A July afternoon in Nashville is too hot to use for anything, so we went to the pool. It would be hard to imagine a more generic motel pool.

Almost kidney-shaped, this one was surrounded by a gate, a handful of plastic loungers, a couple of sunshades and a group of lizard-like humans with nut-brown tans. They smoked and drank beer, and cooled off occasionally with a quick splash. Across from the carpark was a half-built motorway. We were under the landing path of the airport.

I think it's fair to say that Kay and I were probably the only dykes within a ten-mile radius of that pool. My skin takes the earliest opportunity to burn, so I wore my anti-burn outfit: a t-shirt, a whole lot of factor 60+ sunblock, a sunhat and a pair of dark glasses. I wore this whilst in the pool. People stared, unsurprisingly.


The adults smoked and drank, the kids splashed until they were bored. Someone brought a chihuahua into the pool area and we hoped that it would be allowed to swim. It hated the water, alas, and left tiny pawprints on the concrete surround as it went to find a hiding place under one of the plastic chairs.

As well as being the only dykes in the vicinity, we were the only people not acting our age. We bobbed and played martial arts fighting in slow motion, Matrix style. We carried each other around, we swam through each other's legs. We did not hide our laughter or pleasure at being in the water.

Two teenage girls shared the pool with us for a while, They played, also. Girl One kept telling Girl Two not to touch her butt. They sunbathed. They stared and giggled at Kay and I, fat, whitey dykes, dressed stupidly. You could see the sense of superiority in their eyes. I stared back, defiantly. Kay and I bobbed onwards, and we saw Girl Two, the girly-butt-toucher, sneaking secret looks at us. I imagined her watching us because she knew that she could be one of us. She reminded Kay and I of ourselves, too, a long time ago.