Ben C. O. Grimm

I grab the bucket and the net and chuck them into the van. I drive off. A warm day. That's not good. I can smell the stench from a mile away. It's my job, but there's no fun in it anymore. I drag my feet. Just past the small white building. There used to be a nice and homey atmosphere around here. The scent of chlorine. Splashes. Running children. Concerned parents. Well, concerned about their tans, not their offspring. None of that anymore. The usual crowd has gathered around the pool. I'm here to clean it. As usual, the Big Girl's in the center, floating around on a pink plastic bed with the words Cheap Allegory on them. Someone must have had a flash of inspiration. The letters are attached with glue. Water soluble, of course. The crowd may have some ideas, but they don't stick. The Big Girl's scribbling away in her little notepad. She mumbles the words to herself. Sometimes she calls out. 'Hey guys! Listen. I've written something great!'. And then the declamation begins. She rarely makes it past the initial impression of a school teacher trying to score points with the children in her class. 'Now didn't you like that story, kids?'. Yeah, yeah, can we go to lunch now? I can see she's been burned by the sun pretty badly. But there's no way she will leave the pink bed. Big Girls tend to be clumsy. And the water in the pool ... well, that's why I'm here. Ah, the other characters are there as well. There's a boy I've dubbed Jerky. He's a nice boy. Most of the time he just relaxes. He has a face that looks like his brain is being fried in a microwave. It's just that he likes the music loud. He lives in his own world, defined by the length of the cord of his headphones. You can usually find him in the far corner of the pool. Up to his waist in the brownish water. From time to time, one can see the small tidal waves around his body. That's why I called him Jerky. He's turned on by everything around him. He swims over to the pink bed. The Big Girl emits an excited scream. Jerky kneads the pink plastic. The squeaky sound sends him write back to his corner. A few minutes later, he's foaming at the waist. He relaxes on top of an old and faded towel. Face down, of course. He hums to the music and rubs against the cloth. The other boy hardly ever speaks. I think he's Jerky's brother. He just sits there in the shade and looks. His glasses are greasy. He pushes them up every few minutes. He would have been the third character in Beavis and Butthead, had they found him at the time of their creation. But they would have had a tough job in finding him. Always in the shade, never uttering more than a few affirmative words. Hiding behind his hair of undefinable color. He seems focused on the Big Girl. He's always sitting where he can look between her legs. If Jerky's actions cause the pink bed to rotate, the Cartoon Character gets up and relocates his chair to a different shaded zone. And looks. And says "Yeah, that's funny!" when the Big Girl issues one of her borrowed and selfrighteous statements. The Big Girl smiles, looks proud and says "See?". Then she giggles. The Cartoon Character leans to the side to see her heaving breasts. Jerky moans. His butt is writhing beneath his shiny plastic shorts. Meanwhile, a tall skinny character in an off-white toga walks about, muttering to himself. He's memorizing a stack of books, next to the chair where he sits when he's not arguing with himself. His arms move in broad gestures. The King-Philosopher, I call him. He's recycling the same pile of books over and over again. The paper contents of his head. His thoughts in writing. His ideas between book covers. But his name is not on any of them. The Big Girl's trying to pick up his words. She writes them down and muses over them. A statement to the crowd follows shortly after that. The Cartoon Character applauds. Jerky undulates. The King-Philosopher's responsible for inflating her pink bed. Not a thought between them, just breath, whispers and plastic. Someone seems to be missing from the picture. Ah, there she is. Mutha. She's not really their mother, but she acts like she controls the scene. Mutha likes to parade around the pool in a tent-like dress, smoking a cigar. When I first saw her, I thought she was camp. But she isn't really playing a role. I feel kinda sad for her. She would look well on stage. Unfortunately, she has a loud gruff voice and nothing substantial to say. No material. Well, jokes about dogs. Over and over again. So the pool's her theatre. Too bad the acoustics are so lousy. They all spot me at the same moment. They don't like my presence. When the pool was still reasonably clean, they condoned my presence. They saw me walking around with a bucket and a hose, but they weren't exactly sure what purpose they served. Until I hosed down Jerky. He was overheated, and I thought I did him a service. He turned around, and the towel was stuck to his groin. I lost my temper once. I saw pieces of excrement floating around in the pool. Since they were the only visitors, it was pretty obvious who were responsible for them. The traces on the side of the pink bed were hard to miss. I caught the Cartoon Character urinating in the pool once. I wasn't sure though. Maybe he was shaking off the last drops. I could only see his arched back and spindly legs. He was facing the sleeping Big Girl. The King-Philosopher was reading Aristotle to a tree, and Mutha was shaving her legs behind the bushes. Now, the Big Girl sighs. "Oh no, not him again". I know why. A few months ago she followed me into the locker room. I was about to clean it. She asked me if I liked her. At the time, I had no reason to dislike her. So, I said I liked her. And when she dropped her bikini and wanted sex, I obliged. Hey, I clean pools, so why not confirm the cliche? She tried to impress me with arguments and metaphores, but I didn't have a hard time in coming up with better ones. That seemed to turn her on. She was quite enthusiastic. She complained about former boy friends. In general, she only stopped talking during sex. So I obliged. My pleasure. She started following me home. She wrote me letters. She wanted to move in with me. I shrugged her off. None of that, thanks. She tried to get even with me by cuddling up to the King-Philosopher, but I laughed. They matched perfectly in their parasitic symbiosis, feeding on borrowed words and living off a menu of cheap thoughts. And I could perform my duties in peace. But not today. "Stay away from our pool", they say. It's not their pool. It's a municipal pool. And I tell them. "This is a pool for all the people in the neighborhood," I say. "They just don't show up here because you make a mess of the pool." Jerky doesn't hear a word I'm saying. He jumps into the pool, mumbles "Ahh", and one by one, three turds surface. Jerky looks delighted. The Cartoon Character giggles. The King-Philosopher's browsing his pile of books for scatological quotes. Mutha cracks a joke about a dog. It's a warm day. I shrug my shoulders. I'm off to the beach. I hardly ever go there, but I'm pleasantly surprised. The people are friendly. I see some beer cans in the sand. I remove them. Someone behind me says 'thank you'. He slips me a fiver. "Well done". An interesting conversation with a French girl. A German boy recites a chilling poem. An Italian couple listens to my story about the pool. They smile. They want me to come back tomorrow. When the sun sets, I drive back to the pool. They're still there. The Big Girl's trying to keep up with the King-Philosopher's stream of unrelated quotes. She's flipping the pages of her notepad. Jerky's in the pool, next to the pink bed, trying to glue the letters back on. He has a problem arranging them in the right order. 'Heap Allergy', it reads. Mutha's smoking her cigar. She farts. The Cartoon Character giggles. He got the dog joke, finally.

© Ben C. O. Grimm