Patchouli Boy

It was 2011 when I walked into the pool’s natatorium for the first time. It was depressing. It was dark. The only light was coming from a few windows near the ceiling. I wanted to keep it a secret from my then-boyfriend that I was swimming. I wanted to be able to keep up with him when he asked me to swim with him, and I didn’t want to embarrass myself. Many years later, I would be in that same place teaching his wife to swim in that same lane and laughing at what a terrible swimmer he was.

The lifeguards during the five a.m.-noon shifts were all older college kids. Black crescent moons were lingering under their eyes from a night of partying a few hours before. In my homeschooled 15-year-old brain, these lifeguards were the definition of cool. Adults, especially senior adults, rarely intimidated me, but I felt intimidated by these college kids for some reason. I got into the cold water and felt more than a little scared. It was jarring, but at the same, I felt excitement rush through my body. I loved the water more than anything, and that rush of excitement hasn’t left me since. I swam five laps. The chlorine burned in my eyes. I felt exhausted, and I had hung on the side of the pool gasping for breath in between each lap. My body begged me to stop, but my mind had other ideas. I had completed five laps; next week, I would do six. The older lady in the lane gave me a thumbs up for my accomplishment and proceeded to out-swim me by six laps. I couldn’t tell if she was taunting me or trying to be encouraging. When I pushed my tired body out of the pool, I started walking back to the locker room and heard a “hey” behind me. I turned around. It was the lifeguard. The guy lifeguard. He wasn’t the typical Baywatch guard you would think of, but he certainly had his chubby guy charms. He had long, curly black hair and suspiciously smelled of patchouli.

“Have a good day.” Even in the simplest of terms, his voice had the creaminess of a strawberry shake.

“You too,” I tried to muster up even though I was still trying to catch my breath.

This continued for two weeks. I swam, and he told me to have a good day. This short interaction with the college boy excited me more than any date I had been on with my boyfriend. Those “dates”, mostly consisted of sitting next to each other at Wednesday night church and holding hands.

My mom stayed and watched me swim. She feared I would get a muscle cramp or get too fatigued and I would drown. She had told me not to feel pressured to swim in the deep end. I could always just go back and forth in the shallow water. At the time, this would have been a better choice, but I would not have been able to live past the embarrassment in my head. There was no way I would allow anyone to think I couldn’t swim.

“He’s watching you swim,” she said with a singsong, not exactly taunting me but aggravating. She then put on her iconic purple wayfarers and smiled at me while watching her rearview mirror. My kid brother had gotten in the car 15 minutes before we had even left the house.

I dismissed it in my mind. There was no way in my mind this college boy found 15-year-old me attractive.

“WELL, I hope he is. He is the lifeguard,” I said quickly.

“WELL, she responded; he doesn’t watch the old ladies that closely.”

I continued swimming. By the end of the 2nd month, I was swimming a mile. Kane (Chubby lifeguard) had convinced me to try some goggles while swimming, but I hadn’t yet been convinced to put on a swim cap. I developed a friendly relationship with the lifeguards, and I assumed it was because I was the only patron under the age of seventy-five. This was true, but they genuinely liked me, which I didn’t understand until later in life. It wasn’t long before the soon-to-be facility director approached my mother and me about becoming a lifeguard. He promised that if there was anything in the class I was having trouble with, he would help me with it. He did keep his promise, but as I started class, I noticed people fall out as the skills became harder. The brick was the biggest obstacle for many of them. I got the brick at the bottom of the pool in a record time, and that time wasn’t broken again until one of my students in swim class broke it eight years later. My high school boyfriend and I parted ways, but not as coworkers. Fortunately, I didn’t see him much because I worked morning shifts with the college kids, and he worked evenings. For the first time, I felt “cool” to be homeschooled. I became the savior of morning lifeguards, taking any last-minute shifts that needed coverage. My favorite days were working with Kane. He didn’t seem intimidating now, but we were on the cusp of a friendship. One morning, when the sun hadn’t even begun to graze the horizon, he asked me a question.

“What’s your body count?”

I gripped my Monster Energy tighter, and the can crunched under my sweaty fingers. He could see my nervousness at that question.

“I guess you and ol’ drummer boy never did the nasty,” he said with a chuckle. My high school boyfriend’s only cool factor was he played the drums at church sometimes. He talked about it all the time.

“Is he the only guy you have kissed?”

