Deep End Dons

Tuesday was the hottest day of the summer, so far. The temperature was in the high nineties and the air was bad, oppressive. I decided not to run, and instead spent the day eating, drinking and swimming. After a disastrous breakfast at The Friendly Toast (who puts hipsters in charge of breakfast?), a dining experience so bad that it garnered my first one star, one word review on Yelp, I met up with my friend Jess at the McCrehan Memorial Swimming and Wading Pool on Rindge Ave. There were hundreds of black people at the pool… which made it very easy to find my friends. They were the white people by the trash cans. The pool was perfect, a dip every few minutes to keep cool and then sun and magazines.

At around three in the afternoon the life guards blew their whistles and ordered everybody out of the water. The life guards then all entered the pool and splashed around for fifteen minutes or so… Just when I thought people were going to lose their minds they let us all back in, and finally opened up the deep end to swimmers. The deep end was twelve or fourteen feet, plenty deep for diving. Dive people did… with a running start, over the hangers-on at the side, into the sky blue abyss. The deep end had its rulers, a group of guys that I called the Deep End Dons. They were the Frank Sinatra and Rat Pack of the McCrehan Memorial Swimming and Wading Pool… arms hooked over the sides of the deep end as if it were a big leather booth in a club.

The Deep End Dons ruled the deep end for their own diving pleasure, and for scamming honeys.