Swimmers, version 2.0

I originally published “Swimmers” in February 2024 and was thrilled when Chuck Palahniuk, author of “Fight Club” (plus many, many others) and undoubtedly my favorite writer, reviewed it a few months later. It was surreal that someone at his level - he’s sold millions of books and has a cult following - didn’t just read something I wrote, but took the time to give gobs of incredible feedback. I incorporated many of the concepts into this revised…and much better…version of “Swimmers.” Feel free to check out the original if you want, but I encourage you to read this one first. Finally, I’d love to hear what you think about it! Drop a comment to let me know.

Swimmers

They tell you not to. It’s right there in the pre-op instructions – “Don’t eat or drink anything after midnight before your surgery,” like I’m some kind of gremlin. It’s listed twice, in fact. Italics on the front of the page, bold on the back. Likely because some auburn-haired Lynn or Debbie (who prefers to be called Deborah) in Disney scrubs couldn’t stomach the idea of cleaning up yet another pile of vomit after a patient gave the middle finger to the warning and spilled a belly full of osso buco in post-op.

They tell you, in no uncertain terms, that watermelon is off the list. Same with strawberries and apricots. Clams? Nope, not even raw. And don’t even think about cucumber or hagfish or nutria. I know because I asked. Looking back, I should have asked about what I planned to eat that night.

And the written instructions are just the cover-your-ass document for the medical center, since the nurse and surgeon both made the same point during the consultation. Tiny hammers battered my skull and thudded down my neck while the surgeon pointed to gleaming white blobs on the backlit x-rays of my spine and said things like “mesenchymal chondrosarcoma” and “axial skeleton.” I tried to shake feeling into my right hand while Dr. Robert P. Canales, M.D., chattered about “Maffucci syndrome.” I wondered how much this was going to cost me as Doctor Bob talked about “median survival rate” and placed his hand on my shoulder for much longer than someone who was just defining “dedifferentiated.” But the nurse made herself heard, telling me to check in at the surgery center by 5:45am, and that I could have nothing to eat or drink after midnight. Apparently assuming I didn’t take her seriously, either because she was a woman or because she went to community college, Doctor Bob followed it up a few minutes later with “Make sure you get whatever snacks or drinks in your system early, because once the clock strikes midnight you’ve gotta’ shut it down until after the surgery.” His fingers stroked the skin on my thigh while the nurse pretended to not notice.

The point was clear, and I’m not a retard. It made sense and everything. But straight up? No part of me believed things would last that long, and when it was clear they were going to, we were well past the point of bailing out.

***

We were scheduled to start festivities at 7:00pm the night before surgery, which based on prior experience told me we’d wrap up by 11:30pm at the latest. Plenty of cushion baked in, not that I expected to need it. When you’ve done enough of these, you get a good feel for how long each one will last. Sure, there are outliers – guinea pigs that hold out as long as possible just to prove a point, or those who cut bait after less than a minute because they need to get back home to their wife and kids – but the average time is just over five minutes. With 50 pigs lined up to take part, we’d be done by well before midnight.

The timing was fucked from the start.

Felch from Legal Services was almost 20 minutes late and we couldn’t start without him, since he had the release forms. Without signed forms by every single pig, the entire event would need to be shit-canned. You can do it, technically, but missing a signature on even one of the 50 releases isn’t good enough. 49 is false advertising. 49 is keep scrolling to the next one. 50 is what we needed. 50 is The Empire Strikes Back. 49 is The Phantom Menace.

I was rubbing the base of my neck with my cooperative left hand and trying to remember what an oncogene was, eyes clenched, as Felch rushed through the door spewing a stream of “I’m sorrys” and “Today has been a nightmares.” All 50 pigs lined up to sign their form and some even ventured to read it first, while another wanted to use an alias before Uncle Touchy convinced him names would be kept in strict confidence, not appearing anywhere in the publicity material. All 50 would be faceless, nameless props, completely unidentifiable to anyone viewing the end product.

“Ok, we’re a go,” Touchy announced. “Positions! Let’s get into positions, everyone!” Then, after a half-beat, “Wait, where’s Tech Services? Where’s that beef canoe from Tech?” He meant Terri. She was the only one who knew how to operate the drone, which was key since there were some shots we needed to have from above, including a pivoting, 360-degree view of the action. Absolutely, positively needed to have. Groundbreaking stuff. Wait until you see it.

“Snack run,” someone said from the darkness, and Touchy slammed a fist on his knee. 7:29pm. We were really cutting into that cushion I thought we didn’t need.

The smell of chocolate chip cookies arrived an instant before Terri, who absorbed a fuck you glance from Touchy before setting the cardboard tray of treats and two gallons of chocolate milk on the table and grabbing the case with the drone inside. “Number one, you’re up,” Touchy said, motioning to the stumpy, spectacled guy standing along the back wall with both hands in his pockets. He shuffled to the chair in the center of the room and sat with a thud as the drone buzzed to life, quietly humming overhead. The spotlight flipped on, reflecting off his glasses and shimmering, sweaty forehead, as the house lights dropped.

