It was yucky hot here today. The temperature got into the low 90s (about 35 degrees, for those of you with centigrade inclinations) and it was kind of humid. It was one of those days people might call "oppressive." So after dinner I took The Kid to my health club to swim in the pool. There's always something worth talking about going on in that place.

We get there a little before 7:30 and we've got the locker room all to ourselves. At least that's what I thought at first. After a few minutes I hear a boy talking in the area of the toilet stalls. The Kid and I get our suits on and make our way to the urinals. The boy in the stall hears us moving around.

"Mom?" he asks.

"Uhh, no. This is the men's locker room. Your mom's not in here."

"Oh."

Silence.

"Are you ok in there?" I ask the boy.

"I need someone to wipe me."

"Uhh… where's your dad?"

He mumbles something unintelligible.

At this point I'm shaking in my shorts. I'm terrified that this unknown child is going to ask me to wipe his butt. How the hell would I answer that? This kid's sitting there with a Klingon. I wouldn't want to leave him hanging. (har dee har har) But there's no way in hell I'd go anywhere near this boy. Wiping the butts of strange children, even with the most honorable of intentions, seems to me a fantastic way to get my club membership revoked, get arrested, and get permanently branded as some kind of poop-fetish child molesting pervert.

So what the hell was I going to do? Embarrass the hell out of this boy by telling him to pull his shorts up over his soiled bottom and go find his mother? That's the kind of memory that can haunt someone for years. Damaging his impressionable young psyche is a job for his parents, not me.

What's the other option? Wander all over the health club in my swim trunks asking women "there's a boy who can't wipe in the men's locker room. Is he yours?" Yeah, that's way more fun than swimming.

Fortunately, his mother saved me. I could hear her standing outside the door calling to the boy. I went to the door to tell her what was happening. At first she was very embarrassed to be caught peeking into the men's locker room. That embarrassment lasted only a second. We knew each other. We almost kinda sorta dated for about ten minutes in the 11th grade.

So I tell her what's going on and The Kid and I stand guard for her while she helps out her boy. There was no one else in the locker room, so she was able to slip in, take care of business, and slip out again. Crisis averted.

Pleased at avoiding a night in jail over a handful of toiler paper, The Kid and I take our showers and get ready to swim. We get into the pool and Butt Wiping Mommy is making eyes at me and talking me up. I was only marginally interested in her in the 11th grade and not interested in her at all now. But still, it's always nice to get that look.

The Kid and I are playing diving games for a few minutes when this woman in the corner catches my eye. She looks so familiar. I wonder "do I know her?" Every few minutes I keep glancing over in her direction, trying to match a name to her face. Finally it hits me.

"Holy shit! That's Cheesy Poofs! Cheesy Fucking Poofs!"

Until her retirement around 10 years ago, Cheesy Poofs was a plus size stripper. [Cheesy Poofs isn't her actual stripper name, but it's kinda close. I really don't want her to Google this.] There used to be a seedy strip club just outside the city. This club used to have mostly amateur dancers, or dancers that were just starting out. Over time it morphed into the area's only BBW strip club. Cheesy Poofs was more or less the perpetual headliner.

[I know what many of you are thinking to yourselves. You're thinking, "The Fish goes to BBW strip clubs?" No, that's not the case at all, dammit. Cheesy Poofs has become something of a local legend. She's been retired for a decade and people still crack jokes about her. I met this woman under completely different circumstances and didn't realize until years later that she was also a fat stripper. So stop picking on me.]

Every few minutes I steal a glance at her out of the corner of my eye. I keep giggling to myself. "heh, heh… It's Cheesy Poofs!" I can be so damn juvenile.

So anyway, The Kid and I play around for a while longer before we get out of the water. Before we leave I sit in the whirlpool for a few minutes. The club has age restrictions on the whirlpool, so The Kid sits at my elbow and I try to keep him occupied with word games. I'm alone in the whirlpool until this huge man slips in across from me.

I think to myself, "damn, I know this guy too. Where have we met?" He's about 6'5", maybe 300lbs. Well, I'm guessing 300lbs. What's a normal weight for that height? Whatever. The guy's a giant. He's got this reddish all-over tan like you'd see on a construction worker. He looks to be in his mid-40's.

I'm trying very hard not to look at this Red Giant while I try to remember how I know him. Then it comes to me. I helped this guy with his computer last year. He's one of those people who starts out computer-related conversations with the declaration "I barely know how to turn the damn thing on."

When I dealt with him last year, he wanted help with personal ad accounts. He was a single man looking to change his luck with dating services and what-not. Somebody or other had recommended to him about 8 different sites. So he showed up with a list. I walked him through things step by step at Yahoo! Personals, Match.com, Adult Friend Finder, and a few others.

So I'm sitting there remembering all this and I think to myself, "I wonder if any of that ever worked out for him?" Well, this turned into one of those movie moments, where things couldn't have happened more serendipitously if they'd been scripted. Immediately after finishing my thought, a woman gets into the whirlpool. I was quite surprised when she sits down next to Red Giant.

"Maybe that's his daughter," I think. Red Giant then puts his arm around her and "snuggles" her. Based on what I saw above the water the angles were probably right for some substantial pelvic contact below the water. Definitely not his daughter.

But damn. This girl looks like she's barely old enough to be allowed in the whirlpool and she's dating this 40-something? It's not my place to judge them, but I'd really like to know what the story is behind that.

You've seen Pulp Fiction right? One of the most interesting things about that movie is how Quentin Tarantino scrambled the order of the events in the storyline. He wanted events to be in certain places in his narrative, so he just stuck them where he wanted them, regardless of where they would have been.

Yeah, I'm doing that too. The next event happened near the beginning, but I want it at the end, so deal.

Thursdays they have a family swim from 6:30 to 7:30. We were getting in the pool just after this ended. We missed the water slide, which isn't a problem. The Kid's still too short for it anyway. But we did get to see two of the lifeguards in their swimsuits. Normally the lifeguards wear their uniform shirt and shorts, but when they're working the waterslide they're in and out of the water, so it's just their suits.

The two girls running the slide tonight are almost always working together. It's rare to see one of them without the other. Every time I see them I think "I should blog about them." See, they're both exceedingly beautiful, but they're pretty much exact opposites.

Lifeguard #1 is slender and athletic. She has narrow hips and a smallish bust. When she moves, you can just barely see her muscles rippling. The one word that describes her best is "lithe." Think of Gisele Bundchen and you're pretty close.

Lifeguard #2 is softer and more rounded. She has fuller hips and a larger bust. This girl is all about the curves. So "curvy" is definitely the one word that describes her best. Think of Laetitia Casta and you're pretty close.

Seeing the two of them together in their body-hugging swimwear really throws their contrasts into sharp relief. They're both beautiful. They're both perfect, but in very different ways.

So my question to you, readers (if any of you are still reading) is "which do you prefer?" Gisele or Laetitia? Athletic or curvy? What is beauty to you?