My Random Swimming Pool Encounter With An Entitled And Intimidating Man

It was a chilling reminder that they still exist

Jae L
6 min readMar 20, 2021
Photo by Stephane Coudassot-Berducou on Unsplash

It happened just over a year ago on the cusp on the Coronavirus pandemic. The significance of the timing will soon become apparent. I was completely absorbed in my routine with no inkling this would be any different to any other regular swim. Then I saw him.

Or maybe I heard him first. Anyway, what I witnessed was a man in the swimming pool spitting into the corner of it. The bit where people get in and out. It wasn’t just the kind of spit that happens when a bug flies in your mouth but the full throated kind that plunges the depths, gathering everything on its way up.

I was frozen for a moment as I processed what I had just seen and made sure I actually had. In seconds I was at the side of the pool letting him know that I had seen it. I didn’t know what I was going to say or what I hoped to achieve. I just wanted to let him know that it hadn’t gone unnoticed.

I think I told him that I had just seen him spit and it wasn’t okay to do that in a public swimming pool (is it actually okay anywhere?). I can’t remember much of his response other than that he denied it and told me I didn’t knowing what I was talking about.

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Jae L

Queer, neurodivergent and in the business of defying expectations. Doing my best to answer the questions I keep asking myself. diverge999@gmail.com