Swimming Studies

by Leanne Shapton

  25. Speedo black high-neck tank, used for lap swimming, 2011.

  Purchased at Le Bon Marché, Paris. Found in a section on the third floor devoted to le week-end: expensive soft-shouldered cashmeres and cottons in muted, subtle colors that put me in mind of obscure minor royalty. Worn for lap swimming in the Piscine de Pontoise, where I forget to bring a towel, so après swim, I cycle-dry on my Vélib’ city bike back to the hotel.

  As I swim past a pair of older Swedish women talking to each other, heads up and paddling, a young woman jumps off the first level of the platform tower. I follow her pale form as she swims toward the steps, and I get out and head for the tower myself. A wooden spiral staircase leads to the two upper platforms, the top one forty feet or so above the water. The second platform is about twenty-five feet above the water, and it is this one I leap from, naked, into the green waves.

  26. Aquarapid purple tank, bought in Turin, during the 2010 Artissima art fair, used for recreational swimming, 2010–2011.

  Worn in a Holiday Inn pool, Minneapolis, before attending the opening of Jason’s first solo museum show, at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. Taped to a wall near the pool is a piece of paper that reads:

  POOL NOTICE:

  The black marks on the bottom of the pool were caused by a guest, who was an art student, and experimented with a waterproof marker. The pool is clean and safe. In order to remove the marks, we have to drain the pool. We have chosen to do that at a future slow period so that our guests now can enjoy the pool.

  Thank you, Management.

  ST. BARTS

  St. Barts, the last day of December 2009. The sailboat is anchored offshore. It is four p.m., the sun is low, hot, egg-yolk yellow. Four of us—me, James, André, and Xin—decide to swim to the beach with flippers. I’m the strongest swimmer, James the weakest.

  Being pool-trained, I’m used to seeing four sides and a bottom. When that clarity is removed I get nervous. I imagine things. Sharks, the slippery sides of large fish, shaggy pieces of sunken frigates, dark corroded iron, currents. I can swim along the shore, my usual stroke rolled and tipped by the waves, the ribbed sandy bottom wiggling beneath me, but eventually I get spooked by the open-ended horizon, the cloudy blue thought of that sheer drop—the continental shelf.

  When I saw a cross section of the shelf in my fourth-grade geography textbook, I ran my finger from beach out to sea, imagining it was me and imagining the increasing depth beneath my kicking body, my suspension in it uncanny and diminishing. In lakes I think of the ancient tree trunks crisscrossing the bottom, black cities of wood rot and skeletal corridor. I imagine my foot brushing something, stirring up fibrous mud. The wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. The Loch Ness monster. I avoid being in the water next to the hull of a ship or the descending green post of a dock. Any unusual bulk in the water near me is mildly unbearable. If it is dark it is worse. Thrilling and dreadful.

  James and I swam off a sailboat with André a few years before, in the Aegean. The boat had put down anchor in a small bay. The sun had set and the sky was navy. I was below deck, and heard a loud splash outside the cabin porthole. André called to the rest of us.

  The water was black, but André’s body was outlined against it in martian green. Phosphorus. I wanted badly to get in. From the ladder I leapt as far from the side as possible and began swimming around the boat. James came in after me and swam in the opposite direction, so I turned and swam toward him, not wanting to feel alone next to the dark hull. I wrapped my arms around his cool shoulders, scared and ecstatic. Swimming that night, through the phosphorus, with the stars and shredded pieces of cloud reflected in the surface of the glinting, living water, I felt suspended, tiny. On one side of me, the boat’s tall prow swept darkly up out of the water; on the other, the anchor fell taut and deep. My perfect nightmare. I went once around the boat with James, then found the ladder and sat on its rungs, heart pounding. I splashed the glinting green water between my knees. It was my thirty-first birthday.

  • • •

  Looking across to the St. Barts shoreline, we pull on fins and begin the swim to land. I am quickly twenty meters away from James. André and Xin are ahead of me by ten. James does an easy breaststroke with his head held up. I swim back to him and suggest he do the crawl, but he doesn’t answer me. I explain to him that fins help a flutter kick but hinder a whip kick. He doesn’t answer me.

