Chlorine

by Jade Song

Never mind the book teaching me that the shadows inside need not be snuffed but treasured—that darkness existed to hide riches from ordinary mortals unable to handle their brilliance, and if I mustered the courage to dive into those veiled depths, these riches could become mine.

I profusely thanked her for taking me, but she looked nervous that I had fallen in love with a sport. To her, I was not supposed to fall in love. I was supposed to swim well enough to put it on my résumé, to get me into a good school. Love was too powerful a feeling.

He noticed my beauty at the same time he noticed my swimming talent, because Jim had two great skills: swim coaching and predicting who would be hot. The two skills went hand in hand. The pretty ones were always fast.

I didn’t mind—I was a beautiful human girl. So beautiful I could understand why he wanted to touch me. Beautiful things demand touch. Hence the taped floor lines at art museums and the roped boundaries between paparazzi and celebrities on red carpets.

To win was euphoria, and euphoria was a blackout—black holes, stars, and galaxies forming at the edge of your goggles, an entire outer space dedicated to the Big Orgasmic Banging of first place.

Euphoria was reaching the edge of fatigue, near fainting, until adrenaline slapped you awake. Euphoria was muscles on fire.

“When will you be back?”

“As soon as you go under a minute in the 100 freestyle,”

I nodded solemnly. I was close—my time was four seconds away to :59.99. I’d practice and practice and practice to get there. Anything to convince my father to return sooner.

I died and regenerated every month. How else could I define the experience? The reasonable explanation was death. I decided when my body was wheeled into the morgue, the coroner would declare I died of being a woman. Which was far better than dying of being a man.

I may have initiated with her out of desperation, but we became close friends after the meet because it was impossible to stick a hand up a bloody vagina and not fall in love with its owner.

Neither of us had ever seen anyone else carry such an ethereal face, either in China or in America. Faye was the epitome of cool. I didn’t care about Abercrombie logo T-shirts or milkshakes or Tamagotchis. When I wasn’t thinking about mermaids or swimming, I was thinking about Faye. My mother played her CDs to and from practice, Faye’s crooning accompanying our journey.

After the meet, I never listened to Faye in public. I kept my love for her private, through my headphones at home or through the CD player in the car. I learned the idea of fitting in was not to be exceptional, but to be the same as everybody else, regardless of taste.

These are, essentially, human excuses, but more specifically, American excuses. I’m confined to a comprehension of human difficulties through an American lens, no matter how hard I try to break out of the star-spangled brainwashing I was subject to from a young girl’s age. In a way, the recognition that these issues are uniquely American makes it worse, because they are entirely avoidable.

I loved her body, its thickness, its absolute denial of nonexistence. It hurt me to hear her hate herself.

I wasn’t attracted to Brad. It was more the attraction I’d have toward a cup of raw broccoli if I was starving. When you haven’t eaten in days, even flavorless vegetables were delectable. Brad didn’t need spices or an oven. He was quick sustenance. Easy preparation. Weeknight meal in three steps. No nutritional value.

I had never considered a life where rules were discarded like ripped swim caps. A life lived for fun and not for swimming.

Thanks to Ess, I learned none of the past really mattered in the end.

Ess owned a body more a vehicle for their own pleasure rather than a body carrying scars on its surface. From them, I learned I could seize my body back from those who sought to destroy it.

My tan faded in days. But the realization my body was ultimately mine did not. I was happier, and my attitude showed it.

My hands were steady. Pain would not come from sewing my legs together. Pain came from Jim’s 8x200 butterfly descend red punishment set. From disqualifications. From concussions. From losing. Pain came from remaining human.

there was nothing more bold than a star, after all, visible with the human naked eye despite its death eons ago. To be a star there could never be any room for self-doubt,

Humans and monsters both understand stories about magic and marvel and myth are made interesting by their stemming from trauma and violence and blood. How can one grow without pain?