Be Amazed By This Excerpt of Keith James’ “Community Pool”
Keith James is a straight-up Humorist Books superstar. After we published his first novel, the ambitious and hilarious Greg Maxwell’s Inferno: The Erotic, Judeo-Christian Modern-Day Odyssey No One Asked For back in 2021, we were lucky enough to receive the manuscript for his follow-up, Community Pool. Boldly original and trapising through multiple genres, sometimes all at once, it’s a profane, funny, and moving story about family, stature, identity, the nature of reality, changing course mid-stream. I can’t really do it justice here. You’re just going to have to read the first couple of chapters or so, excerpted here, and then buy the rest of this unforgettable and astonishing novel. Community Pool and Keith James, everybody!
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ONE
Chubbuck. It’s in Idaho. It’s a city or a town, I’m not really sure. It’s on the southeast side of Idaho. Close to Utah. Kind of close to Wyoming. There was a guy who, I don’t know when, would load beets and potatoes and other shit onto a supply train that stopped around Chubbuck. But it wasn’t called Chubbuck then. It was just a place. Then in 1951, it became Chubbuck. Remember the guy who was loading shit onto the train? His last name was Chubbuck.
But who cares? It’s trains and a guy. Who cares about trains? No one.
I don’t. I know I don’t. There are so many things I have to care about. To be stressed out about. Jesus, fuck. If you think I care about some guy throwing potatoes on a train, you are damaged. You have a brain problem. You have a priorities problem.
You know what I think? If a city gets started in 1951, I think that sucks. I think that means the city is a bad place. If people wanted it, they would have gotten it well before 1951. Every good city was started in the 1800s, minimum.
Chubbuck.
If you want to get to Chubbuck, you can drive. Take the I-15 north or south and get off when your phone tells you to get off. Or the I-86 east or west. I don’t care. I don’t know where you are coming from.
And if you are reading this and are thinking, “You know, I think I have been to Chubbuck,” you haven’t. If people say this to me, this is what I say: I say, “Oh, so you’ve been to the drive-in theater.” And they say, “Sure have.”
Bzzzt. Wrong. Thanks for playing, shithead. There is no drive-in movie theater in Chubbuck. You got one in Idaho Falls and one in Rexburg. Not Chubbuck. They might have been trying to be polite by saying they’ve been to Chubbuck for the purpose of bonding, but, I don’t know. You probably haven’t been to Chubbuck, so just say that. To be fair, I’ve never been to either drive-in movie theater. Seems like a waste of time.
I don’t know why I’m stuck on “ways to get to Chubbuck,” but you can also fly into Chubbuck. Sort of. You fly into the Pocatello Regional Airport, which is on the Chubbuck side of the 86. But that’s gonna be so expensive. That’s crazy. You are gonna get on a tiny plane in Salt Lake City and fly the worst flight of your goddamn life. For what? You cut an hour off your trip? Stop it. Fly into Salt Lake and drive up.
But I don’t know. It all depends, you know? The roads suck in the winter and no one cares. Once you get past Utah and into Idaho, no one cares. The roads suck and fuck you. You’re gonna die and that’s your fault. You are gonna drive off the road passing Rigby. The hill is too steep coming down and if you are driving a rental, there is no way you have a feel of the brakes. You are going to be in a ditch. No one is going to stop. I might stop. I take that back. I’m not going to stop. Car in a ditch? I’m not stopping. You should have flown into Pocatello Regional Airport. I know what I said before, but you just gotta play it by ear and figure some stuff out for yourself.
But, whatever. That’s what Chubbuck is. That’s where I am. Fine. Okay.
TWO
At this point in time, I’m poolside. The pool is not mine; I mean it’s a community pool so I guess it’s mine. Cronke Community Center. There is a pool. Couple little clubhouse rooms. A little park with some trees. Whatever. Cronke Community Center is in Chubbuck.
