Lifeguard-cum-Coach

(MF not water-sports <*>)

Father Ignatius

© August 2000

I was coming up on the end of my daily morning freestyle mile in the gym pool when I noticed Pammi standing by the side, apparently waiting for me. Her real name is Barbara, I think, but we started calling her Pammi after Pamela Anderson when she started wearing a Baywatch swimsuit. She said that, since Baywatch, the kids all know who the lifeguard is just by her wearing the right suit. Well, nobody objected. No, sir.

Pammi’s the pool life-guard but she also does swimming coaching. The nearby school doesn’t have a pool so they have a sort of corporate membership and send their kids over to the pool for Phys Ed and Pammi looks after them. They think she’s wonderful. Don’t we all?

In fact, Neil, the club manager, confided that Pammi’s Baywatch suit had a measurable effect on gym attendance. He’s an interesting chap, Neil, and he likes to chat. He’s divorced and his life is an odd mix of rampant bachelorhood and devoted fathering to his two young daughters. I owe all that I know about bromeliads, for example, to the nature programmes he watches on TV with his daughters. How the subject came up, however—as is right and proper—was through talking about sex. He likened an aroused woman’s sex organs to the inflorescence of a particular bromeliad he’d seen on TV. That went straight past me—I needed footnotes. Turns out, while Neil-the-devoted-father was making popcorn for the TV-enthralled kids, Neil-the-rampant-bachelor was thinking about his upcoming date, scheduled for after they’d gone home to their mother. And then this bromeliad programme came on. Thanks to that, Neil can never again give oral sex without thinking of bromeliads. And, thanks to him, neither can I.

We were talking about sex because we were standing one day, after my swim, ogling Pammi—as is only right and proper—as she supervised a class of kids poolside. We were making remarks about, “Do you think she’d give me breaststroke coaching?” and so forth when she blasted someone with the whistle she always had hanging round her neck on a dark purple cord. When she let it drop from her mouth to call out an instruction, it plopped into her cleavage and jiggled about as it got itself lodged snugly. I made some smart-arse remark to Neil along the lines of “Ever wish you were that whistle, nestling your little head between those?” and Neil replied, “And occasionally getting blown by Pammi?”

Thing is, no-one’s ever hit on Pammi, that I know of. Physically, she’s more like Anna Kournikova than Pamela Anderson. This, of course, is more than fine with all the guys. But, by the time she’s kitted out in the Baywatch swimsuit, she’s probably over-the-top feminine. If that were possible, of course. Standing by the edge of the pool—taller than Steffi Graf, straight, broad-shouldered, well-muscled, electric-blue eyes, long, blonde hair—blowing the whistle authoritatively and barking out orders, she’s more than a little intimidating. Amazonian, even—a blonde Wonder Woman whose magic bracelets could bounce back your come-on with ten-fold scorn. She got respect, is what she got. The guys ogled from afar but left her alone.

I finished my mile, wrecked. I checked on the clock as I hung, gasping, on to the poolside. My time wasn’t too good—I’d allowed Pammi to distract me.

“Let me give you a hand,” she said, appearing before me. A strong grip enveloped my right hand and lifted me as I pushed out of the pool. I stood before her, blood still singing, as she looked me up and down. I was embarrassed: my cock would be standing out somewhat, as they always do at the end of a race, or whatever. You’d think the blood would have better places to go at time like that but that’s the way it is.

“And now, big boy,” she grinned, “I want you to give me a hand. Those damned water-polo players have left their damned goals in the pool again and I’ve got a class of First-Graders arriving soon for a lesson. Can you help me lift them out? I’ve been struggling with them until I’m fed up with it.”

The water-polo goals spend most of their life out of the pool, propped against the wall away from the water. When they have water-polo on, they lower them into the water each side of the pool and secure them by dropping thick pins that slot into steel-lined holes in the concrete poolside. They’re big, quite heavy and pretty flexible so lifting them out again single-handed—so neither of the pins jams in its hole—is almost impossible. It’s the original two-person job unless you have the knack of it.

