If Holden Caulfield Was a Swimmer

A shy young swimmer breaks down the dos and don’ts of chlorinated love in an excerpt from the new novel Swimming.

Horny swimmers beget trouble. They leave pain in their wake, destroy careers, don’t care. There are stories. Legend has Chrissy Hughs, world butterfly record holder and Olympic champ, quitting when she falls in love with Leif Benson, world butterfly record holder and Olympic champ. Mutual passion gets her pregnant by accident and they have a baby boy they name Little Leif. Later, bored and chubby, her tired red eyes brimming with remorse, she tries to re-launch her swimming career, but never reaches the same level, no matter how hard she trains. Being pregnant changed her center of gravity, the baby sucked too much of the x-factor out of her, and her name had become too long to sound right on the podium: Chrissy Hughs-Benson. Legend has Arch Naylor taking one look at her and shaking his silver head.

Click Here for Nicola Keegan's Take on Writing Swimming

She shouldn’t have taken on his name, I say in the locker room after practice.

Babe’s drying her hair. What in the world does that have to do with it?

I look at her and shout, What doesn’t that have to do with it? She shakes her head, turns off her dryer. That’s the same question, only backwards.

I know what I’m talking about. Chrissy Hughs-Benson doesn’t work.

Peggy chimes in. If Babe would have been born a Rhoda...

It’s the first time we agree...And Rhodas don’t swim.

She finishes my sentence. Chrissy Hughs-Bensons don’t win golds.

I’m basking in harmony. You got it.

She goes in for the kill. If you follow that kind of logic, then Philomena of course would be...

Harmony is fragile, but I know what I’m talking about. A four-syllable anomaly. An exception to the rule.

She’s putting lip gloss on with a wand. Convenient.

Swimming. By Nicola Keegan. 320 pages. Knopf. $25.95. Peggy is attracted to the horny masculine swimmers, the ones who whip towels into weapons and leave welts for fun. She likes the ones who refer to their colleagues as rookie balls, prick, dickhead, and rover, the squinty handsome ones who drape an arm casually over her shoulders, looking up when someone interesting walks into the room. She brings them home when the Peggys are out; they make out in the living room as I hide out with Dave in my bedroom, Adam Ant blaring in my ears. My lonesomeness fights long, weighted battles with fatigue, but fatigue always wins and I eventually close my eyes to a dark velvet dream world inhabited by the soaring silence of a flock of nectar-eating mega bats until I open them up to a fresh new day.

Supercoach E. Mankovitz stays out of our private life, but it’s obvious by the way he tugs at his mustache, slowly shakes his head, clicks his tongue, and sighs that he does not encourage swimming love because everyone knows that in swimming love it’s always the girl who sacrifices her future for the sake of great passion and not the horny swimmer, who keeps on winning medals, eventually stepping down to get a great job in marketing, communications, finance, sports psychology, or pediatrics. I have due reason to avoid boys with balls, a real excuse for turning mute and red and clammy, for standing back, slightly bending my shoulders forward to hide puberty’s kiwis.