshit and give them a nice splashing.

I’ll tell you what they’re saying, if you’ve not witnessed it: they will be telling you it’s time to get out of the pool because it’s time for their class, this, even though the class doesn’t start for another hour, it says that right on the sign behind them which is next to the clock and in spite of the fact the class is not even in your lane. They want your body out of their pool now, especially if it’s brown.

If you make the massive error of engaging in a “conversation,” they will explain they need time to do set up and warm up. If you fail to heed their warning, a coven of these idiots will gather in your lane (in the water) to block you from touching the wall. Like a fucking rugby scrum.

The women’s water aerobics partakers are a distinctive lot and unlike anyone else who belongs to the health club minus the low-impact yoga peeps. Hate to stereotype - ok, I admit I love doing that - but these ladies are self-righteous, rude and mean, and were most likely cheerleaders in high school or, at a minimum, on the pom-pom squad. They are typically really sorry after they mess with me – I was the drum major for the marching band. Think 30-piece brass section, 6 snare drums. 4 bass drums, 2 glockenspiels, and 4 sets of cymbals. Go ahead. Trying fucking with me you rah-rahs.

If the picture is still not clear, let me add a few more descriptors: these ladies arrive for class wearing full-on makeup and sunglasses, they’ve styled their hair, and most are wearing visors or wide-brimmed hats with fucking bows. One lady even does her bun up with Saran Wrap. And the Miraclesuit swimwear they flaunt is designed for lounging poolside in a gated retirement community in Miami. One lap of freestyle in those suits and the girls would be floating on top of the water. Most insulting is the fact that about half of these women get into the water with shoes they wore on their trek from the parking lot to the pool. YUCK. They can’t even be bothered to put on proper water shoes. I guess when your face isn’t actually going in the water, filth is not really a concern.

Who the hell wears a hat when they're swimming? These are the types of hats worn by the asshats in the women's aerobics class. I wouldn't be caught dead in one of these.

My favorite run-in with these women… one day, the ringleader came up to me as I was getting out of the pool and said, “You should join the class one of these days instead of doing laps. You’ll discover muscles you never knew you had,” to which I loudly responded, “Oh, don’t worry. I found those muscles back in college and they still work really well.”

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Then there is the pool meat market scene, both the young-people-in-the-evening scene and the senior-singles scene during the day, which includes a contingency of old men who don’t even enter the pool. They just ogle the thong bikini wearers from their lounge chairs between 11:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m., i.e. peak sun tanning hours. I try not to think too hard on what they do in the hot tub afterward, though it seems they linger near the jets, always with a faraway look in their eyes. Hint for the ladies: if you are in your reproductive years, perhaps consider using contraception if partaking in the club’s hot tub amenity.

The hot tub after throngs of young people from Los Angeles hung out at the club during a recent music festival. Note the mysterious foam. Not soap.

There are several categories of men at the pool during the senior-singles timeslot, namely those who are showing off with their superb swim strokes and ability to do more than two laps without getting winded, those sharing a lane with their domineering wives, and then the throngs of men who hang out in the hot tub, leering indiscriminatingly at every woman doing laps and sunbathing. These men convince their wives they go to the pool to exercise by reeking of chlorine. Hey Londa and Angie - guess what? No laps were swum by your big guys. Hope that clears up the mystery of why they’re not losing any weight.

My feeling on the gaper’s block guys: don’t matter where you get your appetite, as long as you do your eatin’ at home. And perhaps jerk off in your individual shower at the club instead of in the hot tub.

This guy likes the ladies more than sugar cookies. Occasionally his wife turns up so that all the ladies at the pool know there is an actual Mrs. Claus.

There are a few exceptional men during senior-singles time that deserve special mentions, namely Santa-on-steroids, Martin Sheen’s doppelganger, and Hugo, the guy who lets all the ladies know he is happy to do their yardwork at no charge.

Santa wears, kid you not, a bright red Speedo. And boy is he packing the goods. “He spoke not a word, but went straight to work, and filled all the stockings. Then laying his finger aside of his nose, and giving a nod, up the “chimney” he rose...” 🤡 This guy is big in the gut, like Santa, but damn he can swim, even though his physique looks like an overstuffed kielbasa. Oh yeah, then there’s that big white beard. Fucking weird watching Santa flying down Lane 3 doing an expert butterfly and flip turns. And when this guy stares at you, you might as well be naked. Lately, his wife has been turning up during his workouts. My guess is he was coming home a little too stoked up after pool time.

Ed has been unsuccessful at keeping his eyes in their eye sockets at the pool, so his wife suggests they head home and cancel their membership.

And Wednesday nights - not a time to try to do laps. Holy shit. There are literally a hundred young people at the pool, mating. I try to wait a day after to resume doing laps. My hope: that all of the water in the pool has gotten filtered.

Holy shit.

Good luck doing laps on Wednesday evenings.

A hint for older ladies looking for great guys… GO IN THE EARLY MORNING. The early birds are guys who go swimming before work. The operative word here is work. They actually have jobs and a life and in some cases, a wife. Hey! Don’t venture into hooking up with married dudes. Not nice.

Just saying, there is less riff-raff in the morning, the guys are in much better shape and no one will be dying of skin cancer, as the sun is still low in the sky.

Smoking hot @ 7:00 a.m. Mmm mmm mmm.

I’ve run out of stock photos, so gonna wrap this up and go swim. I love swimming and Jesse likes the results. Mmm, mmm, mmm - all is good at the pool and in the bedroom.

FYI - the whip kick for breaststroke is a great substitute for Kegels. Just saying.

The Swimming Song, Loudon Wainwright III