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8:52 a.m. - Tuesday, Jun. 29, 2004
MsLeslie IS the Water
I

I came home from Thailand in a wheelchair, unable, in the end, to remain in denial of the arthritis that was savaging my knees. Even the thin hope that somehow my own country, my own apartment, my own bed would make things better vanished when I found myself unable to make the top of the stairs to my bedroom. I spent my first night home in my clothes on my worn futon downstairs because I could go no further.

My primary care physician at the Veteran�s hospital is a small French woman. She is professional with me, but she can�t completely hide her confusion about my transsexuality and her sense of resentment that I am in her women�s clinic. The first act of her first examination of me was to ask me to bend over for a digital prostrate exam. I was beyond feeling offended by such things, but the poor nurse who came in as a witness seemed very confused.

Now, as I sat before the doctor in her exam room, she had little sympathy for my pain. Without saying it, she wrote in my record that I was experiencing knee pain due to my increasing weight. At my latest weight of 262, it was brutal but true. She prescribed for me one bottle of Advil and one bottle of Darvocet to be used only when the pain was excessive, which was, as far as I could tell, all the time. To that, she added a large jar of ointment, from which my eyes would water each time I unscrewed the lid and as an afterthought, she wrote a consult to the veteran�s swimming pool for twelve weeks of aquatic exercise. I considered that to be an empty gesture; even a mild insult; Like sending me to the dietician to play �what�s for lunch� with little cafeteria dishes and assorted plastic grapes, bread, hamburger, beans and rice. She knew I would never show up at the pool.

I came home depressed. I could feel my knees grinding with every step. Occasionally a kneecap would lock in place and I could only bend my leg with great effort and a sickening �pop�. My mind was focusing finely on the fact that any further travel was only a fantasy. The reality appeared that I was about to begin my new life as an invalid. I kept imagining myself creeping down the aisles of the grocery store in one of those electric carts that seem always to be a little too big to fit between the displays and a little too low to reach the staples on the shelves. I knew I could not live like this. I knew I WOULD not live like this. I still know it as a fact of life. I have to beat this or shoot myself. I am, on the bottom line, too much of a coward to face much more pain.

It�s ironic. I had just begun to understand a new relationship with food. I realized I had been living with the premise that if I could be thin, maybe I would be happy. Just before I left for Thailand, I had begun to think that if I could be happy, maybe I would be thin. Yes, my weight was at an all time high. I was unable to resist the lonely feeding frenzies that were driving up my weight, my blood pressure and my self hatred. But I was also reassuring myself that I could eat what I want, when I want and where I want. I was proving that to myself in the hope that if I could be comfortable with the idea that there would always be food available, I might not feel the need to eat everything I saw wherever I saw it. I felt that it was working. I felt on the brink of a breakthrough. And then came the pain, the damaged joints, and the thoughts of an early painless death rather than the years of pain and helplessness.

Back home, on my bed at last, I wallowed on the twisted sheets and in my new-found misery. Something inside my air conditioner clattered, threatening to break with every revolution of the fan. The roar of the fighter jets as they streaked just above my roof on their approach to their runway seemed louder than before and the disharmonic notes of the horns on the trains passing within yards of me seemed more lonesome, more nervous than ever before. I wondered, as I always do when I don�t know an answer, just how this was all going to work out in the end.

I think that�s when I started to get mad. I was angry, at first, that I had worked so hard and come so far only to lose my last chance for some kind of real life. My fat was killing me and I was ready to throw in the towel. Then my anger turned to my doctor. I knew that just because she thought I wouldn�t, I had to go swimming. It was another of my famous terrifying prospects. I needed to do it for my knees, but I was compelled to do it to overcome that doctor and her contempt. I had never appeared in public in a bathing suit before and the idea of doing so before a group of hardened and conservative Vietnam veterans was just plain ghastly. I had no idea how they might react. I knew too, that I must do the impossible. I had to lose, once again, all the fat that had accumulated around my obsessions, my loneliness, my fear, and my hurt. I had to lose it somehow, and for the rest of my life. I began to cry.

But through the tears, I found resolution. Something inside me began gently to remind me that I must relax. I began to understand that I can beat all this if I can stop fighting it so hard. I was on the right track with my new relationship with food. I understood that I only had to relax and ask myself for small things. I did not need to think about losing a hundred pounds or more. I only had to lose a quarter of a pound. It was an amount so small that my body would not even miss it. And I could then lose another quarter of a pound the following day without any deprivation at all. I could indeed eat what I want, when I want and where I want. Knowing that would make it easy to choose to wait until I actually did want to eat.

I needed to relax about the prospect of swimming too. I�ve always been a non-swimmer, and so I�m afraid of water; Afraid of water and of the stares and side comments of the men who would watch me come to the pool. I had to relax and realize that I would not die. I was only going to do some walking and exercising in the shallow end of the pool. I would not drown and those men would not kill me. I got up and ordered a brand new swimsuit in size 22; Express delivery.

