The Swim Club

“No, no, I dropped out,” I said.
“Pourquoi?” Excusing myself, I looked into the parlor, and glimpsed the woman in the bathing suit. She was ushering late arrivals to the area where everyone was huddling around the TV, and again I lost her. They were all pressing in close, their scrubbed faces glowing blue in the reflected light. I moved into the dining area and from there spotted the woman’s curvaceous silhouette rising up as she adjusted the contrast control. A blue corona flared around her jiggling bottom. A moment later she was reabsorbed by the crowd. Giving up, I decided to lie down on the carpet to listen to the TV show. But all I could hear were two guys talking over it.
“They didn’t issue you any swimming suits?” one of them was saying.
“No,” the other said, “and the Program Coordinator made him get up on the diving board and put a towel over it.” Who were these guys and who were they talking about? I wondered if I knew them. I slid my eyes up the legs of two men standing over me, but their heads disappeared in the blackness above. Then, suddenly, a pair of naked, shapely legs were spotlighted by the gooseneck lamp. I was surprised to discover that they belonged to the woman in the bathing suit. From my vantage point on the floor, I actually seemed to have a good view. She was standing over the phonograph to change the record. Her abundant thighs were exposed, but would I be able to see her buttocks? When she bent over to clean the needle, truncated limbs and countless sections of heads, eyes, noses, mouths, and chins occluded my line of sight, so I stealthily adjusted my position on the carpet. And then—Yes! Yes! There was no doubt. I could see her ass. I could actually see her ass—the cheeks, the crack, rectal hair, everything! Who was this woman? I vaguely remember her being semi-introduced to me as somebody’s roommate or something… Anyway… she then bent over a little further and I could see her vagina. It was huge and pink—hyperreal. The organ’s damp sinewy lips were opened a full three inches and I could see right into her body. It was like a hollow cavern, a ribbed barrel or cave, pink and yellow with tubes and pipes and veins hanging from its sides like stalactites. Pubic hair clung to it like wet grass. It was like looking into the chest of a gutted chicken whose head had been lopped off. Jesus… There was no way I could have sex with this woman…

“Y’know we all tend to focus in on our uglies,” Alan was saying to her.
“Oh yes. Yes we do,” the woman replied, still bent over the Victrola. “Do you like Old Black Joe? Or would you prefer to listen to something more uplifting, say… Stand Up for Jesus.” My eyes were moving like a flashlight beam up and down the inside of her ribs. “The Old Oaken Bucket, My Maryland, Ben Bolt, and Jesus, Lover of my Soul,” she continued, “are all known to be generally strengthening.”

My skin was really beginning to itch. Whether it was from the woolen carpet, the chlorine, or from my damp tank suit, I couldn’t say. A nude soap shower was advised.

In the lockerroom on the way to the shower I remembered I still hadn’t found my earplug case. So I decided to go out to the pool area to look for it. Someone had taped a couple of signs on the door to the pool. The first read: Complaints About the Green Water – The Water is Safe to Swim In – The Management. The other one said: WARNING: DOGS IN THE POOL AREA TODAY. I tried the door, but they had locked it. The pool must’ve been closed for maintenance. Oh well…

I stuffed my tank suit in a locker, which smelled of fumigant, and entered the communal shower room. There, five men were standing in a row cleansing their genitals. They must’ve been regulars. Y regulars. They all looked vaguely familiar. The two closest to me were big and burly. The first one’s penis was long and yellow and seemed to be weighed down by something. He was busily sliding a bar of soap up and down his inner thighs and thrusting it through his legs to scrub his hairless buttocks. In contrast, the other one was almost lax in his cleansing. He was just standing there under the shower head, eyes aglaze, absent-mindedly stroking his anus with a bar of soap. The third guy in the row had his shower on the hottest setting. His testicles were bright red—well, not quite bright red, but red, definitely red. Where did I know these guys from? The pool?… That’s possible… Anyway, one of them, I think it was the fourth one, had an abnormally large scrotal sac, some sort of deformity. Him I’d seen making a claim at the Bureau of Disability… Or was he a caseworker? The fifth guy, whose penis was quite etiolated and was shaped like an inverted ice cream cone, also looked like someone I’d seen there. Another caseworker?… He was scouring his penis with a bar of black soap. When he bent double to rinse off, the suds skidded off his pinkened back. Steam was everywhere. A fluorescent haze was filling the room. There was a surge in the water pressure and water gushed out of the shower heads. The trap drain in the sloped floor backed up, and we were soon up to our ankles in water. Chlorine gas burned my eyes. Liquid soap squirted from the four wall nozzles. Slapping sounds echoed off the tile walls and I experienced a premonitory sensation. I leapt forward, trying to get out of the way, but I was an instant too late. I felt the warm, viscid ejaculate splattering my back. Looking behind me, I saw the first man’s pupils rolling up beneath the lids. The second man’s eyes were two egg whites. Again I leapt forward and again I was struck. The third guy squealed as he came, and the fourth snarled and ejaculated on my neck. In a panic, like a dog chasing a car, I ran forward. Smack into the speckled tile wall.

David Hauptschein is a Chicago-based playwright, screenwriter, impresario, and visual artist. Hauptschein has had four plays produced in London, ‘In Memory of Edgar Lutzen’ (2010), ‘An Alchemy of Flesh’ (2008), ‘The Playactor’ (2007), and ‘Trance’ (2002). His play ‘The Gurney’ was produced in Chicago in 2008. In 2004, his play ‘The Ballad of Johnny 5 Star’, co-written with David Vlcek, premiered at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and the Library Theatre in Manchester, England. ‘Trance’ received a Fringe First Award at the 1996 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, and was featured at the 1997 Arts Festival in Brighton, England.  

Among Hauptschein’s other theatrical events are the Heartless Theatre production of selections from Hauptschein’s ‘Frank Monologues’, featuring Michael Shannon; Pig American Theater’s production of ‘No One Goes Mad: From Writings of the Insane’; and ‘The Duplex Planet Project’, directed by Charles Pike, based on David Greenberger’s magazine.

Hauptschein’s plays have been published online by indietheaternow.com