July 2005 to August 2006, New York, New YorkBy Tiegen Kosiak

He kissed me underwater, bubbles billowing from both our mouths, and later, after work, at my apartment, he told me that I was beautiful, even at 220 pounds.

I didn’t believe him, so he held my face in both his hands and said again, “You’re beautiful. You are.”

We were swim instructors at a summer day camp, placed together by fate, taught the highest level of lessons - station 8. I was 22. He had just graduated from high school, an all-boy boarding school, but still had his share of girls. I was the 10th he slept with.

He was my second sexual partner, a year separating him from the first, a one-night stand on the Upper East Side, the only man to ever see me naked, until Eric, who waited a month to make his first move.

He held my hand on the futon in my kitchen/living room, then led me to my bedroom. He played a Spanish song and said, like the singer, that he knew he was younger but that he wanted to be in my bed, anyway.

I blushed. We kissed. Things progressed. He laid between my legs and pleased me with his hands, said my sweat was sexy, and my hair, and my moans. Then he grabbed my ass and went home.

I saw him again at 8 a.m. for the early-morning meeting. He sat behind me and secretly rested his hand on the small of my back, underneath my tank top. No one noticed, not for a month.

Our students were the first to see how we purposely put ourselves in the other’s eye line while lifeguarding during free time, how we stared across a chlorine sea of splashing swimmers and saw only each other.

Hallie, a 5-year-old, had a good laugh at lunch once, when Eric, in a rush to play basketball, handed me his Snapple. “He gave you his juice!” Hallie giggled. “He loves you!”

I loved him too, a little - the way you have to love the first guy who goes down on you. That kind of lust takes trust.

I was comfortable for a while, lying beside him in the nighttime, but then he mentioned how the moonlight illuminated my ivory skin and made him look even more Puerto Rican. My concern: folds and rolls and a streaked stomach. I hid beneath a blanket. He pulled it off. “I want to see you,” he said.

“I don’t,” was my reply.

He left for college a month after that, went somewhere in Connecticut. I knew he’d never come back, not whole, not noble, unable to understand how much I missed his hand on the small of my back.

I was so sad, teared up all the time, at home, at work, on the train. The only thing that quieted my crying was to dilute it with chlorine, so I swam five days a week. Five-hundred yards was hard at first, but then someone took notice.

I graduated cum laude from college, yet worked as a lifeguard to pay rent on the Upper West Side, where Eric had shared my bed many times. I watched every water polo practice, every elementary swim lesson, every interaction between the physical-education faculty.

One day, the varsity swim coach asked me to assist with the middle school team, said she liked what she saw in me: technique, drive, and a great love of the water.

Her offer made me feel better. It also made me swim harder. I had to keep up with the kids, 12- and 13-year-olds who played sports year-round. I swam upwards of 3,000 yards a day, Monday through Friday, for three months, the span of swim season. I lost 40 pounds.

It felt like magic, but I had to make it last. So I joined a gym, learned to lift and lunge and stand on my head, and took abs and dance and Pilates classes. I also ran 4 or 5 miles a day, listened to Fall Out Boy — “we’re going down, down in an earlier round” — and stared straight ahead, sprinting toward a better version of myself.

All my life, people said, “You have such a pretty face,” and suddenly, at nearly 23, I was beautiful, through and through, a girl you want to see twice on the street.

Obviously, my daily toll of useless cat calls increased dramatically, but real men were finally noticing me too - men from the gym, from work. They took me to roof-top bars, called me cars, and had degrees.

One man worked for a Major League baseball team. Another suitor played competitive chess and bought us the tastiest dessert wine at French Roast. There was also a personal trainer, tall and dark like Eric, 23, who graduated cum laude from Ithaca but made very little money. Of course, I fell for him.

It wasn’t long before he became lucky No. 3, oblivious to the new me: skinnier, happier, and almost entirely over my former lover. Almost.

Summer rose over the city, made the air thick with humidity, filled my mind with memories of the last time I felt the sunshine and the heat of a college boy’s hands. I went back to summer day camp six sizes smaller than the year before, which made most jaws hit the floor.

I didn’t expect to see Eric there.

“Thought you were gonna take summer class,” I said.

“Decided to make money instead,” he said.

“Good plan,” I replied.

He smiled. “I thought so.”

I smiled.

He swallowed. “You look good.”

I swallowed. “Thank you.”

He thought I meant, “… for the compliment.” But I meant, “Thank you for loving me when I was fat.”

A native of North Dakota, Tiegen Kosiak now writes screenplays, short stories, and poetry from her apartment in West Harlem. She graduated from Marymount Manhattan College with a BA in communications, a concentration in film, and minors in both creative writing and theater performance.

Posted by Common Ties on Monday, December 31st, 2007 | Email This Post

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