Swimming is Sexy

I knew there was something I wasn't quite putting my pen on when it came to the reason I am obsessed with swimming. I've said that it is beautifully solitary and silent: a thrumming sort of hypnosis or meditation. I've said that it reminds the body how golden weightlessness can be, even amid the gut wrenching push to get through a set of threshold paced 500's where you gulp in water like a six-year-old in the community pool at the height of an August heatwave. Whatever the athletic cost, the buoyancy and submersion and utter aquatic oneness I feel during the time I am swimming is a worthwhile prize.

What I have failed to describe before, is how sexual swimming can be (apparently). In a recent (wonderful) article in the New York Times, Akiko Busch says "Certainly swimming and eroticism are natural colleagues. I can think of no other sport that is so innately sensual. It is not only in the way the water caresses your skin but also in the way it is all about reaching as far as you can. Swimming is about touching the surface of the water and drawing yourself across it, it is about remove and submersion and sometimes it is also about submitting to the strength and current and direction of the water."

Whew. I'm nearly ready for a shower just reading that description. N, I'm sorry, it seems I've been cheating on you with Burgess Pool. Perhaps I should drop a few swims per week and pick up a few, er, other activities. (Yah right).