I’m poolside, lying face up on my pool chair. Sunglasses off. I don’t even have sunglasses. If I buy sunglasses I will sit on them, honest to god. What’s the point?
It’s summer so this place is packed. Kids. Adults. Families. Single men. I don’t care. Everyone is walking, sitting, or running around and it’s a lot. You have to tune it all out. A few minutes ago it sounded like someone’s kid busted their head on the concrete, but I’m tuning that out.
Why? I’m staring at the sun. And I know it’s frowned upon to stare directly at the sun. And I’m not dumb, I get why. It hurts. The damage lingers. I should know, I’ve been doing this all summer. I pick the time when the sun is right over my pool chair, and I see how long I can go. Looking at the sun. That’s what I’m doing, that’s what I want to do.
What people won’t tell you is that you can develop a tolerance to the sun. If you work at it, you can go longer. At first, I was lasting a couple seconds. I mean at first I stared at the sun by accident. But then I thought, look, I’m going to be here all summer, might as well learn to live with the sun. Grow with it. Now I can go a full minute without having to blink or turn away. Today I go 57 seconds. It’s a setback, but you’re always going to have setbacks. Life beats you down for a bit as a way of saying it’s about to get better. That’s the god’s honest truth.
To be clear, I don’t have any personal examples of this truth. Life has kicked the shit out of me for a straight 58 years. Thorough ass beatings where every part of my spirit and physical body is destroyed. It’s caused me to develop big time mental problems that I don’t want to unpack because I’m too busy getting my shit wrecked. It’s like playing whack a mole, but every mole can whack you back. And, imagine if these moles also say terrible things about you. And let’s say you married one of these moles – I’m getting ahead of myself.
Life is going bad and it does not seem to be getting better. I have researched ways to end my life. I have developed a plan of action, and have made arrangements. But, I dunno. Sometimes you see an internet cartoon or some T-shirt and you say, “Wow, there is still a little color left on this painting. There are still dreams to be had.”
I look around the pool. I try to blink all the sun spots out of my eyes. Okay, so a kid did crack his head open. Looks like he is going to be fine. Lots of paramedics and concerned faces, but I don’t know. I’ve got a good feeling.
In my left hand I’ve got a Mike’s Hard Seltzer. Aside from looking at the sun, I’ve invested a lot of my time into the hard seltzer industry. I don’t work for a hard seltzer company or anything. No, I just spend a lot of time at the gas station looking at hard seltzers. Hours. Where did they come from?
I’m a Mike’s Hard Seltzer guy. I’ve had every seltzer available and Mike’s just does it right. As good as you can, which is not great, but it’s the best. I know I said internet cartoons and T-shirts keep me off the edge, but I should also tip my cap to alcohol.
I’m on my eighth hard seltzer. Again, it’s a hot day. You have to drink these things fast or else the can gets hot and then you’ve got a hot seltzer. If you are drinking hot seltzers you have a problem. You have a brain problem. Seltzer has to be cold. The bubbles need to be painful and the coldness plays against the pain of the bubbles. Fire and Ice. If you have a hot seltzer, there is no relief. You’re just being stupid.
I try to limit my movement on the chair because my stomach hurts from the seltzers. It’s a very specific kind of hurt I only get from drinking seltzers. I don’t think we were supposed to make seltzers hard. We shouldn’t do everything we can do, if that makes sense. I love them, though.
I go into a little trance watching the sun reflect off the surface of the pool. In your head you might imagine a sparkle of light on the water’s surface, but you would be wrong. Don’t get ahead of yourself. No, the pool has got a dull thickness to it. The pool is a publicly-owned property. We do town votes on chlorine levels in public pools. Never enough chlorine. Chlorine can’t keep up with the sunscreen and piss and you’d be surprised — I was surprised — leaked breast milk. I’ve asked around on the internet and apparently its totally normal for a woman to leak at a pool. Kids screaming, crying. Who screams and cries? Babies. So yeah, we’re leaking. And there are a lot of mothers at this pool.
