MEN AND THEIR PONDS
I shake off my funk with a trip to Hampstead, despite my indecision I find comfort in the presence of strangers.
In summer (oh no, not again, you say, sorry, I have only one theme for now: summer), the days extend and my energy levels do, too. In winter I can feel sunken in my bones, heavy with the cold air. These months I can spring out of bed on six to seven hours sleep, excitable, buoyed by the light outside my window. There’s a kind of crazed, sexual energy in people’s insatiable desire to be social animals again that drives me wild. Have you tried just being in the streets? Walking in the park? Getting out there? There’s so much you can find.
Work is quiet, it’s August afterall. Today, I am irascible. I can’t locate the root, but every little thing sets me off – a pond of stale anger bubbles about inside my chest. On my lunch break I manage to write a poem that’s a revelric unfolding of exuberance, in spite of all my bad feelings. The lines are really long, too (nothing more exuberant than a poem with a long line!). I eventually realise the cause of my restlessness and irritability: alcohol. I am a grumpy man trapped in my little grumpy hangover pond.
The week before I did some intense socialising. After the poems at Oto on Thursday, some excitable people younger than me drag me to Ridley Road Market Bar – I am very impressed by the decor, more enjoying the opportunity to think of the bar as a place where people can have fun than just letting myself have fun.
Anyway, I find myself staying out until 1am on a school work night, confused that anyone would be out dancing on a Thursday, equally excited to remember that people under the age of 30 exist, and get drunk, and dance, and try and have sex with one another. Nice.
Shaking off the funk of work hours, I spend an hour trapped in a state of indecision. I know that the best way to wipe the tired away is by plunging my body into water. But the swim spots are so far away. The time disappears. Eventually it’s 6pm and if I don’t leave the house soon I’ll miss my chance. So I get on my bike and just cycle, unsure of my destination. Eventually, somehow, I get to Hampstead mens’ pond. I will drop my man self in the man pond with the men at the mens’ pond. (As an aside, an old friend is leading a campaign to build an eco-swim spot between Leyton and Hackney, give them some money if you have it to give.
The queue is painless. I become excited by my decision, yes, I’ve arrived, I’m here, I’m going to fucking swim. I forgot that the changing rooms are an incredibly special place: a lot of locals, a lot of familiarity, a lot of intergenerational nods and waves and smiles. The variety of conversation is as wild and heterogenous as the shapes and sizes of naked men, from toned muscles and tanned tummies to the pastiest wobbly flesh you’ve seen. Some men talk about their dancing and their night lives and the men they fancy, other men talk about their remortgaging and how their kids are forgetting how to speak English.
“Do you remember Henry who used to come here?”
“Oh the young guy, was he a dancer?”
“He had a beautiful body, but I think he was a mineralogist, really into rocks and that, only in his thirties.”
“Oh no, I don’t remember him.”
“He used to come all the time. Sometimes I wonder what happened to him. I think I heard he got sectioned.”
“Oh gosh.”
The over-familiarity of an inconstant community, broken apart by the pandemic, and now putting itself back together again. No one knows anyone well enough to know how to express their care, but inside of all the gossip it’s still there, a certain fondness.
The political situation everywhere is pretty fucking dire. Money runs upward, we get pressed downward. But away from the online catastrophic chatter, I find small comforts in eavesdropping.
In the expressions of most people you find a complicated expression of care, and equally a desire, for the most part, to keep on living with and among others. There are the people who’ve abandoned a world that involves being with other people – they terrify me. But at least at the mens’ pond, the men want to listen to the other men, and be near the men, swim close to the men. We can learn how to live together, somehow. We must, even.
I jump in the pool, my flesh pulled through the surface of the water, my frame submerged in the murkiness of a pond. I come back to life again. It feels so good, the water. Sometimes pleasure is a simple thing.
I sit in the park after, drying in the last of the day’s sun. I hear the end of a date, at first I mistake it for a beginning.“So I’ve developed this strategy that means my colleagues think I’m online when I’m not,” he says.
“I’m a CEO, I can’t do that,” she says.”
“Oh wow, you’re a CEO, so you’re like entrepreneurial and that?”
“Yeah, yeah, I guess so.”
“What star sign are you?”
“I’m an Aquarius.”
“Wow, I thought you were a Leo. I’m a Pisces myself. So anyway, I’m going this way now? See you around I guess.”
I’m taken aback by the abrupt exit. We’re all managing to get by through these imperfect strategies for understanding each other, excited by the idea of coming together. And equally disentangling, jumping ship, moving on from something. I doubt these two will meet again, who knows. I cycle off home, feeling a little less grumpy after my deep splash in the man pond, ready to face the next day.