I Don't Care About Your Boner

Given the extraordinary breadth of human variation and the complexity of human sexuality, there exist women, somewhere, who enjoy being hit on at the gym.

I am not one of them.

I especially don't enjoy it while I am swimming.

Last weekend, it happened again. It was a different guy from the other guys who have preceded him, but they all might as well have been the same dude for how similar their ploy is.

Like all the other guys, this guy walked into the pool area and stood at the end of the pool, scoping out the lanes. As I swam the length of a lap toward the end of the pool where he was standing, I could see him scan the lanes; choose the lane beside me; slide into the shallow end and fuss with his cap, waiting for me to reach the end of the lane.

I could see him turning toward me with a grin and fixing to say something to me, just as I reached the end of the lane and turned so quickly that he didn't have a chance to speak.

And then I spent the next 15 minutes or so of my swim — which is a time I need for self-care; a time I crave to get lost in my own thoughts; the only time where I can focus exclusively on myself — avoiding this asshole as he timed his swim to recurringly arrive at the ends of lanes at the same time I did. Or just before.

The first time a man did this to me at the pool, I convinced myself that I was imagining it. Until he tried to strike up an overly friendly conversation with me, between laps. The second time, I again convinced myself that I was just being paranoid. Until the same thing happened again. And so on.

By now, I knew what was up. I knew I wasn't flattering myself. And so that 15 minutes or so I spent feeling anxious. And angry at this man who rammed his boner into my serenity.

"You're Queen of the Breaststroke!" he blurted out, at the end of the lane, where he'd been waiting for me.

"What?" I spat at him, not because I hadn't heard him.

"Queen of the Breaststroke!" he said, then looked at me expectantly, like I was supposed to do something sexy, or at least grateful, as the next step in this exchange.

"Yup," I said.

I turned to restart my laps, but he barreled on: "Why do you only do the breaststroke?"

Here, I have to tell you that what I wanted to say was: "That is none of your fucking business. Fuck off and leave me alone." But I didn't. Because I didn't want him to escalate, and I didn't want to be "a bitch" right in front of the teenage lifeguard, where this guy had positioned himself before propositioning me, for precisely that reason.

I see that lifeguard all the time. I spend long hours in a space where he might be tasked with helping me. I don't want him to think I'm "a bitch."

What I said was: "Because it's the only stroke I can do." That is not technically true — it's merely my strongest stroke — but it's true enough, and I don't owe this guy anything, including honesty.

Again, I moved to restart my laps, and again he said: "You can't do the front crawl?"

"Nope," I said, increasingly terse. One of the things I have discovered, however, is that the men who come onto me seem to be attracted to my disinterest, and being rude is often not the deterrent I'd hope.

"Well, I'm only going to be here another 10 minutes or so," he told me, like I gave a shit, "but I'll be here next week, and, if you want, I can teach you the front crawl. I'll make you an expert in it in no time."

"No thanks," I said, and then I ducked under the water, kicked my feet hard against the wall, and slid away from him.

Iain, who had been in the lane to the other side of me this entire time — wearing a green version of the purple swim cap I wear, each a grinning cartoon monster face — was waiting for me at the other end. "All right?" he asked.

He knew what was happening. He had already seen men doing this to me, the waiting for me and striking up conversations about how they wanted to spend one-on-one time with me in the pool or the weight room or somewhere else, teaching me something. Always offering to teach me.

Iain knows I can take care of myself; that I'm not his property to defend. He also knows it's kind to check in.

"Yep," I said.

I went back to swimming. The thing I love most. The thing I do to try to forget how few spaces there are where I am able to breathe without the acrid stink of men being shitty.