  I feel my body acutely in the water. Once in, I like to swim until I feel the edges of my limbs and a familiar strain. I take twenty long, strong strokes and look back. I’ve passed André and Xin; James is now a paddling speck. I swim back to him. He complains that his flipper is cutting into his foot. Once more, I suggest a different kick. He tries for a while, then goes back to what he was doing. I swim out again, then back. André swims to me and asks if James is okay. I tell him James’s fins are giving him trouble. André swims over and offers to trade flippers but James says no, thanks. I am aware of a current, weak and not helping us inshore.

  We all swim at James’s pace for a while, and then André and Xin move away. I stay next to James as we lose sight of them. Resentment starts to build. We are swimming so slowly I’m cold in the water. His inefficient stroke is infuriating. I go back to my usual pace, then double back to keep him within my sight. I can’t leave him behind. I think of the ring he gave me three days ago.

  I can tell James is tiring. The closer we get to shore, the harder I want to swim. I suggest he roll onto his back and do a butterfly kick to relieve his foot, which works for a while, but his stroke is resistance rather than catch-and-flow. As I swim next to him, my voice is full of false patience. He snaps at me about his flipper. I glance at my ringless finger as I swim away from him, then back again. It was too loose, so I left it at home, worried about losing it in the sea.

  We finally reach the curve of the beach basin, and the waves gather us into the rowboats and splashing teenagers. I can see rocks, fish, and the sandy bottom, and swim quickly into shore. On the beach we take off our fins and lie in the hot sand. James rubs at his blister. We do not talk. The swim has taken forty-five minutes. I walk along the beach alone, then return. André trades flippers with James, and the four of us set off to the boat. The swim out is easier, the sun in our eyes. I swim fast, tugging out the thresholds in my arms and the tops of my thighs. James is far behind, so I double back again. Then set back out. I do this until we near the boat.

  As we swim up alongside it, three passengers from a nearby yacht skim out toward us on bright yellow Seabobs. One wears her sunglasses perched on her head. We tread water and shake hands, and they offer us a turn on their machines. At top speed, the Seabobs remind me of resistance training with surgical tubing. During practice we tied ourselves to one end of the pool and swam to the other side, making only inches of progress as the rubber tube was stretched thin. At the other side we’d hang on to the wall, then let go, yanked across the pool like a hooked fish, water banking, as we stroked with superhuman results, the water roaring past. Sometimes the perfect first lengths of a race felt that way, where strength was effortless, its long-stored hours finally gushing out painlessly. The Seabob is a luxury-toy version of this.

  James paddles in and takes a turn on one. It makes him giddy too. As we laugh, our sailboat’s tender sputters up with two new guests. One of them, seeing us bob and wave, pulls her dress over her head and swan dives topless into the water. Later, on deck, she discovers that only one of her diamond hoop earrings remains in her ear.

  PISCINE OLYMPIQUE

  I check into the Westin, at the corner of Saint-Antoine and Saint-Pierre. The hotel is tall and sleek, but the pool is tiny, more of a tank. Its one redeeming feature: a glass bottom that overlooks the entrance drive. I have a couple of hours before I’m due at a Montreal bookstore to talk about a new series of paintings, so I go for a swim. It’s impossible to do laps. As I make short passes across the pool, I see hotel gu
ests silently get in and out of taxis, uniformed porters opening and closing car doors. I hope they’ll glance up and see me floating overhead, so I can wave, but nobody looks.

  • • •

  After the trials in 1992, I stop training, and miss the coverage of the Barcelona Olympics by taking a summer course at an art school in downtown Detroit. I stay in an apartment on campus, cover the walls in cartridge paper and draw large portraits of men from photographs in old Vanity Fair magazines. Robert Wilson’s face covers one wall, Tom Stoppard’s another. After a quiet week of rote life-drawing classes, calls to a not-really-boyfriend, and diary writing, my supply of spaghetti and Granny Smith apples has dwindled. I need to socialize.

  I make some friends in the apartment building who persuade me to buy a pair of Rollerblades. They teach me how to blade during the empty early-morning hours. We drive over to Wayne State and park, put on an R.E.M. tape, open the car doors, and roll round and round the paved university campus, up and down deserted Woodward and East Kirby. When I talk about swimming, my new friends look at me blankly, so we talk about art.