If you came to me with decent odds that there is more breast milk than piss in this pool right now, I don’t know. God. I don’t know. I’d probably turn you down, but I’d think about it.
I trace the water up to where it meets the concrete edge and find myself in the crosshairs of my son Gabe’s big fat tits, wrapped up tight in a wet Hard Rock Café shirt he borrowed from his grandmother. Gabe is ten feet away from the edge of my pool chair in the shallow end. He’s bobbing up and down and when his tits get near the water they float a little. The Hard Rock Café shirt puffs out when he dips down, but sucks against his breasts when he comes back up. He dips and rocks and contorts his body so that maybe his tits will stop bobbing like tugboats, but he can’t help it. It’s physics. Gabe is trying to fight the laws of nature. It’s a fucked up sight.
Gabe is my youngest child. He is a teenager. Puberty. He’s in his awkward years and I’m starting to think they are all going to be awkward.
Gabe’s tits make him feel bad. He doesn’t like showing them, so if we’re at a place like the pool he wears a T-shirt to cover them up. I tell him, “That’s the problem. You’re not hiding these tits, you’re teasing them.” No one in my house agrees with me. I actually have no idea what my wife thinks. She’s a pretty hands-off parent. No knock on her. Just reality.
My daughter Samantha jumps down my throat. Big time. She says that I’m not being body positive even though it is actually the opposite. I’m actually the most body positive. I’m the one saying that my son should show his tits to the world. All of Chubbuck knows that Gabe has a set of cans. Boobs. Let’s see them!
When I say this? Fireworks. I am Hitler. “Gabe doesn’t have to show his body to anyone! His relationship with his own body is most important,” Samantha says. Sure. Fine. But settle down, tough guy. All I know is that when I walk into a locker room, I am naked before I am remotely close to my locker. I am nude, holding a newspaper, trying to make small talk. Why? Because who cares? It’s a body. We all have one. My body is nothing to brag about. I have a dick like a piece of Easter candy. I am uncircumcised, and I should have been. Someone should have intervened. It’s terrible. And I got fucked up pubic hair. But guess what? I’m still here. I’m not dead.
The problem is that Gabe is making this a thing of mystery. Mystery gets attention. And you know, it’s strange because – well I should probably clear something up because it could be a point of confusion: Gabe is not fat. I mean, he’s not winning any bodybuilding contests but he’s not in any health danger either. It’s just, I dunno, the guy is busty. I’m not saying anyone should do this, but if you did a slow camera pan on Gabe’s body, starting from the ankles and moving up his body, by the time you got to his breasts, a record would scratch. I’ve said this to Gabe and he has taken it poorly, but he shouldn’t. It’s more like, hey, you have one part of you that is strange and bad. It’s not all bad. I don’t know. There is a nuance to this conversation that I know is required, but I just don’t have it. It’s like, some pitchers have a curveball, some don’t. Me? I am not a pitcher.
But here’s the major issue with Gabe’s tits and just Gabe in general. We are in a time crunch. This is Gabe’s last summer before high school. It’s going to be rough. He has no confidence, he’s got this curvy body, he still uses his finger to read books, and I think he’s gonna get the living shit beaten out of him. If I was Gabe’s age and we went to the same high school — it’s tough because he’s my son and I love him — but I think I’d beat him until both my hands were broken. And I was no big time jock. I was no Emilio Estevez. But Gabe would have been a low enough bar to clear. I would have seen him as someone that, hey, maybe I publicly beat him and who knows? Maybe I go one rung higher on the social ladder. You know? A lot of people are going to see him and think that.
Also, and I think it’s something you have to account for…maybe it’s low probability/high-risk, but could Gabe’s tits set off some type of hormone infused reaction from his peers? Like, you get some bully who gets a couple punches on Gabe, Gabe’s tits I don’t know, jiggle or something? Then what? What kind of fight is this? I just think, not good. Not good for Gabe.
