was still wearing her shorts. Before I could persuade myself to turn
back, I was tasting saltwater, pulling my arms and kicking my legs
froggy style. It was an overcast day, and the water put everything
just out of focus. After two pulls, I remembered that I had to breathe;
after two breaths, I got anxious. I was panicking, taking in shallow,
quick breaths that were more for show than for air. I am relaxing
on my beach vacation, I thought, hyperventilating.
I pushed my goggles off my face and tried fl oating on my back
instead, holding my breath, afraid to let any air out of my lungs. The
water encircled my face and splashed into my eyes, which I kept
shut, confi dent that the saltwater would dry up my contacts and I’d
have to swim back to shore a blind woman. I opened my eyes — not
blind — and realized, to my horror, that I had been swimming away
from the shore instead of toward it. I took a breath. I could panic, I
thought to myself, or I could save myself.
I stood up.he two experiences — coming out, learning to swim — kept braid-
ing together, a second adolescence, and then a third. I would
arrive to swim class awkward and jittery, nervously cracking
jokes as soon as I got in sight of the water, babbling as if I were
in front of a crush; I’d leave feeling on top of the world or six feet
deep in it, my moods shifty and sudden. I cried random tears of
happiness, disorientation, relief. Water would get into my nose,
and I’d feel like a failure; I’d survive a jump into the deep end
and feel ecstasy. At times, I dreaded going to class with the same
angst as having to ask a girl on a date. I felt gawky and unsure and
annoyed and insecure and thrilled and elated and confused and
strong and brilliant and wondrous all at once. I was performing
miracles every day.
There were a bevy of metaphors I employed to explain why,
after a lifetime of happily dating men, I had suddenly switched
gears: I had upgraded from coach to fi rst class; I was in tryouts
for the other team. But the metaphor that felt most right involved
my eyesight. In fi fth grade, from the second row of my classroom,
I could see the whiteboard decently, but I was sure things could
be better. I asked to get an eye exam. As I rode home from the
optometrist a month later with my parents, a pair of round frames
on my face, I looked at the edges of all the leaves with wonder
and relief. Everything had come into focus.
The day after the kayak incident, I woke determined to swim. I
went to a family resort with a water trampoline a few yards from
shore. For a while, it was crawling with children, so I stayed in
my seat, an impatient and surly teenager not wanting to play with
the babies. When they got out, I got in. Immediately, I started
to panic. I wondered if anyone
on the shore — dads in hats
and refl ective glasses, an older
woman reading a Danielle Steel
novel, children munching on
mahi- mahi tacos — would notice
if I didn’t come back up. I brought
my head above water and took a
shallow, audible breath. Fatigue
crept in. The trampoline was still
so far. I gave up on inhaling and
just held my breath, puffi ng my
cheeks out to keep all the air in.Five or six pulls of the arms later, I grabbed the bottom rung like
a life raft, thrilled to be safe.
But I still had to swim back to shore. I considered jumping off ,
as I had seen the kids do, but quickly humbled myself, sliding in off
the side. Even with goggles, the water was murky, and I couldn’t
tell how deep it was. My pulling got more frantic, my breaths
shallower. I swam into infi nity, unsure of where I was going and
in which direction. My energy had been zapped. I gave up and
scrambled back to shore.
I didn’t think I’d ever enjoy this. But the next day, I made myself
get into Grace Bay, where I saw the older couple two days earlier.
I wore a snorkel mask to get myself comfortable breathing and
swam a few feet out from shore until I relaxed. With the mask on,
I swam vigorously, growing overconfi dent, then nervous about my
overconfi dence, convinced that I was swimming out toward the
horizon, never to be seen again. Then I ran into a pair of knees: a
couple asking me to take a picture of them standing in the water.
In the midst of our conversation, we saw something move past us.
I pulled my goggles down and dove in, spotting my fi rst fi sh: one
blue tang, scuttling away from me.
In the ocean, I wasn’t afraid of what I might fi nd beneath — seeing
something new was the most appealing reason to get in. I would
fi nally see what I had been missing all this time. The fi rst time I ever
opened my eyes underwater was in the pool with Paul. He had me
grip the ledge and hang down by my arms, just to look around and
know that I could come back up: I saw an Atlantis of pasty white legs
and tiled lines, the light blue and refracted. In various diary entries,
I insisted I wasn’t a lesbian, but I still couldn’t stop thinking about
them. I started to see them everywhere.y friend Jessica drove me to the airport for my fl ight to Turks and
Caicos. She and I have an inside joke that we repeat to each other
whenever we’re together: an astonished, resigned ‘‘You’ve changed.’’
On the drive, we traded accusations — she had a new haircut, I
had glasses she hadn’t yet seen — and laughed. ‘‘You have changed,
though,’’ she said. I had gone to her apartment the night before my
fi rst class, where she lent me goggles and a combination lock. ‘‘The
last time I saw you, you weren’t a swimmer,’’ she said.
I still didn’t think I was. To be ‘‘a swimmer’’ implied mastery and
decisiveness — I knew how to swim, I could swim, I had swum, I feel
good swimming, swimming is part of me — whereas my ability was
still inchoate, relegated largely to the shallow end. Afraid to commit,
I wanted the word to refl ect my process: I am taking a swim class, I
am learning how to swim, I am fi guring out what to do, I am mildly
better than before. To call myself a swimmer felt deceitful. But I
could get myself to the far side of the pool now — when would I be
good enough to be what I eff ectively was?
After I started dating women, there was an inner urgency to give
the change a name. My relationship seemed to stave off any inqui-
ries about whether I was ‘‘going through a phase,’’ but I wondered
myself if I was attracted to all women or just this one, a hypothesis
I was happy to test after we broke up. My life had changed — the
laws of attraction had morphed and expanded — but I hadn’t: I was
always happy, but now I was just happier. Even an identity expan-
sive enough to encompass all potential future destinations — bisex-
ual, pansexual, queer — seemed too committal, and I was reluctant
to give myself, as I had long known me, up. I joked, instead, that
I was a ‘‘part-time lesbian,’’ worried that anyWater would
get into my nose,
and I’d feel likea failure; I’d survive
a jump into the
deep end and feel
ecstasy.49
T
M
(Continued on Page 73)P. The New York Times Magazine“
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