How to Swim in Open Water

A  year ago I was walking to class and suddenly I became aware that everyone’s conversation around me sounded oddly familiar. It happened all day long. I had always devoted my energy to eavesdropping, and here was something entirely new: in New York, a city full of millions of people, we were all talking about the exact same thing. The afternoon before classes were canceled, I walked into Washington Square Park behind three other students, their voices bright and nervous, as one of them tried to explain to another what an insurance deductible was. On the N train, a woman teased her boyfriend: “You better still love me when we are trapped inside and my eyebrow hairs grow long. And all we are doing is eating beans.”

That was the start of my indoor life. I ate a lot of beans, and four months passed. Then it was summer, the air was inescapably sticky, and every day I planted myself in front of a blue plastic fan wedged in my living room window and fantasized about one thing: swimming. Luckily, the beach, where there is ample space and a virus-dispersing breeze, was just forty-five minutes away by bike. That’s where I went when I didn’t want to look at the four walls of my apartment anymore, where I went to join the ranks of my fellow CIBBOWS members.