17 April

You know what I miss? That old chlorine smell from swimming pools. The public swimming pool in Lasalle, specifically, where I did swimming on Wednesday nights after school when I was young.

The drive out along the autoroute with the sodium lights that strobed orange through the car.

And the locker rooms, before and after the renovation, with toilets just off the like main body of locker room. I once saw a swimmer walk by with a bruise on her leg the size of my head and for some reason I’ve never forgotten that. In the locker rooms, I mean.

I think there’s something comforting for me about the locker room at a public pool. Everything’s sort of wet and your bare feet on the wet floor feel terrible.

And the huge echoes of a covered pool Olympic. Lengths so long you’re basically stranded if you start getting tired in the middle of a lap.

Miss swimming.

I know this is going to come across in future as that smug sort of shallow navel-gazing I like to do but I’m pretty sure that wealth makes people physically ugly. Just unapproachable.

Maybe it’s like exercise. A little struggle is healthy for people. Then again, crippling poverty also makes people look a little spooky. Haunted. (Bit of a meme with me lately.)

Been seeing a lot more ads for diet sodas lately. I wonder if it’s a summer thing, like people are drinking more diet because they’re going to be wearing swimsuits sometime in the next few months.

Man outside is walking exactly in tune to the music on my headphones: “One Headlight” by The Wallflowers. Sucker for nostalgia, me.