Pammi obviously expected us to take one side each but, anxious to get my back to her and so hide my embarrassingly swollen cock, I went to the middle and grasped the upper bar, palms down, for what the weight-lifters call “military lift”. I then became uncomfortably aware that my cock’s shameless misbehaviour was causing my Speedo to hug my butt even tighter than usual. Damn. Going forward was easier than going back, though, so I squatted, gripped the bar firmly, hands shoulder-width, and lifted the goal. The knack is to shake the goal around a little as you lift to shake the pins loose before they can get stuck. That, and enough brute strength, I guess.

The goal came obligingly out of the water and I dragged it back until my back hit the wall. I came out in front of it and leaned it back against the wall in storage position.

“Wow,” said Pammi, “nice lift.”

I looked at her to see if she was teasing me but she wasn’t.

“Nice back,” she said. “Nice butt.” Her eyes dropped to my Speedo again, “Nice everything, in fact.”

I got embarrassed again. “Glad to be of assistance to the kids,” I muttered, sounding ridiculously pompous even to my own ears, and strode hurriedly round the pool to the other goal.

“Nice shoulders, too. Quite the teacher’s helper,” observed Pammi from behind me as, blushing furiously, I lifted the other goal out of the water. “I’m out of gold stars, though. What does the teacher’s helper want as a reward?”

Sullenly resentful now, in a curiously adolescent way, I smart-arsed, “How about a nice kiss from the teacher?”

“Why, of course. With pleasure,” she said without any trace of hesitation whatever. When I didn’t move, she walked towards me and took me in her arms. One hand went to the curls in the nape of my neck and took a firm, proprietorial grip. She dipped her head to the right and pressed her lips smilingly against mine. It was a proper kiss. No teacher’s helper I ever knew got more than a peck on the cheek before.

It was more than a proper kiss; she withdrew slightly and used her lips to nibble at my lower lip, which she then sucked at gently. My mouth opened and her warm, slippery tongue slithered into my mouth. There was pressure from her hand behind my neck. We submerged into a deep, French kiss. I felt her other hand move down my back and press me to her. I had been trying to keep from pressing my hard-on into her belly but she forced the issue and, once I stopped fighting her, giving in felt wonderful.

Her hand moved lower again, onto my butt, and I felt her thumb in the waistband of my Speedo, between my buttocks. Insistently, she pulled at it, dragging it down. It was too tight to make much progress. She broke the kiss and knelt to make a two-handed job of it. The Speedo was briskly dragged down over my thighs. My cock sprang out at her eye level and she started back and then smiled up at me slyly. As my feet stumble out of my ankled Speedo, she took my now throbbing cock into her mouth and deep into her throat. Then she withdrew and stood, drawing me forward by the hand. Eagerly compliant I followed her up the stairs of the diving board. We walked out over the water and she turned to me.

She sat, and then lay down on the sandpaper-like non-slip surface. I had a sudden flash-back to Army days, of hasty couplings on narrow, Army-issue cots with too many bootlaces to undo to make undressing worthwhile. I dragged the shoulder-straps roughly down her arms. She lifted her elbows and her swimsuit bunched round her waist as her magnificent breasts appeared under my questing mouth.

I reached down to her crotch and dragged the gusset of her swimsuit frantically to one side, feeling her wetness beneath. Her hands appeared on my buttocks and pulled me forcefully into her.

The diving board had its own rhythm. It forced us to its own metronome-steady beat while we fought it to fuck furiously but, when we yielded to it, it led us steadily up a long path to a shattering orgasm.

Pammi slumped back, limbs hanging off the board. I looked down on her; my knees, toes and the heels of my hands hurt from the sandpaper-like non-slip surface. I wondered what her back felt like.

“What is it with this town?” she murmured sleepily, “I thought no-one would ever come on to me again.”

There was no time to pursue that line for, at that moment, there was a clatter of tiny feet and the chatter of tiny voices and a whole bunch of First-Graders made themselves heard stampeding down the ramp from the street into the pool area. There was no time to do anything except hug Pammi to me as I rolled off the board. We plunged together into the water and, underwater, shot guiltily apart. I went in the direction of my poolside Speedo, I hoped, and I don’t know where she went.

I popped my head out of the water and checked for my Speedo. It was about two yards to my right, about four feet from the edge. Damn. I swam sideways and then lunged out of the pool, fingers scrabbling for fabric.