7:36pm. I needed to hustle.

After plowing through hundreds (thousands?) of pigs over the years, for the most part they blend into one seething, shadowy pile of flesh. I don’t remember names or faces. I just have ghost images, like the scene from Karate Kid that was burnt into my TV screen as a kid because I paused the movie and then fell asleep. A flashbulb memory of a guy with sunken cheeks and no eyebrows who bleated like a fawn. A hazy recollection of an artificial leg, the shoeless wooden foot tapping out morse code on the concrete floor until we were done. A knobby, thumbless hand reaching out to push me away while its owner begged me to stop. Maybe this time was different because of how it ended. Maybe I remember so many of them because I was in the recovery room 16 hours later, trying not to puke.

Pig #1, both hands still stuffed in his pockets, was silent and motionless throughout. No discernible reaction to any external stimuli, until the finish. You can’t fake that.

Pig #9, ponytail of red hair, the straps of his Tevas straining from the pressure of a sixth toe on the left foot. Cigarette burns marred the dancing bears on his shirt, but I could still read “Bob Weir” signed in black sharpie across the chest. He was a potpourri of grunts and moans, seemingly in pain from beginning to end. Smelled faintly of sharp cheese, but I couldn’t place the variety.

Pig #12, shaved head, Affliction tank, work boots. “F” tattooed on the pinky finger of his right hand, followed by U, C, and K on the neighboring digits, with Y, O, and U on the left hand. On the left bicep, barbed wire wrapped around a Celtic cross. A pin-up girl with a funhouse mirror face that had apparently been scratched into his skin by the apprentice. “Family” in script lettering inside the forearm. The right arm, inked from shoulder to wrist with a series of tribal sea turtles, lizards, and thick geometric patterns, because I’m sure he was proud of his clan. He was a stream of “fucking bring it, bitch” right from the start, until he deflated like a child’s balloon after less than 45 seconds and staggered to the chocolate milk.

Pig #22, tall with a full head of salt and pepper hair, dressed like he stopped here on the way to the opera, threw off the schedule further. Five minutes passed with barely a response. His black Lombardy hornbacks (which cost more than a month’s worth of rent) shifted, but otherwise he was a statue. 10 minutes. 12 minutes. My right hand was completely numb, my neck pounded. He adjusted the cummerbund. In the distance the microwave beeped and someone said “shit, my cookies!” and the air was filled with the smell of char. I used every approach I had ever learned but was met only with shallow breathing. As we crested the 15-minute mark (usually enough time for three pigs to be ushered through the line), there was a breakthrough. Unable to endure any longer, he bucked and kicked, then quickly departed with a string of epithets.

We were in serious trouble. First Felch, then Terri, and now Placido Domingo or whoever, and after 22 pigs it was 11:21pm. Unless the remaining 28 followed the lead of the skinhead and gave up after less than a minute, I was absolutely going to violate the pre-op instructions.

***

From the drone, we see me working the space between my shoulder blades with my left hand as I down a glass of chocolate milk and pig #34 strolls into position. The others sit in folding chairs or crowd around the snack table, deliberately not watching what was taking place under the spotlight. Faces lit by the glow of cell phones. Heads slumped forward trying to catch a minute of rest. Hands brushing crumbs from laps or wiping milk moustaches. Touchy scribbling something in his notes. Footage we’d later remove during editing. On the screen, we watch as #34 greets me with a Tom Hardy voice and I lean close. We zoom to his strong hands gripping the chair as the muscles and tendons in his thighs flex and relax, flex and relax. The mic barely registers the low, gravelly “fuck” that escapes his throat, the sound that made me think of Bret. But he was Not Bret. He lasted for six minutes and I wished it was 12. Watching it back, I felt a flutter between my legs and the start of something wet.

***

It was already 12:15am. “Remember, nothing to eat or drink after midnight…” played on an endless loop in my mind as I wrapped up the thirties and forged on to the roaring forties. There was no pulling the plug, not after all the work it took to get us to this point. The dozens of hours spent recruiting and vetting pigs. The countless calls and emails to find a facility that would allow us to rent the space, even after learning what the project was all about. Obtaining funding for the equipment, which wasn’t cheap and required me to put up my car as collateral (which still pisses me off, because why wasn’t it Uncle Touchy? He was the project director; I’m just the one who slaughters the pigs). Plus I had a surgery to pay for, and if this took off like we hoped, my share of the proceeds would definitely do that.