  In September, my deferral over, I head to McGill for freshman year, with Chris. We move into an apartment at 2100 Rue Lambert-Closse.

  Halfway through the year, our roommates Amy and Lisa, who found the apartment, decide to turn a large closet into another bedroom and advertise for a “gay-friendly” roommate. Chris argues that this is discriminating against straight people. Amy and Lisa insist it means friendly, not gay. I suggest we all move somewhere nicer and cheaper. We see one apartment that I still think about: Recently vacated by a McGill professor, it had the winding halls, hardwood floors, and tall windows typical of Montreal. The rooms were lined with built-in wooden bookshelves, making the walls a foot thicker, floor to ceiling. I dreamt of filling the shelves with beloved books; I imagined that the insulated, focused qualities of the professor still infused the space; I felt that if I lived there I would be smarter.

  We do not take the apartment. Sumaya—both friendly and gay—moves in and sleeps on a peach-colored duvet on the floor of the large closet. She leaves big pots of spicy dal caking on the stove. Each morning, while my roommates sleep, I silently maneuver my green mountain bike out of our hall, down the stairs, and into fresher air.

  I bicycle from Lambert-Closse to the Cégep du Vieux-Montréal pool, for swim practice with the McGill team. The post-Olympics season is quiet, the gears slowly beginning on another four-year cycle. Earlier in the year I was in Montreal to compete at the 1992 Olympic trials, held at the Piscine Olympique.

  • • •

  I still have a memo Byron handed out in February 1992, a photocopy, on canary-yellow paper. He drew the Olympic rings on a flag upper right. The memo reads:

  TORONTO SWIMMERS: OLYMPIC TRIALS AND OLYMPIC GAMES HERE WE COME!!

  Our twelve-month build up to this summer is in its final phase. We have been able to stay close to our original plan: aerobic base in the Summer; aerobic and major strength focus in the Fall; boost of aerobic over Christmas; reduction in strength training focus with increase in racing in the winter. The results indicate that we are right on track to begin the final phase: the increase in speed work leading to the Trials.

  SO . . . . . . LET’S DO IT!!!

  The plan is very simple. Hard Work. Lots of it. Total focus and total sacrifice. No excuses. You CAN do it.

  • • •

  The memo, along with others outlining training and meet schedules, is tucked into a red notebook. Another scrap of paper reads, in my own handwriting: “Things that will help me achieve my goals: STRENGTH: weight training, knees/kick stuff; HEALTH: plenty of sleep, rest; INTENSITY: focused, practicing tired; WEIGHT: ideal 122.”

  Throughout the notebook are lists of food consumed and my weight. On one page I’ve written the time I want for the long-course 100m breaststroke, 1:10:00, one hundred ten times. This faces lines about how much I hate certain teammates. The book is full of exhaustingly purple crush-pining; lists of art supplies and baking ingredients; notes concerning the rental of a studio space alongside plans to see live bands (Rollins Band, Luka Bloom, Cowboy Junkies) and independent movies (Angel at My Table, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, Diva, Last Exit to Brooklyn). Every few pages I exhort myself: “Focus Focus Focus.” “Just swim.”

  • • •

  I can’t recall much of those Olympic trials, but from the final pages of the notebook I can piece together what happened:

  Tuesday: After a morning workout in Toronto, left for Montreal. Got a quick massage at 8:45 a.m. and joined a team meeting at 9:20.

  Wednesday: Shopped for groceries and watched heats. Did a light swim at 12:30 p.m., shaved down at the hotel; returned to the pool to watch finals.

  Thursday: 200m breaststroke. Swam a disappointing 2:47:43 and finished thirty-fifth. (Four years earlier I had finished eleventh.)

  Friday: Light swim during prelims and read magazines in the Parc Olympique. Found a four-leaf clover, which I pressed into the notebook. That night the team had dinner at Pacini.

  Saturday: Light swim during prelims. Ate an orange. Went to the movies (Lethal Weapon 3). That night my teammate Marianne made the Olympic team in the 200m IM.

