The first thing I see is a short old Greek guy with a potbelly
and an upside-down horseshoe haircut. He walks into the showers with a small
bottle of cologne in his hand. My nine-year old son and I are visiting the local
community center for free swin night. It's a Friday night and it's getting crowded.
There's a lot of noise coming from the rest of the building and it all seems
to funnel into this cold, sad locker room. It sounds like a staticky talk radio
station being played in a cave at a loud volume.
A Mexican kid and his father come in and start peeling off their
wet shorts a little too close to our chosen locker. The father breathes heavily,
his skinny bowed legs shaky. The kid seems like he could go down the water slide
another twenty times. He says something to us but we don't understand him. The
swirling noise of the locker room drowns him out. He yells and yells but the
unbearable clamor matches him syllable for syllable. He grabs his towel, winds
it up, and tries to snap it at my son. I look to the father who does nothing.
Doesn't say a word. The kid is shouting and laughing like he's playing a game.
My son just looks at him blankly. The old Greek guy wobbles past us and sits,
naked, on another nearby bench. I start to wonder if my son will be disturbed
by all this later on (I saw this fat bald man walking around naked at the community
center once, he might say). I impatiently tell him to get his swim trunks on.
Of course he can't hear me, especially with the kid trying to whip him with
a wet towel. As I slip into my shorts the kid looks me over invasively and says,
My dad's penis is bigger than yours is.
I haven't even been in the pool yet-- I can't claim shrinkage.
I glance in the direction of the kid's dad, to see if he's paying attention.
He's standing by the hand dryers, aiming hot air into his armpits. He's wearing
only a tank top, and yes, he is blessed with a larger penis. I look, a little
too long perhaps, until I notice that it's growing and... curving. Like his
legs, his penis is crooked. It points to something just left of us. It laughs.
The sound of the dryer stops, jarring me back to reality. My
son is hit by a towel-whip. He might have a welt from it. He finally tells the
kid: Don't. I feel helpless
Kevin Sampsell runs Future
Tense Books, a micropress in Portland, Oregon. Some of his stories can be
found in new issues of Bullfight,
J&L Illustrated,
and on the web site Facsimilation.
He is part of a "haiku supergroup" called Haiku Inferno.