I sat up a little taller in the chair. “No, I have kissed three people.”

He smirked. “Well, Well, Well, Looks like we have a SLUT over here”

“KANE,” I said in a loud whisper.

“Have you ever kissed a guy that wasn’t in high school?” He asked,

“No,” I tried not to crush my now empty monster can again.

A “Hmmm” purred out of his lips.

We kissed at the end of the shift. It was different kissing him than my past boyfriends. It was the most exciting part of my week.

One day after work, he asked me.

“Let’s do this, not in the break room. Friday night, let’s go out somewhere. I’ll pick you up.”

He never picked me up because he never showed up. This happened 2x before I knew it wouldn’t happen for me and Kane.

I moved on to the other new guy on the morning shift. He was from Florida, and for some reason, I found his tales of Disney, ocean life, and Publix charming.

Kane quickly left, and I wondered if I was the reason he was still there. Florida boy and I branched outside of the breakroom to make out.

I became completely engulfed in the pool. I ended up becoming “drummer boy’s” boss and then became his boss’s boss. I still talked to Kane via texting, but never romantically. He was training police dogs at that point for work and cut his hair. He still looked like he would smell like patchouli.

Florida boy left to work at a call center and gave me a 300-dollar diamond ring to be his forever, which I cherished deeply.

It was a surprise when Kane stopped by my office one day. I was glad to see him and wanted him to see everything I had accomplished since that day of swimming five laps in the pool. He looked around my office.

“I’m proud,” he said.

It was a surprise to me, that I still liked having his approval. He noticed my ring and looked at me with surprise.

“I’m engaged,” I said excitedly.

“Really? You think you know who you want to spend the rest of your life with?”

At the time, I did, and if everything had stayed exactly as it was at that moment, I would still, today, have been sitting in that office, returning home to listen to enchanting tales of Florida every night.

He leaned in close to my face. All the patrons had left the pool, and we were alone. “One last time? Old time's sake before you turn into an honest woman?”

I was appalled. “No, Kane.”

He seemed surprised.

“I have a fiancé.” I said shocked

“Well, I have a girlfriend.”

I didn’t kiss him or even talk to him until I saw him out a few years later.

By that time, Florida boy fiance was long in the past and I was with my new boyfriend,

I looked up, laughing at my new boyfriend's hilarious jokes, and there was Kane. The only thing I recognized about him was his eyes.

He had traded his rasta jackets for a marine uniform, his hair was buzz-cut, and he had a hard six-pack that I could see through his skin-tight shirt instead of a soft chub from years before.

“Lily?” He questioned across the room like he didn’t know me, when I knew he did.

“Kane?” I asked with the same confused look he had.

He had a newfound arrogance about him now, that he had never had before. We spoke pleasantries, and I noticed he didn’t smell like patchouli anymore. “Are you still at the pool?” He asked in a derogatory way like he was saying a slur.

“No, I’m managing an indoor water park now,” There was no need to tell him that I still had much love for the small pool I had left the year before.

“Well, seeing you was good; I gotta get back to the boys.” He pointed to his new friends, who looked exactly like him.

It was another year before I heard from him again. Our text logs had long since been deleted, at least two phones ago. I had mostly forgotten about him. Therefore it was a surprise when I got a text from him in the dead of night. My phone lit up with his name across my screen. “Hey, Lily, it’s Kane.”

I stared at it for a moment, not knowing what to do.

“Hey Kane’ I finally typed back.

“I’m sorry.”

“For what?” I ask. He should be sorry for so many things, but I didn’t know what he was “sorry for.”

I saw three dots come up while he was typing and disappear.

“You knew me when I was a fat loser,” He sent finally.

“I didn’t think you were a loser or fat,” I sent back. Those were not the things he should be asking for forgiveness for.

“Let me make it up to you, all of it. Let's go to Louisville this weekend, and I can finally figure out what you're made of. I can book us a hotel room and everything.”

“Does this guy think after all these years I would be willing to give it up to him at some 2-star hotel?” I thought to myself.

I didn’t go with him to Louisville and saw the next day that he had a girlfriend on Facebook. I thought the whole conversation was amusing. The 15-year-old me would fear I looked like a loser or unattractive. None of those things Kane ever thought of me. He only saw me for my appearance; he never delved deeper into me like I had him.

I finally wrote back to him a few days later. “I liked you better when you listened to The Mowgli's, smelled like patchouli, and were kind. You’re not my type.”