  Sunday: 100m breaststroke. A disappointing 1:17:52, finishing thirty-sixth. (Four years earlier I’d finished thirteenth.)

  • • •

  By the end of Sunday night, the Olympic team had been selected. My teammates Marianne, Gary, and Marcel had made it; Beth, Kevin, and Mojca had not. Beth had missed the qualifying standard by a hundredth of a second. A hundredth. I remember her face, glazed, stoic, on the medal podium. It was like watching the bereaved. Kevin had made the Olympic qualifying time but finished third, and the team took only the top two.

  I got dressed and caught a team van from the hotel to the subway, then the subway to a pub, where I ate french fries. I talked to a heartbroken Kevin, then danced with him to “Let It Be.” Beth, Kevin, Andrew, and I took a cab back to the hotel, where Kevin was locked out of his room and came down to mine. We walked to a McDonald’s. It was drizzling. In the window of Dunkin’ Donuts we saw Gary and Mojca.

  When I got back to my hotel room I sat in a chair, feet on the windowsill, and listened to “One” by U2 over and over again on my Walkman. I watched the sun come up and saw a teammate, carrying a blue backpack, walk across the hotel parking lot. He got into his car and drove away. I slept. When I woke I packed, taking the fruit and the peanut butter, leaving my roommate Shelley the granola bars.

  Stuck to the last notebook page is a candy wrapper from the Bar-B Barn on Rue Guy. Pressed between two pages is a dried brown sprig of something that may have been a lilac.

  • • •

  That fall, back in Montreal, I don’t plan to continue swimming, but after the McGill head coach woos me over a mushroom omelet, I join the team on the condition I make up my own practice schedule. I phone it in, but for the first time in my swimming career, for those few brief months, I enjoy it. I walk out midway through the freshman initiation ritual (twice around the McGill track with a marshmallow tucked under each armpit and between the knees, wearing suit, cap, goggles, and sneakers) with impunity. The team has access to a private gym, where I spend happy hours in the fragrant steam room after weight-training/music-video-watching sessions. At varsity meets I room with my friends Andrea—a 1988 Olympic medalist and 1992 Olympic team captain who bears her mind-blowing accomplishments lightly and has a whooping, filthy laugh—and Ojistoh, the team beauty, a Native Canadian medical student who eats baked beans straight from the can and cucumbers like bananas.

  • • •

  2100 Rue Lambert-Closse is a long, three-story brick building, with a flat white portico veined with cracks. Inside, the foyer and halls are painted a glossy, sickly lavender, and give off a warm cumin scent. Our apartment is narrow, high-ceilinged, with warpe
d hardwood floors. My room is at the end of our hall, overlooking the front path. Chris has the room next door, where he reads Details magazine, listens to Soundgarden and Nirvana. He’s starting to play music with his friend Vernon; they are forming a band. Amy’s boyfriend Dave teaches me some Fugazi chords on his guitar in the living room one night.

  Vernon is visiting Chris when he inexplicably collapses outside 2100. I’m in Toronto when it happens, and stay there for the funeral, but when I come back to Montreal, I stand at my window looking down at the path, wondering at what Chris has gone through.

  • • •

  My McGill history of photography classes take place in a dark room. As the professor clicks through slide after slide, I’m stirred by the fine, pale faces in daguerreotypes; by William Henry Fox Talbot’s grainy nature morte and Julia Margaret Cameron’s images of girls and women, sepia profiles, thoughtful, strong. A hundred ghost stories, in black-and-white, flash up one by one out of the dark.

  Hours between classes and workouts are spent in the McGill Library, where I look at publication design annuals from the 1970s and read about Pentagram and Push Pin Studios—a cool, candy-colored version of America, literate and illustrated.

  These eight months are a hummus-and-steam-room-scented chrysalis—my age and my swimming age aligning. As if Montreal were an atoll enclosing the pools of Etobicoke and the open sea of New York. I swam easily—undermotivated, away from expectations, through dual meets with Dalhousie and Yale, Latin declensions, Fabien Baron–era Harper’s Bazaar, Leonard Cohen’s Gallic deadpan, and Paul Westerberg’s shaggy yearning—toward the conclusion of my competitive swimming career.