Page 115 - TITLES FOR WORK I NEVER MAKE I'll Go To Disneyland Alone

for an hour, five days a week throughout the 1980s and ’90s.
At the Y, I met another swimmer, Tom, who would become a swimming partner. We would laugh at being the two young gay men in an over-heated pool with 80-year-old ladies doing aqua-aerobics. Hours would pass, then we would go our own ways. With the Hotel Chelsea directly across the street, I’d walk east and he’d walk west, saying “see you tomorrow.”
After 20 years I began swimming less until I eventually stopped. The chlorine bothered my skin and my shoulder hurt from a broken collarbone, the result of a bicycle accident while on an artist residency in Amagansett.
Bicycling back from a day at the beach, and carrying a bag of groceries, I hit a pothole and flipped over the handle bars. I was knocked unconscious on the side of the road. As I came to, an older gentleman was looking down at me. He had a long, white beard and a full head of silver hair. In a deep soft voice, he said, “don’t worry, I’m not God.” He waited with me until the ambulance arrived and visited me the next day when I’d returned to my artist’s retreat, with my arm in a sling. No God wondered if I needed anything. But I digress.
1963-2010