The Guys around the Cape Cod Hotel Pool

Meeting people around a hotel swimming pool while on vacation can be a unique experience. Folks who gather together wearing only bathing suits are unencumbered by symbols of status. Expensive cars, Amani suits, jewelry, parisian dress designs and extravagant hair styling are rarely sighted. As a matter of fact, the first impression everyone gives is determined by their 'semi' naked body (the great equalizer). It goes unspoken of course but, as our accountant friends all too often inform us, " figures don't lie ".

Then there is the "instant in time" aspect of such meetings. The people met on vacation are individuals you know nothing about because you do not share a past and equally important, you are highly unlikely to share with them your future. What is left then are just two things: their physical appearance and any narrative they choose to share.

I have seen many hotel pools in my time but the one in which I swam during my last visit to the Cape was unlike all the others. It was an olympic length pool, a portion of which was indoors while the other larger section was out and exposed to the full sun. It was designed to permit swimming in any season. The cavernous opening in the building had a curtain made of a heavy insulated tarp like material, that could be lowered down to make an exact fitting contact with the waters surface and both lip like concrete pool edges.

It was late in the afternoon when everyone was returning from their days sightseeing adventures. Because it was summer the curtain was up revealing an uninterrupted lineup of lounge chairs under the roof shaded area, as well as that part of the pool in the sun. As is their wont, the always health conscious women guests, had distributed themselves in the shade, many with soft cover books in hand and escape into romantic fantasy in their hearts. The men on the other hand, risk taking warriors that they were, spent considerable time in the pool displaying the manly arts of lapping, stroking, diving and being impervious or indifferent to the sensation of being baked. As night follows day, every episode of swimming would be followed by the necessity of drying in the sun, lizard-like, on a lounge chair typically, with their eyes closed.

 Lenny, a stout gentleman, who seemed to have his eyes closed even while in the pool, was from Enfield, CT but more precisely from Wickham a small nearby town that "nobody ever heard of". His initial conversational gambit was political in nature. Originally a Democrat he went through a metamorphosis after becoming relatively wealthy in real estate. He spouted out what sounded like a fully developed conviction, or more exactly a formulation of ideas about why liberal Democrats with their never ending efforts to redistribute income are antithetical to a capitalist and free economy. Here he was, a man, who by his speech patterns and manner I would judge was educated entirely within the walls of "The School of Hard Knocks" in an urban setting, but now was pontificating like some tenured professor from the Wharton school of Business.

The most surprising discovery about Lenny was that, all appearances to the contrary, he was a serious 10 speed bike enthusiast. In fact he was up at the Cape with a small group of bikers anxious to tackle the extensive network of interwoven bike paths over former railroad track areas that divide up the land areas. Just that morning he had completed one 32 mile jaunt. Two people from their group, he proudly informed me, had been unable to complete the tour. I expressed genuine amazement and admiration because, you see, ------- Lenny,  was 82 years old.

Early the next morning I caught sight of him out my window. He was riding round and round the parking lot, warming up on his bike, dressed in a tight fitting bright yellow and black biking uniform with a too small helmet perched on his head. His facial expression and upright leaning posture, communicated pride in self and seemed to say, "Hey look at me".

The other guys I got to meet over the course of several days had much less seniority but told interesting stories, never the less. We came as individuals but soon transformed into a group.