Sure as fate, a little First-Grader voice floated across the pool, “Oh, look, Miz Emsley! I can see that man’s butt!” There was a clatter of high heels coming round the corner as, Speedo in hand, I hastily submerged again.

By the time I surfaced by the steps, the Speedo was respectably in place. Mrs. Emsley, flushing, had apparently been too late for the money shot and was now wondering, embarrassed, whether her ghastly little charge had offended the nice man. The nice man pretended not to have heard anything and retreated hastily to the changing rooms as Pammi appeared from somewhere, neat and tidy, shoulder straps over her shoulders and generally looking as if butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth.

When I emerged in my street clothes, a Phys Ed lesson was in progress, looking completely normal except for the fact that the coach, for reasons best known to herself, had chosen to conduct this one with a towel round her waist over the normal swimsuit. Her back looked a little odd, as if it had been scratched by something. Difficult to tell what, though. Trying not to think of bromeliads, the nice man ultra-casually waved the coach good-bye, tripped over the bottom step and, pursued by First-Grader tittering, stumbled out into the street.

“Just a moment, Mikey,” called out Neil as I walked past his door on my way to the pool a few mornings later.

“I had my daughters over last weekend,” he said, as I poked an enquiring head into his office. He was holding a stack of photographs—large, glossy, black-and-white. “We saw a nature programme on mythological beasts—unicorns and gryphons and stuff. And halcyons. Do you know what a halcyon is?”

Well, no. As a matter of fact, I didn’t. Who would?

“A halcyon is a a mythological bird that was supposed to calm the stormy winter waters around the solstice by laying over the water.

What the fuck? I thought, inwardly rolling my eyes. “That’s great, Neil,” I said politely, edging towards the pool.

“It seems to me that here we’ve got a bird who’s quite calm about being laid over the water,” he said, grinning, and showed me the top photograph. Fuck. It was a picture of me and Pammi on the diving board, after it was all over. Her legs, her arms, her head, her long, blonde hair, the shoulder-straps of her swimsuit hanging from her waist, even her whistle were all hanging towards the water. It was—I gotta say this—a picture of a very satisfied, happy, relaxed woman.

It was a stunningly good picture, too. The focus was so sharp I could see the individual eyelashes over her closed eyes and the half-moons on her fingernails. The light-and-shade effects over her breasts, my muscles, the swimsuit crumpled round her waist and taut over her hips, even the lights on my buttocks. That picture belonged on a calendar.

“Whenever I look at that picture I can hear Celine Dion singing,” said Neil. You know, that scene in Titanic where Kate Winslet is being the figurehead?”

I grunted absently as I leafed incredulously through the rest of the photos. The first was of Pammi watching me swimming. The last was of the back of a First-Grader, fuzzily close to the lens, pointing across the pool at my sharply-focussed back and marble-white buttocks as I leaned out of the pool, grabbing for my Speedo. And everything, absolutely everything, in between.

“I really wanted to get the camera to try and take evening photos of owls with my daughters.” Neil’s voice seemed to be coming from a long way off. “That’s why I had special low-light film. I decided that the club could pay for the camera if I took gym photos for the next brochure, though. And then you and Pammi came along. And came.”

“I had to make a deal with the guy at the lab. They are under strict instructions not to process this kind of thing. In the end, he did it for free, conditional on I let him have a set. And the slide-librarian from the Fine Arts department up at the University, who’s helping me learn photography, made a set of slides from them. They’re probably on the Internet by now.” Said Neil. Chuckling. He looked at me, expectantly.

Eventually, I said, “But I’m nothing like Leonardo diCrapio.”

• Thank you for reading me.
• I would be pleased to hear from you, at FatherIgnatius@ANTISPAMananzi.co.za , about whether or not you liked this story or not, and why.
• The original version of is story was written in three hours as a Write Club duel with Mr. Slot refereed by DrSpin. Thanks, Slot; thanks, Spin.
• The Challenge Words were:

  Mr. Slot	halcyon librarian compliant
  Father Ignatius	life-guard water-polo First-Graders
  DrSpin	Celine Dion sandpaper bromeliads

• The original versions of both stories are in the ASSTR Collection