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Show Reprinted from THE WESTERN HUMANITIES REVIEW, Vol. XVO. No. 3. *.~n,er, i96i Ah, Swimmers! I KEPT MOVING, always on to larger towns: from Grand Junction to Denver, from Denver to San Francisco. I even got to Paris, but via Normandy and me widi my red veins full of plasma instead of money, no blood to spend, and so I only saw an Army hospital and didn't get to test my boyhood idea of French girls. Still, I survived, and have come finally to setde in die sprawling city of Los Angeles. It's not the largest of them all - yet - but it's big enough, it includes everything - never mind if die quality varies. Some say it's paradise, some say it's hell: I vacillate. Like when driving to the beach I join the cheerfully murderous traffic on the freeway and pass one of the internal's outposts of progress, Hollywood; my eyes burn in the rich smog and die smell is suspiciously sulphurous; I recall that morning's headlines and there seems i\n doubt where I am. But then I cross the scorched brown hills and the air cools and die Pacific opens before me just as blue as they say it is, die sand is fine and hot, and one of diose California girls walks by. I mean a healthy golden-fleshed one widi an affinity for water which leaves no doubt mat fifty thousand pools and die world's largest ocean call to her, sofdy, in-sistendy. And die naiad in her hears. She comes. In our timid age she comes dressed but with all of Eve's wise innocence she comes dressed barely in a swim suit which would make old Adam cheer his Fall. And in that suit she will parade down die beach as regal as any ermine-robed queen, heralded by the rolling drum of the sea and die trumpets of the flesh, supported to her throne by the subject adoration of men's eyes. They are a glorious agony, those girls; they lure me into bottomless ceaseless waters, they draw me in over my head and then make me like it to choke and struggle to swim. I mean, don't you, seeing one of those golden girls, want to get really involved? With her? With everything? I didn't always feel this way and what I want to tell about is my first swimming lesson, figuratively speaking of course, since Selig, Colorado, has no ocean, no lake, no pool and not even much rain: I grew up from the dust. Then she moved in next door. I don't remember exacdy when but it must have been diat winter sometime, fall or winter. Now I would remember the season all right, the day and probably the hour, but then like most boys my age T was Wind widi myself: I mought die eighdi-grade operetta far more 7/ |