Part of the issue is that he doesn’t have a pack. A crew. A similar species group. I watch a lot of shows where wild animals die. I got these new Bluetooth headphones set up and I go full volume on these wild animal shows. I also watch violent street fights, but the wild animal stuff relates more to Gabe. Sometimes an animal will survive only because their pack is big enough that the predator says, “If I go in there I am going to get my ass beat,” or the pack is so big that sheer odds alone are in a single animal’s favor to survive.
Gabe doesn’t have that. He is not a jock. You would think he is a nerd, but he can’t make nerd friends because he is kind of simple. Not a full blown dum-dum. Not at all. Just like, when he gets older, he is gonna need a job where they give him a list, or write down what he is supposed to do on a whiteboard. So he is not going to have that nerd pack.
He has some weirdo aspects to him, so maybe he gets a weirdo pack, but that’s always a gamble. He’s always on Amazon buying camo and the camo never fits on his love handles right so it’s a major waste of money.
If he’s not on Amazon he’s on YouTube just watching stuff. And he’s got his mouth open for breathing. Watching nonsense.
He — and I say this with love and also disappointment — is a dork. Just a big dork. And dorks don’t have packs. They fly solo. Breaks my heart but also makes me upset with him because I feel like he has something to do with this. He could take that shirt off and be fat tits guy for a couple hours and then we’d all move on. He would just be Gabe, a guy who happens to have fat tits. But it’s inhabited him. He is fat tits guy forever.
But you should notice when I said “we” as in “we are in a time crunch.” Gabe’s tits are a “we” issue. I’m his dad. I want to help. And unlike my wife, I’m a hands-on kind of parent.
So. What’s the plan? We go to the pool. Every day. We get comfortable with our bodies in public. We show the world that we don’t hide from anything. And, we do this as a family. Everyone goes to the pool. No excuses. Every day.
How is the plan going? Not great. Technically, everyone is going. Is it to help Gabe discover his body? No. I will say that with confidence. Everyone is going to the pool for their own reasons. Is Gabe getting comfortable with his body? No. Shirt never comes off. Sometimes there are two shirts. One time he tried to go in the pool wearing a sweatshirt and jeans and I had to get a little stern with him.
But whatever. We go every day. Same car. All together. Pool opens at 10 a.m. We get there at 9:50. Drives everyone crazy. But we have one car, I drive, and I have a very legitimate reason for getting to the pool 10 minutes early.
What are the reasons? Okay. We need five pool chairs. There are five of us. Names and my personal rankings come later, but there are five of us. One chair per person. I’m not sharing my pool chair, and I don’t expect anyone in my family to share. Do I expect anyone to use the chair at all times? Of course not. I use my chair almost at all times, but that’s because I feel a need to guard the other chairs. The other four don’t really use their chairs, but I can only imagine that one time I am not guarding their chairs, and they want a chair and it has been taken? They would make sure that my day was ruined.
Next, I need a spot that is NOT in the direct line of sight of BOTH the lifeguard and the towel kid. I’m drinking alcohol. Can’t drink alcohol at the pool. I know a lot of people are sneaking their alcohol inside using water bottles or Camelbacks, but I’m drinking hard seltzer. If you take the seltzer out of the can and transfer it to a water bottle it loses the initial bubbles. That’s why you drink seltzer! So I have to drink from the can and I need to hide the can. If I get my alcohol taken away from me, I’ll just go home. If I can’t drink at the pool what is the point?
It’s a lot of pressure on me. Everyone has said they don’t need a chair if it means we can leave a few hours later, but I don’t think they mean that. I think they are lying. I think they are all lying to me.
Everyone has to be in the car at 9:30 a.m. Everyone consists of my wife Michelle, Gabe, my daughter Samantha, and our neighbor’s kid, Ethan. Nobody ever asks, but I can rank them, and I keep the rankings updated.