II

It wasn�t easy, stepping out into the hallway from the ladies� dressing room in my new flowered swim dress. It had a fringe that covered my gelatinous thighs but did nothing to obscure the snake and dagger tattoo on my right leg or the cantaloupe sized scar from the gunshot wound on my left. Both legs proclaimed that they were carrying a woman with a very, very unusual past. I wrapped a towel around me and hurried through the sign-in and got myself into the water as quickly as I could. The VA had thoughtfully installed a long ramp leading into the shallow end and as I walked its length, I counted only three veterans in the pool. I didn�t count the wispy-haired old man left over from WWII because I didn�t notice him cruising the shallow end with his face mask and snorkel. Not until, that is, I started marching back and forth across that end, lifting my legs and bending my knees with a surprised joy at the weightlessness I enjoyed in the water. As I walked, I realized the old pervert was swimming alongside me and slightly behind; studying that part of me that was below water. I was less than five minutes into my aquatic career and already I had a posse of one. The other vets kept in the deep end, studiously ignoring me, a non-reaction I received with gratitude. Each of them was easily twice my girth, a fact that made them ultra buoyant. They paddled lazily back and forth across the deep water, chatting and glancing at me with the snorkel tip following me everywhere like a remora tailing a fat and toothless shark.

When I couldn�t lose the scuba diver, I decided to check out the contraption I can only describe as an aquatic jungle gym. It was anchored to the side of the pool and had handles above and below the surface so that people who, like me, could barely walk on land could do pull-ups and other exercises more easily in the weightlessness of the water. There was a kind of seat that would fold down. The physical therapist showed me how to straddle the seat and do sit ups, starting with my back in the water, but then breaking free of the surface as I strained my abdominals. I did three sets of thirty sit ups the first day and I never saw my goggled friend closer than ten feet again.

By the time I came for my second session, I was already more confident in my flowered swimsuit and disfigured legs. The same vets were there. No one said my name. They only swam and chatted. They met my eyes and nodded. After a few more sessions, I knew they would say �hi�.

I had worked out a series of exercises for my knees. First some sit-ups for my belly, and then some various squats, leg raises, and sidesteps. It felt fantastic to be able to move and flex my knees without that grinding pain. The water is kept at a constant ninety-three degrees and the warmth of it on swollen and aching joints is nothing less than sublime. But there�s only so much squatting and stepping a person can do in an hour, so before it was half over, I found myself looking for something more challenging. There were some shelves alongside the pool. They had an assortment of floats, lifebelts and toys for vets to use in the pool. Alongside that was a stack of Styrofoam noodles. Each one was about six feet long. The therapist told me that people put these between their legs so they could float while bicycling their legs under water.

The vets stopped chatting and the pool fell silent as I wrestled with the noodle, trying to slide it gracefully under the water and up between my legs. The whole action fell right in the middle of the spectrum between bawdy and obscene. Once I got it there, it shifted to the right to become simply obscene. I ducked under the floating rope into the deep end and began to float. Rising in the front of me, from between my legs was this three foot yellow tube that looked like it might have been the mother� or should I say� Father� of all erections. A similar tube rose from the water behind me like a big yellow� well, you know what it looked like. I felt as silly as I must have looked.

As goofy as it looked, however, I found that it gave me just the little bit of support I needed to feel confident in water over my head. I could lean back against the foam and lazily kick my legs, watching the beams in the ceiling overhead pass slowly by. When I reached the end of the pool, I could lean forward and do my own little version of a dog-paddle back to the rope, where I would lean back and start over again. Within a few minutes, I felt myself truly relaxing, being one with the water. What began as an exercise for my legs was becoming an exercise for my spirit. I felt graceful in the water. I moved my arms against the gentle pressure of the warm water and I felt the turn of my wrists, the movement of each muscle. I was the water. I was a slow and languid song. I could hear the music of the water and the rhythm of my breath. And then I bumped my head on concrete, choked on water, and opened my eyes to see my big yellow penis right in front of my face.

I struggled back to the rope and jockeyed myself from my Styrofoam mount. I flung it up on the deck and then hung there on the side of the pool, thinking and wishing I could feel the way I had just felt once more.

I very slowly let go of the edge. I let myself sink into the water until my own body found its place. I floated with my face nearly under the surface. I was just on the edge of panic. Then, against my own instinct, I tipped my head backwards. I was excited to see that I didn�t slip under the water, but instead, I floated with just my face above the surface. I knew I could do this.

I leaned back into the water. I put just the fingers of my right hand on the top of the edge of the pool and then kicked myself into the deep water. I was afraid again, for a moment, but fear these days, seems almost like a comfort to me. I only had to relax and not panic. I only had to give myself to the water, lean back into it and trust it to hold me. I did it a little at a time, knowing that I was always able to grab the edge of the pool and save myself. I kicked all the way to the other end, just dragging my finger along as I went. I did it two times before I got the courage to do it again, but this time, I only dragged the end of my fingernail against the side of the pool. I was swimming for the first time in my life.

I�m still swimming three times a week at the veteran�s pool. More than that, I�m swimming nearly every day in the pool outside my apartment. I�m waiting in the early hours of morning for the black sky to turn gray. When it does, I�m slipping silently into the cool water. I feel as it that�s where I really belong. It�s there that my body is freed for a time from its awful weight. It�s there that I can feel wonderful and fluid, and I�m learning to relax and trust the water and myself as I lay on my back and watch the sky turn from red to yellow to blue. I can glide peacefully around the pool, learning from the birds that fly above me. They fly by relaxing. If they only flapped their wings and fought the sky, they would tire and fall to the ground. Instead, they feel the air. They trust it to hold them up as they glide along. It�s as natural to them to fly as it is to me to swim. We are the same.

And then I feel this amazing sense of gratitude; To the birds, to the sky and the water, and to myself for finding the courage to step out in my little flowered swimsuit. I feel gratitude that I can feel like a part of the universe in this new way. I belong here. I�m home in the water. I�m home in my body. I�m home in my own mind. And it feels really, really good to be alive.

And the water caresses me. It holds me, it comforts me, and it hides my tears.

Happy Thoughts, Deep Breaths,

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