I don't know why Heinekens are so much more difficult to open than other beers--I mean, a pop-top is supposed to pop off, not mangle off. The usual way I get them is to poke a hole in the top with the bottle opener, and once the pressure equalizes, there you go. However, true to my bachelor nature, I couldn't find a bottle opener. I finally managed to get it by pinching it in the handles of a can opener and twisting. It took chunks of plastic out of them, but I didn't care; they weren't mine anyway.
Bringing the beer, my lighter and an unlit clove cigarette, we all went out to the pool. I took off my shirt and lit the cigarette.
"How cold is this?" Sam asked, dipping a toe.
"I dunno," I answered. "It gets pretty warm in the daytime. Sun shines on it all day." I waded in and submerged, holding my cigarette aloft. Coming up I pulled back my hair, and took a long drag. The gentle currents of the night air wafted the smoke in lazy circles.
George and Alissa sat on the concrete, with their bare feet in the water. Kathy waded in, shivering, and then dived and swam underwater for a short distance.
We swam about for a while. I drank beer and floated on my back with the cigarette in my mouth, sending long trails of smoke into the air. Finally I stood and tossed it at the stone ashtray, missing it.
"We ought to swim naked," Sam said, looking about him. " I will if someone else will."
"God," I said, finishing my beer and laughing. "I guess you could do it, though. No one's awake anyway."
"Look at Kathy's nipples," Alissa giggled. Kathy crossed her arms over her chest in mock horror.
"Oh, shit, there's a cockroach over here," Alissa exclaimed suddenly, scrambling back. I saw it scuttling toward me on the edge of the pool. When it got within reach I squashed it with my bottle.
"How do you like roach hell, you little bastard?" I asked, peering at the distorted corpse."Oh, disgusting." I threw the bottle in the bushes.
"George, go get some more beer," I said solemnly. George gave me the thumbs up, and went, with Alissa following to use the bathroom, I guess.
As soon as he heard the door close down the hill, Sam shucked his shorts and tossed them onto the edge of the pool.
"Ha ha ha! Oh, what the hell," I said, and pulled off my Island Gods or whatever brand-name shorts. Kathy was laughing as she wriggled out of her clothes.
I had never really gone swimming naked, and I would have been in complete enjoyment if it weren't for the fact that my penis had shrunk down to approximately acorn-size. I have never had small-organ-complex, because it's not, but when you think someone may see you naturally want it to at least look normal. It's just one of those things. I guess the weenie is sort of the center of the male ego. Jimmy and I used to shout SPS! when we were in Alaska and the cold and damp really bit hard; it stood for Spontaneous Penis Shrinkage. We got a real kick out of that, being the age we were. It's kind of funny still, when I think about it.
I heard the door open down the hill.
"Quick," Sam whispered, "get in the shadows."
We all splashed over to where the pool made an ell behind a small tree, and huddled giggling in the shadows. George and Alissa came through the gate.
"Where'd they go?" George said walking past the discarded clothes without noticing them. Alissa spotted us behind the tree, and they came over. George had four or five opened bottles in his hands.
"Oh, shit, they're naked," he said suddenly, taking a step back. I stood up in the water and reached for the beer.
"Just give me the first one," I said. Sam and Kathy started laughing as George gingerly approached and gave me a Shiner Bock. I took a swallow and felt the smooth brew wash away the taste of chlorine in my mouth. Holding the bottle, I waded out from behind the tree and swam lazily across to where Alissa and George were sitting. George apparently had started some religious argument with Alissa. I sat back against the wall with the beer and got a glimpse of Kathy's boobs as she dived. I had thought the sight would have excited me but it didn't; it was more a pleasant, slightly erotic feeling of sharing with friends. I guess that conjures up images of group sex, but it wasn't at all like that. We were just less inhibited around each other. It's like, clothes are really just a social thing--people don't want to walk around seeing everyone else waving in the wind. I'm not being an advocate of nudism, either, or naturalism, rather--pardon my un-political correctness (which I never gave a shit about.) Just in this case, with a few friends and a few beers, I felt at ease. Not to mention, talkative. Like Lestat, I felt my magic moment approaching.
George was expounding on religion.
"Religion doesn't have to be about God. It can be, like, anything you live your life by. Music, art, whatever. It doesn't mean you have to do all this shit to be redeemed."
I took a swallow of Shiner Bock (brewed by the good people of Shiner, Texas).
"You know, I have a question," I said gravely. " If I have a soul, then why doesn't my dog? I mean, he has intelligence, and emotions--"
"--personality," put in George.
"--exactly, and he even has a rudimentary grasp of right and wrong. I mean, it's just because he knows there will be pain if he does wrong, but that's not any different from a lot of people I know."
"I think dogs have souls," Sam said.
"What makes a soul?" George asked.
"I mean that, if we continue on after we die, then we must have a soul, which is just that part of us that continues after we die." I felt good about that sentence. It had a ring as it came off my tongue.
Kathy destroyed the discussion by jumping on Sam's back and ducking him. I finished the Shiner and picked up a Zima that stood open on the edge. I threw the Shiner bottle in the bushes.
"Nobody really needs God. anyway," George said.
"That's how I used to feel," said Alissa. I looked at her curiously, but she said no more. She was starting to intrigue me, just by being quiet.
"Well, it makes me feel better to believe in God," I answered, splashing water with my hands. The bubbles tickled my thighs. "I mean, I think a lot of the Bible is crap anyway, and all you really have to believe in is that Jesus was guiltless and died for us. And I guess it follows from that that the only real sin is rejecting God." I felt even better about that sentence. I was quite proud of the way I was expressing myself. I drank more beer. " You know, George, you're right, this stuff does taste better after you've had a few real ones."
"I think so, too," said Colin. I thought he was talking about Zima for a second, until he continued. "The Bible has been translated like, sixty million times, and a lot of times it doesn't even say what it used to say."
The discussion had drawn us together in the corner of the pool. Alissa sat with her legs drawn up, listening and not saying much. There was a ragged row of empty bottles at the edge by this time, and a couple lay in the bushes where I had thrown them. I thought about the consternation of the managers when they found glass in the pool area, and laughed. Who gave a fuck about glass when we were all naked. Let them say something about that. It wasn't like we were breaking it or anything.
We drank, swam and talked for a couple of hours. At one point there a was a general panic when some guy came out to the pool to swim, but after his initial shock he sat on the edge of the pool and talked to us. George gave him a beer, and I figured he must be pretty cool because he wasn't staring at Kathy's boobs, which I probably would have been doing if I was him. He could have been gay, I suppose, but I figured he was just being polite. I introduced myself.
"Hi, I'm, uh, Tom," I said, offering my hand.
He took it. "I'm Jeff, and I'm not really in the habit of shaking hands with naked men."
"That's OK," I said comfortably." I'm not really in the habit of being naked."
I was enjoying it, though. As we got more and more tipsy the conversation became less and less involved, until we got into how much a breast weighed, in and out of the water. (I figured with drunken importance that it must be about five pounds.)
After a while longer, we got cold, and got dressed, and went inside, where we held fellowship with each other and our good friends the Heinekens, which George showed me how to open using the door to the apartment.
After another while longer, we slept peacefully as the eastern sky began to lighten.