David Hauptschein" />
  • ABOUT
  • PRINT
  • PRAISE
  • SUBSCRIBE
  • OPENINGS
  • SUBMISSIONS
  • CONTACT
The Missing Slate - For the discerning reader
  • HOME
  • Magazine
  • In This Issue
  • Literature
    • Billy Luck
      Billy Luck
    • To the Depths
      To the Depths
    • Dearly Departed
      Dearly Departed
    • Fiction
    • Poetry
  • Arts AND Culture
    • Tramontane
      Tramontane
    • Blade Runner 2049
      Blade Runner 2049
    • Loving Vincent
      Loving Vincent
    • The Critics
      • FILM
      • BOOKS
      • TELEVISION
    • SPOTLIGHT
    • SPECIAL FEATURES
  • ESSAYS
    • A SHEvolution is Coming in Saudi Arabia
      A SHEvolution is Coming in Saudi Arabia
    • Paxi: A New Business Empowering Women in Pakistan
      Paxi: A New Business Empowering Women in Pakistan
    • Nature and Self
      Nature and Self
    • ARTICLES
    • COMMENTARY
    • Narrative Nonfiction
  • CONTESTS
    • Pushcart Prize 2017 Nominations
      Pushcart Prize 2017 Nominations
    • Pushcart Prize 2016 Nominations
      Pushcart Prize 2016 Nominations
    • Pushcart Prize 2015 Nominations
      Pushcart Prize 2015 Nominations
    • PUSHCART 2013
    • PUSHCART 2014
Fiction, LiteratureJuly 31, 2015

The Swim Club

Untitled III

Untitled III by Rabeya Jalil. Image Courtesy: ArtChowk Gallery.

Once again the little white case for my earplugs had fallen from the useless pocket of my tank suit, so I headed out toward the pool area to find it. Ordinarily when I lose my case I circle the Olympic-size pool, surveying it until I spot it bobbing somewhere on the surface of the water. But this time I was just too lazy to. I washed off my feet in the footbath as required by law—actually once I did find the case in the footbath’s open drain, and a couple other times on the side of the pool. Anyway, I washed off my feet, picked up a kickboard from the pile under the GOD LOVES US banner and sat down on the edge of the pool. One way or the other I was going to get in a good swim.

A few lanes down a Christian Scientist wearing blue coveralls and street shoes was on his knees testing the water. I thought he was giving me a queer look. Did he suspect I hadn’t taken a nude soap shower? Was I supposed to be wearing a shower cap or something? Some of the YMCA’s rules weren’t all that clear actually, and I wasn’t in the mood to be yelled at. I watched him use an eyedropper to squeeze a little pool water into a test tube. The solution turned greenish brown. Now what did that mean? Jesus! The pool, a common bathtub, is supposed to be kept free of toxins by continuous recirculation, filtration and chlorination. But you wonder if you can trust the people who run this place. I guess you just have to if you want to get exercise.

Bracing myself, I slid into the cold water and stood on the underwater ledge in the deep end. At the other end, the shallow end, the Ladies’ Aquacise class was about to begin and the Christian Scientist was called to assist. With a flourish he delivered a bamboo pole, shepherd’s crook and ring buoy. Splashing to the beat of Christian rock, a group of twenty women—fearfully well-made women—were working to achieve their target heartbeat. Participants were led through a series of specially designed exercises which, with the aid of the water’s buoyancy and resistance, can help improve joint flexibility and mold God’s body. Some of the young Christian women had enticing figures. I should invest in a pair of those prescription goggles, I thought, so I can see underwater. That way I wouldn’t mistake the ugly ones for the ones I’d like to fuck…

Several other groups were forming in the pool area. Roll call had begun. Sister Bertha put the buddy system into effect, as well as a system of tagboarding to check who went in the water and who came out. “All bathers must have a nude soap shower,” she announced over the P.A. “Urinating, spitting or blowing the nose in the pool can spread disease to other bathers and is not permitted! And, except for seeing eye dogs, NO PETS!”

Bracing myself, I slid into the cold water and stood on the underwater ledge in the deep end.

My group was Gym ‘n’ Swim, a coed skills development group emphasizing stroke work, aquatic first aid and Christian standards of living. To prepare myself for my upcoming Social Security Disability trial, I planned to swim one mile. “EVERYONE SWIMS, EVERYONE WINS!” barked the Program Coordinator. “You will, you will, YOU WILL WIN!”

“You are gaining self-control! You are the master of your body!” She fired off a pistol and I began practicing my elementary backstroke. On the sixth lap, in the shallow end, the back of my hand brushed against some guy’s thigh or something and we both stood up. The man had a clipboard in his hand. It was none other—you’re not gonna believe this—but it was none other than my rehearsal lawyer Jack, with his pool buddy David at his side. David was munching on a pungent green steak and saying something to Jack. As he spoke, green pieces were falling out of his mouth and into the water.

“Okay, Frank,” Jack was saying to me, checking off several items on the clipboard. “So we’ve got those two points straight. Number three: Introductions. Now, I’ll be the judge and I’m going to fire some questions at you concerning your disability case. You with me?”
“Sure.”
“Okay… Are you single or are you married?”

