Let\'s get rid of the ugly first.
I made up my mind to attend the swim three days ago. I contacted the organizsers (the FQN) and told them of my intention. I got a great reply
Problem is, when I realized this WAS going to happen, I became very nervous. I slept very little. It was on my mind all the time.
Today, I decided to eat a light dinner, to avoid feeling heavier than I already was. I went to an Asian restaurant (Vietnamese, Thai and Chinese). At the end, I got a fortune cookie which read \'Your heart will skip a few beats\'. I don\'t know if that played tricks on my unconscious mind, but boy was in for it.
When I got to the pool, I paid my fee and then it was time to undress. As I entered the locker room, I distinctly felt a certain \'je ne sais quoi\' or at least I hoped it wasn\'t what I thought it was.
It was :(
The phrases \'Houston, we have a problem\' and \'Lift Off\' were unfortunately an apt way of describing what I was experiencing. I chose to undress where nobody else was. When it came time to remove my jeans, a couple arrived and sat next to me. I clumsily tried to be as discreet as possible. I used my strategically-placed towel to conceal the issue I was having and headed to take the coldest cold shower of my life.
:eek: X Infinite
Then, a young person arrived to the showers as well with his/her dad (I wasn\'t wearing my glasses and I\'m blind as a bat when I don\'t). I hope I wasn\'t to obvious in what I was doing, but I\'d directed the shower head to cool off the offending party :( It must have seemed strange, to put it mildly, but it did the trick
The Bad.
When I got to the pool, the water felt OK at first, but then it got colder as time went on. I understood why when I moved to a jet to try to get a back massage. The water coming out was cold. I juggled between places to try to get warm. I never found the right balance.
Then, as more and more people got in, it got crowded. I was tired and this wasn\'t the relaxing experience I\'d hoped for. I moved to another place in the pool which was better. Later, I felt a \'Whoosh\' behind my head. A child jumped in the pool what felt inches from me. It probably wasn\'t so close, but, as I said earlier, I\'m blind without my glasses.
The good
All that being said, there were many good things. For instance, the average age was late 30s-early 40s. Everybody I saw had a smile on his/her face. There\'s nothing more attractive to me (both intellectually and emotionally) than a person who feels comfortable in his/her body.
One surprising thing was that I saw more teenage girls than boys. I\'m not talking double-digits here, but there were a few I\'d judge to be between 16 and 18.
The great
OK, I lied in the title...
When I got out of the pool, I went to see a volleyball game. There was supposed to be a guy I\'ve exchanged e-mails with.
When I got to the gym, the temperature felt absolutely perfect for me
There was a slight breeze which came from the air circulating around the gym. This confirmed something I felt in my first visit to a resort last summer, i.e. that I\'m an \'air bath\' type, that I like air more than water even if I\'ve realized I\'ve bought my last bathing suit.
It was the feeling I\'d been looking forward to. I was at ease with myself. I was relaxed. I wasn\'t seeing time go by.
Then, when their game ended, it was time to leave for everybody. We all headed to the showers.
What the hell was I thinking not showering after gym when I was younger because the showers were communal??? Communal showers are GREAT! I\'d been mostly by myself the whole evening, but that wasn\'t the case in the shower. It was hot, people were laughing, I was talking to people, etc. I felt a connexion which I\'d describe as almost \'family\'-like. What in God\'s name are schools doing putting stalls in their showers? They\'re great for team spirit! When you think how much time, money and effort is spent on High School/College sports in the U.S., it\'s a no-brainer IMHO.
Anyways, it might not have been completely the evening I was looking for, but it did confirm that naturism is adding something that was missing in my life.
