‘Shit! My knees are not as young as they used to be.’ He sat down flat and then shielded his face from the sun and looked at me. ‘How are you?’
‘Good. You?’
‘Good.’ I waited for him to say something, but he didn’t. I looked around. The awkwardness seemed to have reared its head again. Maybe I could say something about the weather? Something else? (Not about his thighs though; that would be bad.) It was always the starts of conversations that were the worst for me. I never knew what the correct opening line should be, and especially now, when things were feeling a little off. So I said the first thing that permeated my mind.
‘Did you see that they’re upping the gym membership fees next month,’ I heard myself say, and then cringed. This was possibly the dumbest thing to say, considering they were hardly going up at all.Why had I said that?‘They’ve been over-chlorinating this water lately. Perhaps if they didn’t use so much they wouldn’t need to up the fees.’ And now why the hell had I said that? ‘Did you know that the reason chlorine smells like it does in a public pool is from contaminates mixing with it, like urine and perspiration?’ I waited for him to say something, but his lips were not moving at all. ‘Twenty per cent of adults admit to urinating in a public pool. I’ve never done it, in case you’re wondering, however, I have urinated in the sea, even though you probably shouldn’t because of sharks.’ I looked at him and waited. Nothing.
‘Was it leg day today?’ I asked, and immediately regretted it.
He smiled. ‘Yes.’ He was silent again.
‘Are you not going to say anything?’
‘I wasn’t, actually, I was going to keep silent and just let you continue talking about urination in public pools. Speaking of, is the water warm?’
I pointed at the wall, where a digital thermometer hung.
‘Twenty-seven degrees,’ he read out loud. ‘It’s warm, maybe I should get in.’
‘You would have to shower first. Like I said, your perspiration would contaminate the pool.’
‘Sounds like way too much effort. What if I take my shoes off and put my feet in?’
‘Only if you rinse them off under that tap first.’ I pointed again.
‘Fair enough.’ He smiled at me again and got up. He continued smiling at me as he walked over to the tap and rinsed his feet. And he was still smiling at me when he returned and sat back down on the side of the pool. He straightened his legs, his engorged muscles rippling, and then lowered his feet into the water on a long ‘aaaahh’ sound. I looked down at his feet.
He had really nice feet. I hated feet in general, hated having mine touched, sometimes even hated looking at them, especially the toenails, but his were good. He didn’t have one of those disproportionately long second toes that dwarfed the other toes and made everything off balance. Or toes that were so long they looked like fingers. And he didn’t have large tufts of toe hair either. His were, like the rest of him, in geometrical proportion.
‘Are you staring at my feet?’ His question ripped my eyes away from his toes.
‘Yes,’ I admitted.
‘Do you have a foot fetish?’
‘No. I was just noting their . . .’ I tried not to look at them again, but he’d lifted them out of the water and was wiggling them at me. ‘Stop doing that!’
‘Why? Is it turning you on or something?’ He laughed and reached out one of his toes towards me.
‘Stop!’ I stuck my head underwater to get away from this conversation, but when my ability to hold my breath failed me and I was forced to come back up he started again.
‘Just admit you have a foot fetish.’
‘I don’t.’
‘You can tell me if you do.’
‘I don’t.’
‘It’s nothing to be ashamed of.’
‘I’m not ashamed of it, not that I have it, but if I did, there’s nothing wrong with having a sexual interest in feet, not that I have one.’
‘Well, then why are you starting at them so much?’ He was still wiggling his toes at me.
‘I like the symmetry of your feet, okay?’
‘Symmetry?’