“Single.”
“Do you live alone or do you have a roommate?”
“I have a roommate, Your Honor.”
“And what is his or her name?”
“Sally.”
“And when you introduce your roommate to a neighbor or a friend, how do you introduce her?”
“I introduce her as my roommate.”
“As your roommate?”
“As my roommate, Your Honor, or as Sally.”
“Never as your wife? You never once introduced her as your wife?”
“No, Your Honor, we’re not married.”
“Uh-huh. And how long have you lived with this Sally, for how long have you not been married?”
“Seven years.”
“Seven years? Correct me if I’m wrong, Frank, but is the Court to understand that for seven years you have lived with this woman, and you have somehow managed to have abstained from introducing her as your wife? Not even once? Not even to your landlord? That is very abstemious behavior. The Court finds that difficult to believe. But that is what you allege.”
“Yes, Your Honor.”
“Court is adjourned for fifteen minutes.”

Jack was aware that if the Social Security Administration found out I was living with Sally as “man and wife,” they would assume she was supporting me, and my claim would be denied. “Y’know, Frank,” Jack said, splashing some water on his hirsute chest. “the judge might pry a little bit and come to find out that when the psychiatrist asked you to define the word ‘domestic,’ you answered, ‘Cleaning, washing the dishes, and fucking the wife.’ Fucking the wife? Now how do you plan to explain that one?”

Pieces of green steak were falling like bird droppings from David’s mouth into the pool. Each one landed with a little plop, and disintegrated in a green fizz beneath the surface of the water. I guess the pool had plenty of chlorine in it after all.

Continue Reading

1 2 3 View All →

Tags

David HauptscheinfictionStory of the Week

Share on

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Pinterest
  • Google +
  • LinkedIn
  • Email
Previous articleBerlin
Next articleMy Parents as the House Fire

You may also like

Billy Luck

To the Depths

Dearly Departed

Ad

In the Magazine

A Word from the Editor

Don’t cry like a girl. Be a (wo)man.

Why holding up the women in our lives can help build a nation, in place of tearing it down.

Literature

This House is an African House

"This house is an African house./ This your body is an African woman’s body..." By Kadija Sesay.

Literature

Shoots

"Sapling legs bend smoothly, power foot in place,/ her back, parallel to solid ground,/ makes her torso a table of support..." By Kadija Sesay.

Literature

A Dry Season Doctor in West Africa

"She presses her toes together. I will never marry, she says. Jamais dans cette vie! Where can I find a man like you?" By...

In the Issue

Property of a Sorceress

"She died under mango trees, under kola nut/ and avocado trees, her nose pressed to their roots,/ her hands buried in dead leaves, her...

Literature

What Took Us to War

"What took us to war has again begun,/ and what took us to war/ has opened its wide mouth/ again to confuse us." By...

Literature

Sometimes, I Close My Eyes

"sometimes, this is the way of the world,/ the simple, ordinary world, where things are/ sometimes too ordinary to matter. Sometimes,/ I close my...

Literature

Quarter to War

"The footfalls fading from the streets/ The trees departing from the avenues/ The sweat evaporating from the skin..." By Jumoke Verissimo.

Literature

Transgendered

"Lagos is a chronicle of liquid geographies/ Swimming on every tongue..." By Jumoke Verissimo.

Fiction

Sketches of my Mother

"The mother of my memories was elegant. She would not step out of the house without her trademark red lipstick and perfect hair. She...

Fiction

The Way of Meat

"Every day—any day—any one of us could be picked out for any reason, and we would be... We’d part like hair, pushing into the...

Fiction

Between Two Worlds

"Ursula spotted the three black students immediately. Everyone did. They could not be missed because they kept to themselves and apart from the rest...."...

Essays

Talking Gender

"In fact it is often through the uninformed use of such words that language becomes a tool in perpetuating sexism and violence against women...

Essays

Unmasking Female Circumcision

"Though the origins of the practice are unknown, many medical historians believe that FGM dates back to at least 2,000 years." Gimel Samera looks...

Essays

Not Just A Phase

"...in the workplace, a person can practically be forced out of their job by discrimination, taking numerous days off for fear of their physical...

Essays

The Birth of Bigotry

"The psychology of prejudice demands that we are each our own moral police". Maria Amir on the roots of bigotry and intolerance.

Fiction

The Score

"The person on the floor was unmistakeably dead. It looked like a woman; she couldn’t be sure yet..." By Hawa Jande Golakai.

More Stories

In Praise of Maths

“A pyramid here, a statue there,/ But now why bother?…” Weekend Poem, by Heidi McKinley

Back to top
One last love letter...

April 24, 2021

It has taken us some time and patience to come to this decision. TMS would not have seen the success that it did without our readers and the tireless team that ran the magazine for the better part of eight years.

But… all good things must come to an end, especially when we look at the ever-expanding art and literary landscape in Pakistan, the country of the magazine’s birth.

We are amazed and proud of what the next generation of creators are working with, the themes they are featuring, and their inclusivity in the diversity of voices they are publishing. When TMS began, this was the world we envisioned…

Though the magazine has closed and our submissions shuttered, this website will remain open for the foreseeable future as an archive of the great work we published and the astounding collection of diverse voices we were privileged to feature.

If, however, someone is interested in picking up the baton, please email Maryam Piracha, the editor, at maryamp@themissingslate.com.

Farewell, fam! It’s been quite a ride.

Read previous post:
Berlin

"It is a long way. The way has been long./ You stumble at the gates/ whose flags and guards breathe...

Close