***

Pig #48, who tried to leave not once but twice because of how late it was and only stuck around because Touchy quietly slid him two crisp hundreds (50, not 49). Picture your high school math teacher but with worse teeth, constantly calling me a cunt and a whore. He pulled back a hand at one point as if to slap me, but security shoved him back down and, no more than 30 seconds later, he surrendered like they all do while the drone circled wordlessly a few feet away.  He was proud, no doubt, of the 14-minute performance that left me thoroughly drained. I’d been at this for more than five hours. Everything was fuzzy and blurred, like I was watching it through a shower door.

Nobody was more excited than I was when pig #50 sat down and got prepped. He was normal in every way, with the subtle aroma of vanilla bodywash, a pair of grey joggers, and a red quarter-zip pullover. Not memorable under typical circumstances, but it was 1:52am when we started and I was doing the math on how much sleep I was going to get (not much), while also dreading what the actual risk was for violating the surgeon’s orders. So yeah, I remember #50, and the four minutes it took for him to decide enough was enough.

***

I’m driving home, swirling gulps of spring water around my mouth and spitting it out the window, sick to my stomach and hallucinating with exhaustion.

The alarm goes off at 5:20am and I consider cancelling the surgery, but the tingling and numbness in my hand has started to travel up my right arm. I’m often unable to hold a pen or cup of coffee. My neck feels like a sausage left on the grill too long, on the verge of splitting open and spraying juice across the coals. Walking into the surgery center, I’m replaying Doctor Bob ranting about “positron-emission tomography” and handing me a pamphlet that discusses coping tactics. I’m thinking about those glowing full moons on the x-ray that need to be sliced out. This can’t wait.  

It's right there staring me in the face, the second patient intake question on the little tablet they hand me: “Have you had anything to eat or drink since midnight?” I could tap “yes” and reschedule the procedure for another day, but if I did that you wouldn’t be reading this.

They call me back to pre-op and I put on the surgical gown. Nurse Deborah is giving me a summary of what to expect, but I’m too distracted to pay attention. My guts are bubbling and churning because something in there is ready to get out. A hot snack of a burb escapes my lips. I’m facedown for surgery, staring at the floor through a cut-out in the table, so I can’t say hello as the voice of Doctor Bob is introducing me to Doctor Luciano Carreras, the anesthesiologist on duty. Counting down from 10 like a good little girl, a pair of black Lombardy hornbacks slides into view. Shoes that would pay for three months of groceries. And Doctor Carreras, from six feet above those shoes he says to me “Good to see you again, Lana…”. And then, nothing.

***

I open my eyes in recovery. Regrets, immediately. Buried under a heavy heated blanket, nausea is sweeping over me, my head floating in the delirious aftereffects of isoflurane. Nurse Deborah sees I’m awake and says “There you are, sweetie. Welcome back!” and jots something down on a clipboard. Smiling at me, she says “I have to say, I don’t know who Bret is, but you’ve been talking about him almost nonstop.” I don’t respond and she rushes over, clearly seeing the panic on my face, but is a split-second late with the bucket as the contents of my stomach detonate across the room.

The remnants of pig #7, nutty with a sticky consistency that made it hard to swallow, splatter across her hand. Pig #13, who clearly had eaten mountains of pineapple in a misguided attempt to make his semen taste better, would be delighted to know Nurse Deborah in Recovery Room 2C just tasted it as well. Pig #25 barely had any gravy left when he finally burst into my mouth hours earlier, presumably because he had preemptively masturbated before arrival in the hopes of lasting longer, but his noble little load is now mixed with countless others on the front of Deborah’s light-blue scrubs. My belly ejects the sad and foul-smelling offering of pig #38, the massive and acidic cream of Doctor Carreras, and the delicious yogurt that spurted from the averaged-sized member of Mr. Irrelevant at the back of the line shortly before 2am. It was all there, the cock rockets and baby batter from 50 different sucked dicks, brewed for hours in my stomach before escaping to form a festering slick of ejaculate across the black and white tiled floor. A floor that is now the home to millions of tiny swimmers searching for an egg to impregnate. Pig #3 drips from the edge of the metal table. Pig #36, who tried to give me his number and exploded with such force that I almost choked when it slapped against the back of my throat, is slowly leaking into the folds of the blanket. Pig #47, an ogre of a man with an intimidating hog that made my eyes water, probably never expected his juice to be strung like a spiderweb from my mouth to an IV bag. Pig #11’s jizz disappears in the holes of the Crocs poor Deborah had opted to wear to work. Not Bret, his white pee is puddled mostly on my chest, and I’m wondering if I can get a doggy-bag to take it home.

I didn’t eat after midnight necessarily, but I had a full stomach. The evidence was right there, patiently waiting for a mop and some paper towels. So yes, I suggest you take the doctor’s orders seriously.

But anyways, the project? It’s called Slob Knobbing 50: Golden Throat’s Revenge and you can watch it on the Porn Palace website for free. I’m hearing we are going to be nominated for at least two AVNs, including Best Cinematography (Terri!! 😊) and Female Performer of the Year.